Re:Toxic Workers Are More Productive, But the Price Is High
by AbyormPiranha on Thursday February 21, 2019 @01:58AM
(#19215092)
The moral of the story is not that the needs of the many (group selection) outweigh the needs of one (individual selection). The moral of the story is that some incentives come with perverse effects.
In India, the British government issued a law paying people by the weight of cobras they killed. They came back next year and found cobra farms nationwide. That was a perverse effect of their incentive system.
And Yudkowsky jumped to a conclusion prematurely: group selection must be immune to perverse effects because switching from individual selection to group selection eliminated the perverse effects in one singular instance. There are ways perverse effects can emerge from and supervene over group selection.
In India, the British government issued a law paying people by the weight of cobras they killed. They came back next year and found cobra farms nationwide. That was a perverse effect of their incentive system.
And Yudkowsky jumped to a conclusion prematurely: group selection must be immune to perverse effects because switching from individual selection to group selection eliminated the perverse effects in one singular instance. There are ways perverse effects can emerge from and supervene over group selection.