Long piece this week: commoncog.com/blog/the-right
The core idea here is that it's tempting to take ideas from one layer of abstraction and apply them to a different layer. But it's not usually a good idea to do so.
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This has lots of little implications. It's sort of tied to last week's post on neuroplasticity and practice: commoncog.com/blog/neuroplas
But there are many, many other instances where it 'feels' good to take ideas from a different level of abstraction and apply them elsewhere.
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But these are nearly always mistaken.
Related example: at the individual level, the 'trigger-routine-reward' habit loop is enough for behavioural change.
But at the societal level, you need different ideas for behavioural change. Think: incentive systems design, not habits.
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This post really belongs to 'category of thinking traps that smart, analytical people fall into'.
The post is not as clear as I want it to be. But I've spent 2 weeks on this, and multiple discussions with diff people, and I threw out 3 drafts. This is the best I can do for now.
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Replying to
Without having read the article, I’d argue that the mistake here isn’t so much that the reward loop doesn’t scale as that the atomic element (the individual) wasn’t scaled when the loop was
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Incentive system design is a trigger-routine-reward loop but for a society
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