Ah this really leans into the “indistinguishability” property in the sense of blindness. I was thinking it more as ambivalence, when I go buy orange juice I might not care for the brand that I buy but I can in principle check it.
In the automation example say that there are 1000 jobs about to be born and 1 job about to be lost. Sure just caring about the number of jobs might be blind but if one halts this transition because the loss of the 1 job is unacceptable then that implicitly incurs a heavy weighting between the different jobs (ie the new jobs are about 0.001 worth the old kind of job). Being capriciously impartial could come off as a bias, rather than shooting for general wellbeing you are infact advocating for the well being of some groups over others.
In the technical debt case we could also model it as the step that introduces the standstill to be be a highly harm inducing decision that could not “sneak by” the cost benefit analysis.
I think there is a certain “cost amnesia” that sets in after a “good” decision? Even for fairly large costs. So the “indistinguishability blindness” is often a cognitive response to maintain the image of a good decision rather than determined by hard numbers.
Regardless, this is likely entering speculation territory. It’s something I’d noticed in my own life as well as in policy decisions i.e. a negative reaction to talking about fairly large costs because net-benefits were still positive.
Ah this really leans into the “indistinguishability” property in the sense of blindness. I was thinking it more as ambivalence, when I go buy orange juice I might not care for the brand that I buy but I can in principle check it.
In the automation example say that there are 1000 jobs about to be born and 1 job about to be lost. Sure just caring about the number of jobs might be blind but if one halts this transition because the loss of the 1 job is unacceptable then that implicitly incurs a heavy weighting between the different jobs (ie the new jobs are about 0.001 worth the old kind of job). Being capriciously impartial could come off as a bias, rather than shooting for general wellbeing you are infact advocating for the well being of some groups over others.
In the technical debt case we could also model it as the step that introduces the standstill to be be a highly harm inducing decision that could not “sneak by” the cost benefit analysis.
I think there is a certain “cost amnesia” that sets in after a “good” decision? Even for fairly large costs. So the “indistinguishability blindness” is often a cognitive response to maintain the image of a good decision rather than determined by hard numbers.
Regardless, this is likely entering speculation territory. It’s something I’d noticed in my own life as well as in policy decisions i.e. a negative reaction to talking about fairly large costs because net-benefits were still positive.