If one were to be above average but imperfect (e.g. not falsifying data or p-hacking but still publishing in paid access journals) then being called out for the imperfect bit could be bad. That person’s presence in the field is a net positive but if they don’t consider themselves able to afford the penalty of being perfect then they leave and the field suffers.
I’m not sure I endorse the specific example there but in a personal example:
My incentive at work is to spend more time on meeting my targets (vs other less measurable but important tasks) than is strictly beneficial for the company.
I do spend more time on these targets than would be optimal but I think I do this considerably less than is typical. I still overfocus on targets as I’ve been told in appraisals to do so.
If someone were to call me out on this I think I would be justified in feeling miffed, even if the person calling me out was acting better than me on this axis.
I read your steelman as importantly different from the quoted section.
It uses the weak claim that such action ‘could be bad’ rather than that it is bad. It also re-introduces the principle of being above average as a condition, which I consider mostly a distinct (but correlated) line of thought.
It changes the standard of behavior from ‘any behavior that responds to local incentives is automatically all right’ to ‘behaviors that are above average and net helpful, but imperfect.’
This is an example of the kind of equivalence/transformation/Mott and Bailey I’ve observed, and am attempting to highlight—not that you’re doing it, you’re not because this is explicitly a steelman, but that I’ve seen. The claim that it is reasonable to focus on meeting explicit targets rather than exclusively what is illegibly good for the company versus the claim that it is cannot be blameworthy to focus exclusively on what you are locally personally incentivized to do, which in this case is meeting explicit targets and things you would be blamed for, no matter the consequence to the company (unless it would actually suffer enough to destroy its ability to pay you).
That is no straw man. In the companies described in Moral Mazes, managers do in fact follow that second principle, and will punish those seen not doing so. In exactly this situation.
I might try and write up a reply of my own (to Zvi’s comment), but right now I’m fairly pressed for time and emotional energy, so until/unless that happens, I’m going to go ahead and endorse this response as closest to the one I would have given.
EDIT: I will note that this bit is (on my view) extremely important:
If one were to be above average but imperfect (emphasis mine)
“Above average”, of course, a comparative term. If e.g. 95% of my colleagues in a particular field regularly submit papers with bad data, then even if I do the same, I am no worse from a moral perspective than the supermajority of the people I work with. (I’m not claiming that this is actually the case in academia, to be clear.) And if it’s true that I’m only doing what everyone else does, then it makes no sense to call me out, especially if your “call-out” is guilt-based; after all, the kinds of people most likely to respond to guilt trips are likely to be exactly the people who are doing better than average, meaning that the primary targets of your moral attack are precisely the ones who deserve it the least.
(An interesting analogy can be made here regarding speeding—most people drive 10-15 miles over the official speed limit on freeways, at least in the US. Every once in a while, somebody gets pulled over for speeding, while all the other drivers—all of whom are driving at similarly high speeds—get by unscathed. I don’t think it’s particularly controversial to claim that (a) the driver who got pulled over is usually more annoyed at being singled out than they are recalcitrant, and (b) this kind of “intervention” has pretty much zero impact on driving behavior as a whole.)
Is your prediction that if it was common knowledge that police had permanently stopped pulling any cars over unless the car was at least 10 mph over the average driving speed on that highway in that direction over the past five minutes, in addition to being over the official speed limit, that average driving speeds would remain essentially unchanged?
As it happens, the case of speeding also came up in the comments on the OP. Yarkoni writes:
[...] I think the point I’m making actually works well for speeding too: when you get pulled over by a police officer for going 10 over the limit, nobody is going to take you seriously if your objection to the ticket is “but I’m incentivized to go 10 over, because I can get home a little faster, and hardly anyone ever gets pulled over at that speed!” The way we all think about speeding tickets is that, sure, there may be reasons we choose to break the law, but it’s still our informed decision to do so. We don’t try shirk the responsibility for speeding by pretending that we’re helpless in the face of the huge incentive to get where we’re going just a little bit faster than the law actually allows. I think if we looked at research practice the same way, that would be a considerable improvement.
On reflection I’m not sure “above average” is a helpful frame.
I think it would be more helpful to say someone being “net negative” should be a valid target for criticism. Someone who is “net positive” but imperfect may sometimes still be a valid target depending on other considerations (such as moving an equilibrium).
Trying to steelman the quoted section:
If one were to be above average but imperfect (e.g. not falsifying data or p-hacking but still publishing in paid access journals) then being called out for the imperfect bit could be bad. That person’s presence in the field is a net positive but if they don’t consider themselves able to afford the penalty of being perfect then they leave and the field suffers.
I’m not sure I endorse the specific example there but in a personal example:
My incentive at work is to spend more time on meeting my targets (vs other less measurable but important tasks) than is strictly beneficial for the company.
I do spend more time on these targets than would be optimal but I think I do this considerably less than is typical. I still overfocus on targets as I’ve been told in appraisals to do so.
If someone were to call me out on this I think I would be justified in feeling miffed, even if the person calling me out was acting better than me on this axis.
Thank you.
I read your steelman as importantly different from the quoted section.
It uses the weak claim that such action ‘could be bad’ rather than that it is bad. It also re-introduces the principle of being above average as a condition, which I consider mostly a distinct (but correlated) line of thought.
It changes the standard of behavior from ‘any behavior that responds to local incentives is automatically all right’ to ‘behaviors that are above average and net helpful, but imperfect.’
This is an example of the kind of equivalence/transformation/Mott and Bailey I’ve observed, and am attempting to highlight—not that you’re doing it, you’re not because this is explicitly a steelman, but that I’ve seen. The claim that it is reasonable to focus on meeting explicit targets rather than exclusively what is illegibly good for the company versus the claim that it is cannot be blameworthy to focus exclusively on what you are locally personally incentivized to do, which in this case is meeting explicit targets and things you would be blamed for, no matter the consequence to the company (unless it would actually suffer enough to destroy its ability to pay you).
That is no straw man. In the companies described in Moral Mazes, managers do in fact follow that second principle, and will punish those seen not doing so. In exactly this situation.
I might try and write up a reply of my own (to Zvi’s comment), but right now I’m fairly pressed for time and emotional energy, so until/unless that happens, I’m going to go ahead and endorse this response as closest to the one I would have given.
EDIT: I will note that this bit is (on my view) extremely important:
“Above average”, of course, a comparative term. If e.g. 95% of my colleagues in a particular field regularly submit papers with bad data, then even if I do the same, I am no worse from a moral perspective than the supermajority of the people I work with. (I’m not claiming that this is actually the case in academia, to be clear.) And if it’s true that I’m only doing what everyone else does, then it makes no sense to call me out, especially if your “call-out” is guilt-based; after all, the kinds of people most likely to respond to guilt trips are likely to be exactly the people who are doing better than average, meaning that the primary targets of your moral attack are precisely the ones who deserve it the least.
(An interesting analogy can be made here regarding speeding—most people drive 10-15 miles over the official speed limit on freeways, at least in the US. Every once in a while, somebody gets pulled over for speeding, while all the other drivers—all of whom are driving at similarly high speeds—get by unscathed. I don’t think it’s particularly controversial to claim that (a) the driver who got pulled over is usually more annoyed at being singled out than they are recalcitrant, and (b) this kind of “intervention” has pretty much zero impact on driving behavior as a whole.)
Is your prediction that if it was common knowledge that police had permanently stopped pulling any cars over unless the car was at least 10 mph over the average driving speed on that highway in that direction over the past five minutes, in addition to being over the official speed limit, that average driving speeds would remain essentially unchanged?
Take out the “10mph over” and I think this would be both fairer than the existing system and more effective.
(Maybe some modification to the calculation of the average to account for queues etc.)
As it happens, the case of speeding also came up in the comments on the OP. Yarkoni writes:
On reflection I’m not sure “above average” is a helpful frame.
I think it would be more helpful to say someone being “net negative” should be a valid target for criticism. Someone who is “net positive” but imperfect may sometimes still be a valid target depending on other considerations (such as moving an equilibrium).