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Well, I have an unbaked thought that says assigning numbers to people's contribution to the world is going to create the wrong kind of incentives. The problem
by AriaMinaei 11y ago
Well, I have an unbaked thought that says assigning numbers to people's contribution to the world is going to create the wrong kind of incentives.
The problem is that it's (probably) impossible to summarize someone's effects on other people into a number. We're seeing that even quantifying school performance ends up being counter-productive.
For me, the ideal is that instead of seeing how many people you've helped, or how much you've helped them, or any other quantified view of your work, you are just somehow able to see the story of how you helped them. Who did you help, in what situation? And it doesn't have to be something big like saving lives. Just, mundane, everyday stuff.
- jessriedel 11y agoI think that's more of a concern when there is a principal-agent problem. Yes, if you pay me X $/widget but are unable to measure widget quality well, then I may try to maximize number of widgets produced at the expense of quality. (And it may make sense to use other incentive structures.) But if I'm trying to help people, it's much less likely that I'll stupidly maximize a metric (# of page views) by lowering quality. What have I to gain? (This of course because a problem as soon as you start tangibly rewarding me based on the metric, or if the metric influences my public reputation, etc.)
- AriaMinaei 11y agoI see. But I think this "system that lets you see how what you do affects other people" should be applied to everything we do, not just charity. It should be mainly about your job and what you do that pays you. I wanna say why I think this is a good idea, but I'm curious to know whether it's obvious to other people why this could be a good thing.