I’m looking for a reading recommendation on the topic of perverse incentives, especially incentives that cause people to do unethical things. Yes, I checked “The Best Textbooks on Every Subject” thread and have recorded all the economics recommendations of interest. However, as interested as I am in reading about economics in general, my specific focus is on perverse incentives, especially ones that cause people to do unethical things. I was wondering if anyone has explored this in depth or happens to know a term for “perverse incentives that cause people to do unethical things”, (regardless of whether it’s part of economics or some other subject), as I can’t seem to find one.
Hard Facts, Dangerous Half-Truths And Total Nonsense: Profiting From Evidence-Based Management has a fair amount about the limits of incentive plans.
From memory: incentives can work for work that’s well-defined and can be done by one person. Otherwise, the result is people gaming the system and not cooperating with each other.
I don’t remember whether the book covered something I heard about in the 70s or 80s about a car company which had incentives for teams assembling cars rather than an assembly line.
I was told about a shop owned by partners which had an incentive system for bringing in sales for the shifts the partners worked. The result was that the partners wouldn’t tell customers to come back if it might be on someone else’s shift.
Since we’re supposed to use karma votes for weeding the garden, then I assume they are supposed to mean “you’re acting like a weed”. If you press the “you’re acting like a weed” button for anything other than a weed-like act, then you’re essentially crying wolf with the karma button which will result in people becoming indifferent just like they do when any other false alarm is raised often.
I like you Vladimir. I have observed that you’ve made an effort to be friendly and fair to me in the past. Since you have been honest with me, I’ll be honest also: It’s the fact that people use karma to express minor preferences like this one that keep me from taking most karma votes seriously.
I am also surprised to discover that people are communicating minor preferences using down votes. Look at it from my point of view: there are over 1000 people who regularly use this site. We don’t even have a consensus on things like Newcomb’s problem, free will or dust specks, let alone stylistic preferences. Were I to hypothesize about all the possible reasons why one of 1000+ people might down vote me that are not obvious in the way a Schelling point would be and calculate the probabilities of each, I would be spending an incredible amount of time just to figure out that you didn’t like a particular turn of phrase.
This might be Expecting Short Inferential Distances. (I have this problem as well, though it comes out in different places.) I still like you, but I hope you will try not to communicate minor preferences to me via karma votes in the future.
We don’t even have a consensus on things like Newcomb’s problem, free will or dust specks, let alone stylistic preferences. Were I to hypothesize about all the possible reasons why one of 1000+ people might down vote me that are not obvious in the way a Schelling point would be and calculate the probabilities of each, I would be spending an incredible amount of time just to figure out that you didn’t like a particular turn of phrase.
This is true, the overhead for adopting and learning somewhat arbitrary cultural norms can be significant. This is particularly the case for those whose instincts are less finely targeted towards social conformance. This is a class predictably overrepresented on less wrong. That said, you have now had the preference explained to you in clear English. The need for calculating probabilities for countless hypothetical downvote causes is largely removed and this one hypothesis “Saying +1 Karma causes some downvotes” is now comfortably high. Now it is a choice whether you want to spend emotional effort fighting that norm or whether you let it go and adapt.
There are many times where it worthwhile to fight the tide and attempt to influence social norms in a desired direction. I do this constantly in my battle against what I call bullshit. However it is important to chose one’s battles. In no small part because if one spends their influence attempting to fight irrelevant things then there is less credibility remaining for fighting the battles that matter.
In this case people don’t like “+1 karma” as part of a general distaste for all unnecessary references to the karma based meta-level. I expect that if you had responded “Ok, thank you for explaining. I’ll adopt different word use in my reinforcement.” then you would have been upvoted and also had people reverse their downvotes of the earlier comment. People being cooperative and updating tends to be appreciated.
I personally request that you change this detail of style rather than escalating your dissent. It is frustrating to watch otherwise rational people undermining their credibility due to what amounts to social awkwardness. Lose gracefully on small things so that you win more things that matter.
Thank you for this, army1987. I am glad to know that others can see appreciation as being a good and necessary thing rather than treating it as spam, and am more glad to see that someone else is willing to show support for encouraging behaviors. +1 karma. The Power of Reinforcement, “What Works”
Thank you for this, army1987. I am glad to know that others can see appreciation as being a good and necessary thing rather than treating it as spam, and am more glad to see that someone else is willing to show support for encouraging behaviors. +1 karma. The Power of Reinforcement, “What Works”
This comment could be improved by the removal of “+1 karma.”.
For example allocating funds to fire departments based on how many fires they put out. That encourages them to stop putting work into fire prevention and, at the extreme, creates an incentive for outright arson.
The medical system. (Does that even need explaining?)
I gather Australia’s medical system is just as notoriously bad as America’s (as per Yvain’s excoriations)?
Finland’s Healthcare system and to a lesser extent the NHS seem to mostly have proper incentives in place, as uncured folk means less capacity to treat oneself. Surely medical care the world over isn’t guided by perverse incentives? That is more a question than an assertion.
I’m looking for a reading recommendation on the topic of perverse incentives, especially incentives that cause people to do unethical things. Yes, I checked “The Best Textbooks on Every Subject” thread and have recorded all the economics recommendations of interest. However, as interested as I am in reading about economics in general, my specific focus is on perverse incentives, especially ones that cause people to do unethical things. I was wondering if anyone has explored this in depth or happens to know a term for “perverse incentives that cause people to do unethical things”, (regardless of whether it’s part of economics or some other subject), as I can’t seem to find one.
Hard Facts, Dangerous Half-Truths And Total Nonsense: Profiting From Evidence-Based Management has a fair amount about the limits of incentive plans.
From memory: incentives can work for work that’s well-defined and can be done by one person. Otherwise, the result is people gaming the system and not cooperating with each other.
I don’t remember whether the book covered something I heard about in the 70s or 80s about a car company which had incentives for teams assembling cars rather than an assembly line.
I was told about a shop owned by partners which had an incentive system for bringing in sales for the shifts the partners worked. The result was that the partners wouldn’t tell customers to come back if it might be on someone else’s shift.
Thank you. +1 karma.
Who the hell downvotes this?
I do, mostly for the “+1 karma” ending, which I dislike stylistically.
Since we’re supposed to use karma votes for weeding the garden, then I assume they are supposed to mean “you’re acting like a weed”. If you press the “you’re acting like a weed” button for anything other than a weed-like act, then you’re essentially crying wolf with the karma button which will result in people becoming indifferent just like they do when any other false alarm is raised often.
I like you Vladimir. I have observed that you’ve made an effort to be friendly and fair to me in the past. Since you have been honest with me, I’ll be honest also: It’s the fact that people use karma to express minor preferences like this one that keep me from taking most karma votes seriously.
I am also surprised to discover that people are communicating minor preferences using down votes. Look at it from my point of view: there are over 1000 people who regularly use this site. We don’t even have a consensus on things like Newcomb’s problem, free will or dust specks, let alone stylistic preferences. Were I to hypothesize about all the possible reasons why one of 1000+ people might down vote me that are not obvious in the way a Schelling point would be and calculate the probabilities of each, I would be spending an incredible amount of time just to figure out that you didn’t like a particular turn of phrase.
This might be Expecting Short Inferential Distances. (I have this problem as well, though it comes out in different places.) I still like you, but I hope you will try not to communicate minor preferences to me via karma votes in the future.
This is true, the overhead for adopting and learning somewhat arbitrary cultural norms can be significant. This is particularly the case for those whose instincts are less finely targeted towards social conformance. This is a class predictably overrepresented on less wrong. That said, you have now had the preference explained to you in clear English. The need for calculating probabilities for countless hypothetical downvote causes is largely removed and this one hypothesis “Saying +1 Karma causes some downvotes” is now comfortably high. Now it is a choice whether you want to spend emotional effort fighting that norm or whether you let it go and adapt.
There are many times where it worthwhile to fight the tide and attempt to influence social norms in a desired direction. I do this constantly in my battle against what I call bullshit. However it is important to chose one’s battles. In no small part because if one spends their influence attempting to fight irrelevant things then there is less credibility remaining for fighting the battles that matter.
In this case people don’t like “+1 karma” as part of a general distaste for all unnecessary references to the karma based meta-level. I expect that if you had responded “Ok, thank you for explaining. I’ll adopt different word use in my reinforcement.” then you would have been upvoted and also had people reverse their downvotes of the earlier comment. People being cooperative and updating tends to be appreciated.
I personally request that you change this detail of style rather than escalating your dissent. It is frustrating to watch otherwise rational people undermining their credibility due to what amounts to social awkwardness. Lose gracefully on small things so that you win more things that matter.
Thank you for this, army1987. I am glad to know that others can see appreciation as being a good and necessary thing rather than treating it as spam, and am more glad to see that someone else is willing to show support for encouraging behaviors. +1 karma. The Power of Reinforcement, “What Works”
This comment could be improved by the removal of “+1 karma.”.
For example...?
For example allocating funds to fire departments based on how many fires they put out. That encourages them to stop putting work into fire prevention and, at the extreme, creates an incentive for outright arson.
The medical system. (Does that even need explaining?)
I gather Australia’s medical system is just as notoriously bad as America’s (as per Yvain’s excoriations)?
Finland’s Healthcare system and to a lesser extent the NHS seem to mostly have proper incentives in place, as uncured folk means less capacity to treat oneself. Surely medical care the world over isn’t guided by perverse incentives? That is more a question than an assertion.