Conversation

Replying to
It’s not that incentives don’t work, it’s that there are more incentives in play in a complex system than you can dominate by design behaviors reveal landscape of incentives thinking designed incentives drive behaviors is a bit like thinking mountains will step aside for roads
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At best designed incentives can usefully perturb wild behaviors if you take the time to map their host landscape a bit Like how road builders survey land in laying out roads
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A particular problem with legible incentives is that they rapidly hit cognitive limits: accurate, rational computation of optimal response to incentives is for trading algos, not humans. Humans struggle to grok even simple shit like “pay off highest interest debt first”
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I think I last acted optimally in relation to my incentives in 2003 jk I’ve never done it Once Cass Sunstein tried to nudge me to eat a salad but I didn’t notice the clever cue and ate a sandwich instead
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Outside of algorithmic automation domains, most examples of incentives shaping live human behaviors involve large amounts of money and overlooked loopholes to game them efficiently. Goodhart’s law examples are more common than working-as-designed examples.
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Most incentives try to get humans to invest reasonable effort for fair rewards. Most humans only pay attention if there are unfair rewards. So you have to offer unfair rewards or penalties (“death for littering”) to shape behavior strongly enough to claim you’ve “designed” it
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Replying to
People don’t deeply want any of the 2nd-tier things we find ourselves pursuing in lieu of what we really want, eternal safety and love—heaven. Fascinations squirm like water in a squeezed balloon—unstable incentive targets. Reliable people choose to keep themselves driven.
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