I don’t think you’re totally barking up the wrong tree about incentive systems causing corruption, but I think it’s easy to misunderstand what power incentivizes, and I think you’ve done so. For the most part, the world’s conspiracies are bubbles of fairly tight cooperation-small-to-defect-big that gets leaked relatively quickly if it gets complicated. Corporations, despite being fairly corrupt and taking actions against those at the bottom, do also incentivize their participants to do good things, to some degree. But they crush workers.
A key thing that those in power need is for everyone to blame the power structures on groups based on their fundamental attributes. There is a hierarchy of which fundamental attributes people out of power are incentivized to incorrectly blame for the behavior of those few who have significant commands of others’ incentives; incentive-command power needs you to see any attempt to remove that hierarchy as merely an attempt to change it.
I worry you’ve misrecognized Power’s corruption of DEI as a fundamental feature of the concept of DEI. if you wish to preserve what any of us have had from any of our places in the hierarchy of blame and boot, we must invert the conspiracy incentive that is shared by the way the economic system’s incentives cause us to goodhart.
It’s just the same inter-agent safety problem as AI safety, really.
While I don’t disagree that “incentive systems causing corruption” is similar to what I would call conspiracy there seems to be a problem of the mundanity of evil. “Everyone knows” “capitalism” is unfair and corrupt, “everyone” doesn’t have a very specific understanding of how it is corrupt nor do they really think it can be addressed. It’s one of these unsolvable problems of “the system”.
Compare that to conspiracy people who for example actively distrust the media, actively resist the idea of large corporations running important parts of their lives such as the town-square. If we buy the idea that the system we have in place right now is systematically corrupt then these seem like reasonable actions to take, especially in an attempt to figure out alternatives.
I’m still having a very hard time to differentiate what people would call conspiracy. If the media knowingly tries to make you believe false thing X is that conspiracy? What about if all mainstream media knowingly try to make you believe false thing X? What if all mainstream media knowingly try to make you believe false thing X because another organization has decided that they should do that and has by some not-secret-but-not-known mechanism convinced all media of this?
What if the CIA tries to get control over how people think, is that conspiracy? What if they do this in a way that technically is not secret but claimed to be for our own good? Would that make it go from conspiracy to not?
What if the Mossad runs an operation to get blackmail on American politicians is that a conspiracy? What if they succeed and those politicians become high-ranking?
then I don’t think we meaningfully disagree on what there is to protect self and community from—malice incentivizes divide and conquer, so if you’re seeking to protect, unite and aid. my only objections to conspiracy theorism is that it can cause one to mismodel the coordination patterns that cause the behaviors one notices. in general, I don’t think the media as a whole tries to convince people of things; as a whole, mostly they try to get people to click on things. subgroups of media do have specific agendas, but for the most part the shared directions in behavior space do not result in reliable coordination. I also agree with Scott Alexander’s take about how the media usually lies: by omission. I don’t think it’s an awful idea to occasionally read or watch stuff produced by media companies, it’s just important to do citation tracing. don’t be a crackpot; there are always many possible causal hypotheses.
I don’t think you’re totally barking up the wrong tree about incentive systems causing corruption, but I think it’s easy to misunderstand what power incentivizes, and I think you’ve done so. For the most part, the world’s conspiracies are bubbles of fairly tight cooperation-small-to-defect-big that gets leaked relatively quickly if it gets complicated. Corporations, despite being fairly corrupt and taking actions against those at the bottom, do also incentivize their participants to do good things, to some degree. But they crush workers.
A key thing that those in power need is for everyone to blame the power structures on groups based on their fundamental attributes. There is a hierarchy of which fundamental attributes people out of power are incentivized to incorrectly blame for the behavior of those few who have significant commands of others’ incentives; incentive-command power needs you to see any attempt to remove that hierarchy as merely an attempt to change it.
I worry you’ve misrecognized Power’s corruption of DEI as a fundamental feature of the concept of DEI. if you wish to preserve what any of us have had from any of our places in the hierarchy of blame and boot, we must invert the conspiracy incentive that is shared by the way the economic system’s incentives cause us to goodhart.
It’s just the same inter-agent safety problem as AI safety, really.
While I don’t disagree that “incentive systems causing corruption” is similar to what I would call conspiracy there seems to be a problem of the mundanity of evil. “Everyone knows” “capitalism” is unfair and corrupt, “everyone” doesn’t have a very specific understanding of how it is corrupt nor do they really think it can be addressed. It’s one of these unsolvable problems of “the system”.
Compare that to conspiracy people who for example actively distrust the media, actively resist the idea of large corporations running important parts of their lives such as the town-square. If we buy the idea that the system we have in place right now is systematically corrupt then these seem like reasonable actions to take, especially in an attempt to figure out alternatives.
I’m still having a very hard time to differentiate what people would call conspiracy. If the media knowingly tries to make you believe false thing X is that conspiracy? What about if all mainstream media knowingly try to make you believe false thing X? What if all mainstream media knowingly try to make you believe false thing X because another organization has decided that they should do that and has by some not-secret-but-not-known mechanism convinced all media of this?
What if the CIA tries to get control over how people think, is that conspiracy? What if they do this in a way that technically is not secret but claimed to be for our own good? Would that make it go from conspiracy to not?
What if the Mossad runs an operation to get blackmail on American politicians is that a conspiracy? What if they succeed and those politicians become high-ranking?
key question that will guide how I answer: is fox mainstream media in your view?
Yes
then I don’t think we meaningfully disagree on what there is to protect self and community from—malice incentivizes divide and conquer, so if you’re seeking to protect, unite and aid. my only objections to conspiracy theorism is that it can cause one to mismodel the coordination patterns that cause the behaviors one notices. in general, I don’t think the media as a whole tries to convince people of things; as a whole, mostly they try to get people to click on things. subgroups of media do have specific agendas, but for the most part the shared directions in behavior space do not result in reliable coordination. I also agree with Scott Alexander’s take about how the media usually lies: by omission. I don’t think it’s an awful idea to occasionally read or watch stuff produced by media companies, it’s just important to do citation tracing. don’t be a crackpot; there are always many possible causal hypotheses.