What if every “cognitive bias” is actually rational behavior under correctly modeled incentives? What if the problem isn’t that people are irrational, but that we’ve been modeling their incentive structures wrong? This isn’t a semantic trick. It’s a testable claim with falsification criteria. If the framework I’m presenting holds, it...
What if every “cognitive bias” is actually rational behavior under correctly modeled incentives? What if the problem isn’t that people are irrational, but that we’ve been modeling their incentive structures wrong?
This isn’t a semantic trick. It’s a testable claim with falsification criteria. If the framework I’m presenting holds, it means most of what we call “irrationality” is actually us failing to model which incentives dominate in a given context. Confirmation bias often looks like a cognitive defect, but it can be rational protection of belonging when truth-seeking threatens group membership. Sunk cost “fallacy” can be rational risk avoidance when switching costs are uncertain and immediate.
I’m going to make this case below. I... (read 2412 more words →)
Facinating post, and beautifuly written!
What I am struggling to understand without the full context (I am being lazy) is why the introduction of this super AI requires the removal of Humans at all? If it can find the cure to cancer, why can it not just go-ahead and do that alongside the existing cancer research efforts? It would be madness in any system to imediately remove the incumbent/legacy solution until the replacement is proven, do we really want to pin our hopes for cancer cures with no hedge.
I apprecaite that was not the point of your post at all, but felt compelled to say it.
More on topic, I would say that I... (read more)
I agree, taking risks and generally being a 'yes man' is much more likely going to result in positive outcomes compared to taking no action.
But I do wonder, on average, are people incentivised to seek connection to satisfy their actual personal needs and circumstances, and how much is possibly from a culture that prescribes an 'instagram' lifestyle and a huge friendship network as a goal to work towards?
For me, I find that shared interests are the automatic icebreaker that circumvents the awkward/social convention and risk elements and that finding a group that does/discusses what I am already interested in makes the whole thing feel effortless/natural and fulfilling.
Reputation stops being verifiable beyond 2 degrees of separation.
At 1 degree you observed their behavior directly.
At 2 degrees someone you trust observed it.
At 3+ degrees it's pure performance, reviews can be bought, testimonials cherry-picked, social proof manufactured.
Humans broke away from the constraints of Dunbar's limit and while communities stayed small enough, reputation tracking sufficed, but the introduction of the internet and global connectivity has expanded our effective 'communities' to effectivly billions.
This is why every digital reputation system (LinkedIn endorsements, Trust Pilot scores, follower counts) fails at scale: they collapse verification radius to zero.
We're trying to run reputation-based trust in networks where nobody can actually verify anyone's claims. We rationally offload agency and accountability (for verification of trust) onto institutions who are themselves, perpetrators and participants in this incentive driven, optics obsessed disfunction.
I’ve built a diagnostic engine that assess governance and incentive documentation to surface the structural conditions that 'allow' for the rational behaviour of actors to occur, resulting in externalised harm.
The core of the engine is an Incentive First Framework, that strips narrative, intent, optics, culture and general governance theatre from the equasion and just simple asks:
"Given the structure, what behaviour is rational?"
I have ran the engine through a number of high profile back tests e.g. Boeing 737 MAX, Grenfell Tower and Post Office Horizon etc. and found that the qualifying questions the engine produces would reliably had surfaced the opacity or lack of enforcement/feedback integrity that could have corrected the behaviour.
All analyses were... (read more)