I don’t think it’s a measurement problem. It’s like you’re looking at a feedback loop spiraling out of control and at each iteration you say “It doesn’t matter that we started from that little insignificant seed down there, look at how horrible the current state is, we need to go higher!”. Climb to the next level, rinse, repeat.
So, to get back to the original issue, yes, sometimes statistically small numbers are misleading because there are huge indirect effects which are hard to measure or are just missing from data available to you. I agree that, say, you can’t estimate the suppression of the US black population in the late XIX—early XX century by the number of lynchings.
But on the other hand, sometimes small numbers are just small numbers and there is no menacing shadow behind them.
It is just our good friend incentives hard at work. People like getting elected. Being tough on whatever is popular. So you look tougher than the existing guy. Buy he got the job by looking tougher than the previous guy, and so it goes.
After a few iterations the system is at nonsense levels. Everyone has been even tougher than the last person, until rank madness is being paraded as the only acceptable alternative. Anything else would be surrender to the unpersons.
Now you’ve got endless waves of people ready to defend college ladies from stranger danger, while ignoring their relatives who will actually rape them. Endless bills to defend black folks from men in white hoods, while thugs in masks and men with badges actually kill them. Endless efforts to shield children from “bullies” while they are flushed through a system actively hostile to their development.
Bravery is rewarded, so people try to show it. You look bravest when you fight the scariest foe. Imaginary stuff is scarier than real stuff could ever be, so those who would be our defenders squander their energies wrestling shadows, even as actual harms come and go, undeterred. It is pitiful, but entirely understandable.
until rank madness is being paraded as the only acceptable alternative. Anything else would be surrender to the unpersons.
Yep. This is called a “holiness spiral”.
After a few iterations the system is at nonsense levels
That’s an interesting moment because the system has to continue functioning in some way. So at this point it usually turns out that some animals are more equal than others and that the draconian measures are actually to be applied at the discretion of powers-that-be. The consequences are left as the exercise for the reader :-/
I don’t think it’s a measurement problem. It’s like you’re looking at a feedback loop spiraling out of control and at each iteration you say “It doesn’t matter that we started from that little insignificant seed down there, look at how horrible the current state is, we need to go higher!”. Climb to the next level, rinse, repeat.
So, to get back to the original issue, yes, sometimes statistically small numbers are misleading because there are huge indirect effects which are hard to measure or are just missing from data available to you. I agree that, say, you can’t estimate the suppression of the US black population in the late XIX—early XX century by the number of lynchings.
But on the other hand, sometimes small numbers are just small numbers and there is no menacing shadow behind them.
It is just our good friend incentives hard at work. People like getting elected. Being tough on whatever is popular. So you look tougher than the existing guy. Buy he got the job by looking tougher than the previous guy, and so it goes.
After a few iterations the system is at nonsense levels. Everyone has been even tougher than the last person, until rank madness is being paraded as the only acceptable alternative. Anything else would be surrender to the unpersons.
Now you’ve got endless waves of people ready to defend college ladies from stranger danger, while ignoring their relatives who will actually rape them. Endless bills to defend black folks from men in white hoods, while thugs in masks and men with badges actually kill them. Endless efforts to shield children from “bullies” while they are flushed through a system actively hostile to their development.
Bravery is rewarded, so people try to show it. You look bravest when you fight the scariest foe. Imaginary stuff is scarier than real stuff could ever be, so those who would be our defenders squander their energies wrestling shadows, even as actual harms come and go, undeterred. It is pitiful, but entirely understandable.
Yep. This is called a “holiness spiral”.
That’s an interesting moment because the system has to continue functioning in some way. So at this point it usually turns out that some animals are more equal than others and that the draconian measures are actually to be applied at the discretion of powers-that-be. The consequences are left as the exercise for the reader :-/