Judging Aaron Swartz’s decision-making capabilities in light of his suicide is a form of survivorship bias (pun not intended, I am terribly sorry). It’s not at all clear that the outcome of his decisions was a predictable consequence of them.
On a societal level, it’s both useful and inspiring to have some people take more risks than others (risk-taking people sometimes bring large benefits to society, risk-averse people get inspiration and some Bayesian evidence about what works from looking at what risk-taking people do). This is probably why whatever personality traits correlate with risk-taking are heritable and vary within populations, and it suggests the reasonable hypothesis that optimal group rationality doesn’t necessarily mean that each individual in the group has optimal individual rationality.
optimal group rationality doesn’t necessarily mean that each individual in the group has optimal individual rationality.
Nitpick: Only if “the group” and “the individual” don’t have the exact same utility function and/or that either optimal rationality is not common knowledge within the group or not all individuals are optimal—which all seems rather suboptimal for “optimal group rationality”, but not excluded.
If all group members have knowledge that all group members are optimal, and all of them care about the group utility function rather than individualistic interests, they will all randomize who has the sub-personally-optimal strategy. Just like in the Rationalist vs Barbarians scenario.
Judging Aaron Swartz’s decision-making capabilities in light of his suicide is a form of survivorship bias (pun not intended, I am terribly sorry). It’s not at all clear that the outcome of his decisions was a predictable consequence of them.
On a societal level, it’s both useful and inspiring to have some people take more risks than others (risk-taking people sometimes bring large benefits to society, risk-averse people get inspiration and some Bayesian evidence about what works from looking at what risk-taking people do). This is probably why whatever personality traits correlate with risk-taking are heritable and vary within populations, and it suggests the reasonable hypothesis that optimal group rationality doesn’t necessarily mean that each individual in the group has optimal individual rationality.
Nitpick: Only if “the group” and “the individual” don’t have the exact same utility function and/or that either optimal rationality is not common knowledge within the group or not all individuals are optimal—which all seems rather suboptimal for “optimal group rationality”, but not excluded.
If all group members have knowledge that all group members are optimal, and all of them care about the group utility function rather than individualistic interests, they will all randomize who has the sub-personally-optimal strategy. Just like in the Rationalist vs Barbarians scenario.