When decisions have few externalities, decoupling bad from good decision makers by allowing people to make their own decisions works very well. When decisions have large externalities, only having most people able to make a good decision leads to a robustly safe outcome.
-
Show this thread
-
You get some improvement if there are strong individual incentives towards making a good decision that also aligns with the incentives of those impacted by the externalities, and to some extent competent opinion leaders can help, but you ultimately need widespread competence.
1 reply 0 retweets 1 likeShow this thread -
Even the sorts of cooperation incentives seen with iterated prisoner's dilemmas don't help if those harmed by defection are third parties who can't even identify which defector harmed them. (Perhaps being able to trace blame might help a bit, though information can be expensive.)
1 reply 0 retweets 2 likesShow this thread -
All of this is problematic given that competence and strong decision-making abilities are not widespread skills. The obvious short term solutions (like strong competent authoritarian rulemakers) inevitably break down because the incentives for the dictators are poor too.
1 reply 0 retweets 5 likesShow this thread -
There are strong competent states, but they're rare, and don't survive for long, and this is probably not an accident; public choice economic theory explains why pretty well. In the long run, strong competent authoritarians almost certainly are replaced with incompetent ones.
2 replies 1 retweet 7 likesShow this thread -
We're left with extremely poor choices in most situations where there are strong negative externalities to stupid behavior. It appears the only effective mechanisms involve actually improving the bulk of the populace, which is impractical (to say the least) in the short term.
3 replies 0 retweets 6 likesShow this thread -
Replying to @perrymetzger
i think this is what tradition is meant to do; you take a few common hazards and you hard-code rules about it for people who aren’t wise enough to originate the right decision on the fly
2 replies 0 retweets 0 likes -
Replying to @s_r_constantin @perrymetzger
Ie you can easily have cultural norms that are good for preventing disease spread, like handwashing or mask-wearing or quarantine. handwashing & quarantine are in fact biblical commandments.
1 reply 0 retweets 0 likes
I’m not enthusiastic about practicing a traditional lifestyle myself, but this is clearly the use case that explains why traditions are ever good.
Loading seems to be taking a while.
Twitter may be over capacity or experiencing a momentary hiccup. Try again or visit Twitter Status for more information.