I really like the article but I feel like ignoring incentives always costs something. Only people who can afford the cost get to look principled, which turns having money into looking like having character. Everyone he praises in the article has/had a safety net: Sumner was a Harvard-educated senator with inherited standing, the writer himself still had a career after dropping his uni title.
The fish metaphor has the same issue. The people dying on the sidewalk outside his conference have seen worse than he has, they don't lack moral clarity but rather the freedom and capital to rebuild their lives around it. His essay treats seeing the fish and acting on it as a single moment when the acting part requires you to have capital/social safety net.
I usually go around saying to anyone who will listen "incentives are dangerous". Like... you can't avoid them as people are sneaky bastards and will find what the incentives are even if you didn't design any on purpose, but you should be on the lookout always and be damn careful if you ever get the bad idea to introduce any.
Completely agree. Incentives are for the statistical masses.
As thinking individuals we can and should use our awareness and courage to make biggest "good" choices we can bear to. We can't all be zero-waste vegan community organisers lobbying for renewables and free education/healthcare, but I doubt living life with the blinders on leads any kind of moral or spiritual growth or fulfilment either.
> As thinking individuals we can and should use our awareness and courage to make biggest "good" choices we can bear to.
That’s the cool thing about incentives, we follow them whether we realize it or not. “bear to” is where the incentives are hiding. We don’t make the best choices, we choose from the choices available to us.
You can’t fight your environment forever.
If the gooder choice is 50km away and the bad choice is down the street, eventually you’ll stop going 50km out of your way every day because it’s just too cumbersome. You might even do it “just this once” because you had a busy day and your kid is crying and you’re just so tired and then before you know it, it’s been months or even years since the last time you did the cumbersome better thing.
> In the eternal game of cat and mouse between the goodhearted people trying to fix the incentives and the Goodhart’d people trying to exploit the incentives, I am rooting for the cats.
This article reflects my values and philosophy exactly... However I think the author is underestimating the cost of not following incentives. The costs are tortuous.
In this society, I'm a loser precisely because I ignored incentives. I think we live in a failed society so I don't mind that much being a loser in such society. I don't think I would feel any pride being a winner... However, I would very much appreciate the financial comfort of not having to participate in it!
I loved this. Unfortunately, I don't know how realistic it is at this point. The entire modern Western system is built on incentives, and it would require dramatically changing the social order and economic system.
>My real gripe with this line of thinking is it implies that incentives should be obeyed, that it is normal or even noble to do so, and that is perhaps impossible to do otherwise. How could you be expected to break a rule, forego a promotion, or give up decimal of your grade point average, for the sake of—what? Doing the right thing?
But this misunderstands incentive based analysis.
The point isn't just that people naturally follow incentives, but that those who refuse are punished and no longer in a position to affect the world.
Taking a principled stand is great and all, but if the result is simply that you get fired and replaced by someone better at following orders, you didn't really fix the problem.
Of course it's more complicated than that. Certainly other people being willing to do evil is no excuse to do evil yourself. Maybe your principled stand inspires others and you start a revolution or something. But that's rare. In the average case incentives win. Which is why if you want to actually change the world for the better you should attack the incentives not the individuals - individuals can be replaced, but millions are willing to follow incentives.
-----
The rest of the article seems to be about developing your own morality, but morality is really just yet another incentive.
Maybe more succinctly: incentives work whether anyone cares or not, which is broadly the hallmark of good public policy. As foolish as relying on heroism in technology, so too is relying on perfect behavior from the citizenry in government.
I think your comment is describing something slightly different from incentives: the criteria for granting power and control to some individuals rather than others. There may be incentives to do what's necessary to fulfill those criteria, but it's a different axis from the incentives themselves.
Responding to the actual article: it seems like the author simply has a different set of values than what is assumed by the conventional incentives that he sees around him. If you choose your values then you can also choose your incentives.
I think you've written a good counterargument, but I disagree with your claim that "morality is really just yet another incentive". Incentives must be external.
Agreed, but I think some logic follows that as increasingly more incentives are needed then maybe people just don't have these principles. People seem to want it both ways—both to get the thing they want, but to be seen as not having taken it. To be seen as principled without standing for the principle. So we hear that taking a "principled stand is great and all, but". That line is right, it just implies the person doesn't believe that much in the principle.
This seems to misrepresent what incentives are: latent unobservable things. Incentives are not what you or anyone else says they are. It makes sense to simply state the incentives in academic games which are of course useful at times.
So the author is making some point about wrong incentive models and meta models.
I think implicit in this argument is a proposal that society stops making excuses for anti-social people and behavior, and shames them and their behavior instead. Ironically, this is just a different incentive system! But IMO that doesn't make the argument less correct. It is a more full realization that "people respond to incentives", including shame.
develop or rediscover a culture that views people as possessing inherent dignity, reason, empathy and individual freedom instead of promoting a commercial culture whose logical terminus are the Wall-E people.[1]
Practical first step would be to return to Humboldt's model of education[2] and to not devalue to arts and humanities at every opportunity.
Very few people are self starters, I’ve become fixated on increasing the productivity of the population. Anyone excluded or encumbered has things to address why that is, and then add them to the productivity machine. At one point women weren’t included, other marginalized people are excluded, some populations have a tendency to suicide unless we affirm their feelings and then they are productive. All of that fits within my philosophy and makes the tweaks to the workflow easy adopt, if it means more people are included in the productivity engine.
Most of the comments are one level deeper “lets condition all of society to be self starters” with no proposal on how to do so
Who cares what names you call. I would be more powerful and comfortable in this world. While you spend your time calling names that would have zero effect in this world. You would be like a donkey who cries its lust away. Sounds like a total loser to me..
> A critical part of human development—in fact, the most human part of human development—is to acquire a purpose.
This is actually a fairly recent concept.
For a long time, humans across the globe have believed that life had a purpose, but until the 18th and 19th centuries, the belief was more or less that the purpose was dictated by God, the universe, etc. That there was a purpose that applied to everyone, not that everyone had to find his or her own purpose.
> That means refining your sense of right and wrong and figuring out how you, personally, can increase the right and decrease the wrong.
The problem with this is that the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Well-meaning people who believe strongly that they are increasing the right and decreasing the wrong are capable of creating many problems. And sometimes, you get really sick people who think they're well-meaning and their "right" is everyone else's "wrong".
> But over the years, as I had the opportunity to meet some of these captains of industry, these Grand Pooh-Bahs and Distinguished Scholars, I’ve realized how wrong I was. They only seemed enviable because I was looking at them from a distance, so all I could see was what they had. Up close, when you can see what they are, it becomes clear that only a few of these ladder-toppers are indeed wise and cool. More often, they’re sniveling little twerps. They’re spiritually chinless. They have no convictions, no passions, no purpose other than ladder-climbing. It’s sad to watch them, these people who have everything except the one thing that actually matters.
I'm personally not a fan of the Elons and Zucks of the world, but going around categorizing people into groups like "spiritually chinless, passionless, purpose-lacking sniveling little twerps who only care about getting ahead" probably isn't healthy.
Has the author considered that many of these people simply have beliefs, passions, purposes that don't align with his and that, if asked, they might speak poorly of his beliefs, passions, purposes?
We can debate whether or not these people are, in the final analysis, ethical, but I don't think reducing them to this helps the author's argument.
> Why spend your days wondering about right and wrong, good and evil, sacred and profane, etc. when you don’t have to?
Most people in this world don't have the luxury of sitting around and figuring out all of the world's mysteries and solving all of the world's problem.
> I saw my fish in 2020 in San Fransisco, during the annual meeting of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology.5 Inside the conference hotel were dozens of talks about stereotyping, prejudice, inequality, and so on. That had never struck me as strange until that year, when outside of the hotel, which was in the middle of SF’s Tenderloin district, people were sprawled out on the sidewalk, dying of overdoses. Scholars were scurrying past homeless people to give talks on social justice, which is ironic because “scholars will scurry past homeless people to give talks on social justice” is literally the main finding from one of the most famous psychology studies of all time.
The author paints his experience as some sort of Siddhartha-like epiphany. The reality is that lots of people have seen what the author saw, and worse. Any many were affected by it. But just because they didn't stop and play Jesus (which the author apparently didn't do either) doesn't mean that they didn't notice and weren't affected.
The author seems to be assuming that he's one of the few people who isn't oblivious.
> When I meet someone of uncommon integrity, someone willing to defy the incentives at any cost, I find they almost always have seen the fish—big, hulking fish, far larger than any I’ve ever encountered. They have undergone some kind of moral reckoning that undid their illusion of philosophical depth and gave them the chance to forge their own values.
Like what? The article is really lacking in specifics and it seems like it's a reflection of the author's experience and views, which he projects onto the other 8 billion people on the planet.
In my own experience, which includes having emigrated from the US to another part of the world, most people are just trying to get through the day, pay their bills, provide for their families, find peace and contentment, etc. They're not morally-corrupt zombies who, at best, are oblivious to the suffering in the world or, at worst, bad apes chasing free bananas. They're just people who don't have any illusions that their lives and powers are bigger than they really are.
There's a difference between being born into a world where you are taught you have a purpose defined by God, the universe, etc., and being born into a culture where you are taught you need to find your own purpose.
I really like the article but I feel like ignoring incentives always costs something. Only people who can afford the cost get to look principled, which turns having money into looking like having character. Everyone he praises in the article has/had a safety net: Sumner was a Harvard-educated senator with inherited standing, the writer himself still had a career after dropping his uni title.
The fish metaphor has the same issue. The people dying on the sidewalk outside his conference have seen worse than he has, they don't lack moral clarity but rather the freedom and capital to rebuild their lives around it. His essay treats seeing the fish and acting on it as a single moment when the acting part requires you to have capital/social safety net.
I usually go around saying to anyone who will listen "incentives are dangerous". Like... you can't avoid them as people are sneaky bastards and will find what the incentives are even if you didn't design any on purpose, but you should be on the lookout always and be damn careful if you ever get the bad idea to introduce any.
Completely agree. Incentives are for the statistical masses.
As thinking individuals we can and should use our awareness and courage to make biggest "good" choices we can bear to. We can't all be zero-waste vegan community organisers lobbying for renewables and free education/healthcare, but I doubt living life with the blinders on leads any kind of moral or spiritual growth or fulfilment either.
> As thinking individuals we can and should use our awareness and courage to make biggest "good" choices we can bear to.
That’s the cool thing about incentives, we follow them whether we realize it or not. “bear to” is where the incentives are hiding. We don’t make the best choices, we choose from the choices available to us.
You can’t fight your environment forever.
If the gooder choice is 50km away and the bad choice is down the street, eventually you’ll stop going 50km out of your way every day because it’s just too cumbersome. You might even do it “just this once” because you had a busy day and your kid is crying and you’re just so tired and then before you know it, it’s been months or even years since the last time you did the cumbersome better thing.
I can’t totally tell if this is satire but we are all subject to incentives, even if (especially if?) we are aware of it.
> In the eternal game of cat and mouse between the goodhearted people trying to fix the incentives and the Goodhart’d people trying to exploit the incentives, I am rooting for the cats.
What lovely writing.
This article reflects my values and philosophy exactly... However I think the author is underestimating the cost of not following incentives. The costs are tortuous.
In this society, I'm a loser precisely because I ignored incentives. I think we live in a failed society so I don't mind that much being a loser in such society. I don't think I would feel any pride being a winner... However, I would very much appreciate the financial comfort of not having to participate in it!
I loved this. Unfortunately, I don't know how realistic it is at this point. The entire modern Western system is built on incentives, and it would require dramatically changing the social order and economic system.
>My real gripe with this line of thinking is it implies that incentives should be obeyed, that it is normal or even noble to do so, and that is perhaps impossible to do otherwise. How could you be expected to break a rule, forego a promotion, or give up decimal of your grade point average, for the sake of—what? Doing the right thing?
But this misunderstands incentive based analysis.
The point isn't just that people naturally follow incentives, but that those who refuse are punished and no longer in a position to affect the world.
Taking a principled stand is great and all, but if the result is simply that you get fired and replaced by someone better at following orders, you didn't really fix the problem.
Of course it's more complicated than that. Certainly other people being willing to do evil is no excuse to do evil yourself. Maybe your principled stand inspires others and you start a revolution or something. But that's rare. In the average case incentives win. Which is why if you want to actually change the world for the better you should attack the incentives not the individuals - individuals can be replaced, but millions are willing to follow incentives.
-----
The rest of the article seems to be about developing your own morality, but morality is really just yet another incentive.
Maybe more succinctly: incentives work whether anyone cares or not, which is broadly the hallmark of good public policy. As foolish as relying on heroism in technology, so too is relying on perfect behavior from the citizenry in government.
I think your comment is describing something slightly different from incentives: the criteria for granting power and control to some individuals rather than others. There may be incentives to do what's necessary to fulfill those criteria, but it's a different axis from the incentives themselves.
Responding to the actual article: it seems like the author simply has a different set of values than what is assumed by the conventional incentives that he sees around him. If you choose your values then you can also choose your incentives.
I think you've written a good counterargument, but I disagree with your claim that "morality is really just yet another incentive". Incentives must be external.
Agreed, but I think some logic follows that as increasingly more incentives are needed then maybe people just don't have these principles. People seem to want it both ways—both to get the thing they want, but to be seen as not having taken it. To be seen as principled without standing for the principle. So we hear that taking a "principled stand is great and all, but". That line is right, it just implies the person doesn't believe that much in the principle.
Sorry OP, I stopped reading when I saw it was Substack. I won't subject myself to hostile UX, no matter the content.
This seems to misrepresent what incentives are: latent unobservable things. Incentives are not what you or anyone else says they are. It makes sense to simply state the incentives in academic games which are of course useful at times.
So the author is making some point about wrong incentive models and meta models.
what alternative are people proposing?
I think implicit in this argument is a proposal that society stops making excuses for anti-social people and behavior, and shames them and their behavior instead. Ironically, this is just a different incentive system! But IMO that doesn't make the argument less correct. It is a more full realization that "people respond to incentives", including shame.
develop or rediscover a culture that views people as possessing inherent dignity, reason, empathy and individual freedom instead of promoting a commercial culture whose logical terminus are the Wall-E people.[1]
Practical first step would be to return to Humboldt's model of education[2] and to not devalue to arts and humanities at every opportunity.
[1] https://i.ytimg.com/vi/Yw7WAq_GZY8/hqdefault.jpg [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humboldtian_model_of_higher_ed...
> develop or rediscover a culture that views people as possessing inherent dignity, reason, empathy and individual freedom
But you don't have to wait for the entire world to change for you to treat the people around you this way.
Oh what a relief to finally read a non-LLM-generated article. The creative expressions in it are tickling my brain
Disagree
Very few people are self starters, I’ve become fixated on increasing the productivity of the population. Anyone excluded or encumbered has things to address why that is, and then add them to the productivity machine. At one point women weren’t included, other marginalized people are excluded, some populations have a tendency to suicide unless we affirm their feelings and then they are productive. All of that fits within my philosophy and makes the tweaks to the workflow easy adopt, if it means more people are included in the productivity engine.
Most of the comments are one level deeper “lets condition all of society to be self starters” with no proposal on how to do so
Incentives it is
Idiotic article
> then you’re a dummy and a schmuck
Who cares what names you call. I would be more powerful and comfortable in this world. While you spend your time calling names that would have zero effect in this world. You would be like a donkey who cries its lust away. Sounds like a total loser to me..
<3 this so much
> A critical part of human development—in fact, the most human part of human development—is to acquire a purpose.
This is actually a fairly recent concept.
For a long time, humans across the globe have believed that life had a purpose, but until the 18th and 19th centuries, the belief was more or less that the purpose was dictated by God, the universe, etc. That there was a purpose that applied to everyone, not that everyone had to find his or her own purpose.
> That means refining your sense of right and wrong and figuring out how you, personally, can increase the right and decrease the wrong.
The problem with this is that the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Well-meaning people who believe strongly that they are increasing the right and decreasing the wrong are capable of creating many problems. And sometimes, you get really sick people who think they're well-meaning and their "right" is everyone else's "wrong".
> But over the years, as I had the opportunity to meet some of these captains of industry, these Grand Pooh-Bahs and Distinguished Scholars, I’ve realized how wrong I was. They only seemed enviable because I was looking at them from a distance, so all I could see was what they had. Up close, when you can see what they are, it becomes clear that only a few of these ladder-toppers are indeed wise and cool. More often, they’re sniveling little twerps. They’re spiritually chinless. They have no convictions, no passions, no purpose other than ladder-climbing. It’s sad to watch them, these people who have everything except the one thing that actually matters.
I'm personally not a fan of the Elons and Zucks of the world, but going around categorizing people into groups like "spiritually chinless, passionless, purpose-lacking sniveling little twerps who only care about getting ahead" probably isn't healthy.
Has the author considered that many of these people simply have beliefs, passions, purposes that don't align with his and that, if asked, they might speak poorly of his beliefs, passions, purposes?
We can debate whether or not these people are, in the final analysis, ethical, but I don't think reducing them to this helps the author's argument.
> Why spend your days wondering about right and wrong, good and evil, sacred and profane, etc. when you don’t have to?
Most people in this world don't have the luxury of sitting around and figuring out all of the world's mysteries and solving all of the world's problem.
> I saw my fish in 2020 in San Fransisco, during the annual meeting of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology.5 Inside the conference hotel were dozens of talks about stereotyping, prejudice, inequality, and so on. That had never struck me as strange until that year, when outside of the hotel, which was in the middle of SF’s Tenderloin district, people were sprawled out on the sidewalk, dying of overdoses. Scholars were scurrying past homeless people to give talks on social justice, which is ironic because “scholars will scurry past homeless people to give talks on social justice” is literally the main finding from one of the most famous psychology studies of all time.
The author paints his experience as some sort of Siddhartha-like epiphany. The reality is that lots of people have seen what the author saw, and worse. Any many were affected by it. But just because they didn't stop and play Jesus (which the author apparently didn't do either) doesn't mean that they didn't notice and weren't affected.
The author seems to be assuming that he's one of the few people who isn't oblivious.
> When I meet someone of uncommon integrity, someone willing to defy the incentives at any cost, I find they almost always have seen the fish—big, hulking fish, far larger than any I’ve ever encountered. They have undergone some kind of moral reckoning that undid their illusion of philosophical depth and gave them the chance to forge their own values.
Like what? The article is really lacking in specifics and it seems like it's a reflection of the author's experience and views, which he projects onto the other 8 billion people on the planet.
In my own experience, which includes having emigrated from the US to another part of the world, most people are just trying to get through the day, pay their bills, provide for their families, find peace and contentment, etc. They're not morally-corrupt zombies who, at best, are oblivious to the suffering in the world or, at worst, bad apes chasing free bananas. They're just people who don't have any illusions that their lives and powers are bigger than they really are.
> This is actually a fairly recent concept.
Whether people think it's God dictated or it's self invented, sounds to me like people acquire purpose.
There's a difference between being born into a world where you are taught you have a purpose defined by God, the universe, etc., and being born into a culture where you are taught you need to find your own purpose.