LessWrong, conveniently, has a rough metric of status directly built-in, namely karma. So we can directly ask: do people with high karma (i.e. high LW-status) wish to avoid quantification of performance? Speaking as someone with relatively high karma myself, I do indeed at least think that every quantitative performance metric I’ve heard sounds terrible, and I’d guess that most of the other folks with relatively high karma on the site would agree.
… and yet the story in the post doesn’t quite seem to hold up. My local/first-order incentives actually favor quantifying performance by status, so long as the quantitative metric in question is one by which I’m already doing well—like, say, LW karma. If e.g. research grants were given out based solely on LW karma, that would be great for me personally (ignoring higher-order effects).
And yet, despite the favorable local/first-order incentives, I think that’s not a very good idea (either for me personally or at the community level), because implementing it would mostly result in karma being goodhearted a lot more.
Zooming back out to the more general case, I see two generalizable lessons.
First: the local incentives of those with high status agree with performance quantification just fine, so long as the metric in question is one by which they’re already doing well. Quantification is not actually the relevant thing to focus on. The relevant thing to focus on is whether a particular new criterion (whether quantitative or not) is something on which high-status people already perform well.
Second: performance standards are a commons. Goodhearting burns that commons; performing well at a widely-goodhearted metric has relatively little benefit even for those who are very good at goodhearting the metric, compared to performing well on a non-goodhearted metric. So, high-status individuals’ incentives also push toward avoiding goodhearting, in a way which is plausibly-beneficial to the community as a whole.
the local incentives of those with high status agree with performance quantification just fine, so long as the metric in question is one by which they’re already doing well.
To me this rhymes pretty closely with the message in Is Success the Enemy of Freedom?, in that in both cases you’re very averse to competition on even pretty nearby metrics that you do worse on.
LessWrong, conveniently, has a rough metric of status directly built-in, namely karma. So we can directly ask: do people with high karma (i.e. high LW-status) wish to avoid quantification of performance? Speaking as someone with relatively high karma myself, I do indeed at least think that every quantitative performance metric I’ve heard sounds terrible, and I’d guess that most of the other folks with relatively high karma on the site would agree.
… and yet the story in the post doesn’t quite seem to hold up. My local/first-order incentives actually favor quantifying performance by status, so long as the quantitative metric in question is one by which I’m already doing well—like, say, LW karma. If e.g. research grants were given out based solely on LW karma, that would be great for me personally (ignoring higher-order effects).
And yet, despite the favorable local/first-order incentives, I think that’s not a very good idea (either for me personally or at the community level), because implementing it would mostly result in karma being goodhearted a lot more.
Zooming back out to the more general case, I see two generalizable lessons.
First: the local incentives of those with high status agree with performance quantification just fine, so long as the metric in question is one by which they’re already doing well. Quantification is not actually the relevant thing to focus on. The relevant thing to focus on is whether a particular new criterion (whether quantitative or not) is something on which high-status people already perform well.
Second: performance standards are a commons. Goodhearting burns that commons; performing well at a widely-goodhearted metric has relatively little benefit even for those who are very good at goodhearting the metric, compared to performing well on a non-goodhearted metric. So, high-status individuals’ incentives also push toward avoiding goodhearting, in a way which is plausibly-beneficial to the community as a whole.
To me this rhymes pretty closely with the message in Is Success the Enemy of Freedom?, in that in both cases you’re very averse to competition on even pretty nearby metrics that you do worse on.