Regulation does not fix the problem, just moves it from the consumer to the regulator. A regulator will only regulate a problem which is obvious to the regulator. A regulator may sometimes have more expertise than a layperson, but even that requires that the politicians ultimately appointing people can distinguish real from fake expertise, which is hard in general.
It seems like the DOE decided to adopt energy-efficiency standards that take into account infiltration. They could easily have made a different decision (e.g. because of pressure from portable AC manufacturers, or because it’s legitimately unclear how to define the standard, or because it makes measurement harder), but it wouldn’t be because the issue wasn’t obvious (I think it’s not even anywhere close to the “failure because the issue wasn’t obvious” regime).
Overall I agree with the bottom line that regulation is unlikely to help that much with alignment. But I don’t think this seems like the right model of why that is or how you could fix it.
Waiting longer does not fix the problem. All those people who did not notice their air conditioner pulling hot air into the house will not start noticing if we just wait a few years. Problems do not automatically become obvious over time.
I think our understanding of these issues has always been much better than the low baseline you imagine in the OP, but I also think discourse has clearly improved significantly over time. So I’m also not sure that this analogy really says what you want it to say.
It seems like the DOE decided to adopt energy-efficiency standards that take into account infiltration. They could easily have made a different decision (e.g. because of pressure from portable AC manufacturers, or because it’s legitimately unclear how to define the standard, or because it makes measurement harder), but it wouldn’t be because the issue wasn’t obvious (I think it’s not even anywhere close to the “failure because the issue wasn’t obvious” regime).
Overall I agree with the bottom line that regulation is unlikely to help that much with alignment. But I don’t think this seems like the right model of why that is or how you could fix it.
I think our understanding of these issues has always been much better than the low baseline you imagine in the OP, but I also think discourse has clearly improved significantly over time. So I’m also not sure that this analogy really says what you want it to say.