I had generally assumed that “food isn’t about nutrition” was pointing to the idea that food is about status. For instance, it is rather suspicious that foods people consider virtuous seem to be those which involve high resource expenditure: organic, non-GMO, “fair-trade”, “artisan”, and so forth.
Ah, yeah, your interpretation is likely more in line with Robin Hanson’s. I think this points to a more general way in which my version diverges from his, but I’m not sure how to articulate it. It’s something like: I’m talking about the divergence of a system from the explicitly stated goal as a result of proxy incentives being imperfect. He’s talking about entirely different incentives sneaking in, perhaps even determining what the proxies are in the first place. These are similar because a proxy is often set up as a status mechanism. You often want your proxy to serve as a status mechanism, because that’ll make it more powerful for humans. But, on the flip side, you might be influenced by status dynamics when you set up your proxy.
(The above doesn’t quite seem to capture a wider frame in which to understand both versions of “X is not about Y”.)
I had generally assumed that “food isn’t about nutrition” was pointing to the idea that food is about status. For instance, it is rather suspicious that foods people consider virtuous seem to be those which involve high resource expenditure: organic, non-GMO, “fair-trade”, “artisan”, and so forth.
Ah, yeah, your interpretation is likely more in line with Robin Hanson’s. I think this points to a more general way in which my version diverges from his, but I’m not sure how to articulate it. It’s something like: I’m talking about the divergence of a system from the explicitly stated goal as a result of proxy incentives being imperfect. He’s talking about entirely different incentives sneaking in, perhaps even determining what the proxies are in the first place. These are similar because a proxy is often set up as a status mechanism. You often want your proxy to serve as a status mechanism, because that’ll make it more powerful for humans. But, on the flip side, you might be influenced by status dynamics when you set up your proxy.
(The above doesn’t quite seem to capture a wider frame in which to understand both versions of “X is not about Y”.)