Perhaps the key problem with attempts to lift the unilateralist’s curse, is that it’s very easy to enforce dangerous conformity - ‘conformity’ being a term I made sure not to use in the OP. It’s crucial to be able to not do the thing that you’re being told to do under the threat of immediate and strong social punishment, especially when there’s a long time scale before finding out if your action is actually the right one. Consistently going against the grain because it’s better in the long run, not because it brings immediate reward, is very difficult.
Both being able to think and act for yourself, and yet also not disregard others enough to not break things, is a delicate balance, and many people end up too far on one end or the other. They find themselves punished for unilateralist action, and never speak up again; or they find that others are stopping them from being themselves, and then ignore all the costs they’re imposing on their community. My current sense is that most people lean towards conformity, but also that the small number of unilateralists have caused an outsized harm.
(Then again, failures from conformity are often more silent, so I have wide error bars around the magnitude of their cost.)
Indeed.
Perhaps the key problem with attempts to lift the unilateralist’s curse, is that it’s very easy to enforce dangerous conformity - ‘conformity’ being a term I made sure not to use in the OP. It’s crucial to be able to not do the thing that you’re being told to do under the threat of immediate and strong social punishment, especially when there’s a long time scale before finding out if your action is actually the right one. Consistently going against the grain because it’s better in the long run, not because it brings immediate reward, is very difficult.
Both being able to think and act for yourself, and yet also not disregard others enough to not break things, is a delicate balance, and many people end up too far on one end or the other. They find themselves punished for unilateralist action, and never speak up again; or they find that others are stopping them from being themselves, and then ignore all the costs they’re imposing on their community. My current sense is that most people lean towards conformity, but also that the small number of unilateralists have caused an outsized harm.
(Then again, failures from conformity are often more silent, so I have wide error bars around the magnitude of their cost.)