This also sometimes implies that efforts to get out tend to suffer defeat in detail (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defeat_in_detail). If there’s 4 factors amphicausally propagating themselves, and you intervene on 1 (one) factor (strongly and in the right direction), the other 3 factors might be enough to maintain the bad equilibrium anyway.
This can lead to boondoggling: you correctly perceive that intervention X is somehow relevant, and is somehow directionally correct and has some effect. A bit of X gets a small temporary good effect. So you do X more. It doesn’t work. But maybe that’s just because you didn’t do X enough. So you invest even more in X. Since the bad equilibrium is confusing (no one root factor, in terms of factors you already understand) and out of sight, you don’t know why more X doesn’t work, so you don’t have an intuitive reason to not think more X might help… so you just keep doing more X even though it doesn’t get you out of the equilibrium.
This also sometimes implies that efforts to get out tend to suffer defeat in detail (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defeat_in_detail). If there’s 4 factors amphicausally propagating themselves, and you intervene on 1 (one) factor (strongly and in the right direction), the other 3 factors might be enough to maintain the bad equilibrium anyway.
This can lead to boondoggling: you correctly perceive that intervention X is somehow relevant, and is somehow directionally correct and has some effect. A bit of X gets a small temporary good effect. So you do X more. It doesn’t work. But maybe that’s just because you didn’t do X enough. So you invest even more in X. Since the bad equilibrium is confusing (no one root factor, in terms of factors you already understand) and out of sight, you don’t know why more X doesn’t work, so you don’t have an intuitive reason to not think more X might help… so you just keep doing more X even though it doesn’t get you out of the equilibrium.