I’m not sure I endorse this comment as written, but just wanted to note that I appreciate trying to tease out why the article felt subtly off to you.
Something about framing it through mistake theory stills feels off to me, too, though. I see where you’re coming from with the naive-conflict-theory feeling off. But something important about the article seemed to be grappling with (or at least, I was grappling with as I read the article, and especially through the lens of your comment) was something like:
“We have a bunch of naive intuitions about who to blame. Those naive intuitions get weird in sufficiently complex systems, and it’s not obvious what to do. One thing you might do is discard the blame concept. But, this feels a bit unsatisfying because many people are still playing the blame game, and directing the blame at someone, and it’s rarely the privileged people who were able to purchase distance from the blameworthy things. And maybe the solution here is to get everyone out of conflict theory, but it’s not obvious to me that this is a tractable or even optimal-given-buy-in approach, because people in fact do fight over things.” [edit: and jessicata’s note that incentive alignment is conflict theory feels relevant]
I’m not sure I endorse this comment as written, but just wanted to note that I appreciate trying to tease out why the article felt subtly off to you.
Something about framing it through mistake theory stills feels off to me, too, though. I see where you’re coming from with the naive-conflict-theory feeling off. But something important about the article seemed to be grappling with (or at least, I was grappling with as I read the article, and especially through the lens of your comment) was something like:
“We have a bunch of naive intuitions about who to blame. Those naive intuitions get weird in sufficiently complex systems, and it’s not obvious what to do. One thing you might do is discard the blame concept. But, this feels a bit unsatisfying because many people are still playing the blame game, and directing the blame at someone, and it’s rarely the privileged people who were able to purchase distance from the blameworthy things. And maybe the solution here is to get everyone out of conflict theory, but it’s not obvious to me that this is a tractable or even optimal-given-buy-in approach, because people in fact do fight over things.” [edit: and jessicata’s note that incentive alignment is conflict theory feels relevant]