"More Fully" Week 6
In this issue:
Exaggerated Insecurity
The Future is Private, and Dark
Reimagining Criminal Justice
(Writing took a second seat to exploring the 4th dimension)
Exaggerated Insecurity
Insecure people exaggerate the insecurity of their friendships BECAUSE they make an assumption about the baseline insecurity of their friend. This is another example of the "We all tend to project OUR qualities on the people around us, leading us have very distorted perceptions of social dynamics/vibes/etc (especially when we make assumptions about WHY others are upset, etc)" effect. These distortions are especially exaggerated in diverse groups. I.e. When we are with our families (literally raised to be upset in the same way, communicate in the same way, etc), we are remarkably better at reading the WHY of social situations quickly.
Let's break down the mechanics. In general, people make an assumption about the baseline insecurity of their friends. They either massively overestimate or underestimate, guessing a number closer to THEIR OWN baseline insecurity. E.g. When they have limited information, very insecure people tend to imagine the friends as very insecure BECAUSE THEY THEMSELVES are very insecure (there is some correlation here, so this isn't based off of nothing -- see the earlier point about diversity of group as an input variable).
This assumption of insecurity ascribes a whole different meaning to a) the time between friends hanging out (E.g. "it's been awhile" = "this friend is fading away" instead of "dang we've both been busy") and b) sub-awesome hangouts. This is similar to "different people ascribing different meanings to the time between laughter within a conversation" [7] effect. Again, the whole process of ascribing social meaning to anything = a norm (see: Elephant). Shared norms (aka lack of diversity) generates less social friction (compared to the counterfactual).
Over time, people gather more information about their friends' insecurities (or lack therefore of). Their guesses get more accurate. Also, their friends BECOME more like them (this "shaping" effect varies considerably), so the initial baseline guess becomes more accurate. However, there's a third effect -- more time spent together, IN GENERAL, breeds more security in friendships. It's unclear which of the three effects dominates (I suspect the third)/
This would explain why diverse friend group have so many interesting conversations about norms (E.g. "oh you interpreted that THAT way? Interesting -- I thought something completely different"), while my homogenous (white, Catholic) family talks about sports a lot of the time. It's hard to imagine them sitting around, discussing different interpretations of social situations. A general rule of thumb: WE FIND THINGS TO DISAGREE ABOUT, OR things to watch together WITH TENSION (Imagine the tension as the ball is in the air while watching a football game "Is he going to catch it?" OR the tension while we're slightly uncomfortable before the comedian says the punchline about a taboo subject #flirtingwiththeedgeofasocialnorm). It's incredibly boring to just have everyone nod their head to someone's monologue -- adding nothing (no alternative perspectives). Asking questions is a norm we've created to (politely) offer an alternative perspective (???).
As to why we project our negative/positive qualities on friends? It's probably because friends are people we LIKE -- because they have SOME of OUR qualities (or the qualities of our loved ones / parents commonly -- see another post on friend selection; initial conclusion -- damn it must be hard not liking your parents). E.g. I'm socially reading my friend, John. I know we share SOME qualities (x), and ON AVERAGE, people with quality x have quality y (I overestimate this effect), and I have y, so my friend John probably has y. We probably make this jump MORE for POSITIVE qualities (???) (it's unclear). We can even spin negative qualities as positive qualities (because it's really fucking hard to be swimming against the current all the time -- disliking our qualities 100%). E.g. Insecurity might be understood/framed by contrasting with a super secure person --> "Well of course I care!! And (unlike others) I care about others knowing that I care!! (Unlike others) I'm not just going to walk around in the world ASSUMING everyone likes me!! (How audacious!!)."
This would help explain a) why white and/or attractive people are criticized (they tend to be the super secure person stereotype) and b) why older people love talking about sports, high-end beer, cooking etc during happy hours -- when relationships/norms are pretty constant, we move on to other topics (??). (Also, over time, older people realize just how limited/fixed/global political/economic winds are -- why talk politics AGAIN when we have so little control over the outcome. See another general rule of thumb: as we mature, WE FIND THINGS TO OCCUPY OUR MIND THAT WE CAN CONTROL (there's a sweet spot -- because we want tension (???) -- we don't want outcomes to be too controllable, nor too out-of-reach -- we love the chase??).
The Future is Private, and Dark
My good friend Jackson says more and more companies are electing for private markets (as opposed to IPO). This trend is arguably, attributable to increasingly rich high-net-worth individuals (see: skyrocketing global inequality ever since the World Wars wiped out Big Wealth in Europe). Add in tech/winner-take-all markets (aka "The Rise of the Intangible Economy") + favorable tax laws (#capitalgains) there is a definitive trend towards wealth accumulation. Super super high-net-worth individuals are, in theory, more patient and LR optimizing. They also have special access to private investing opportunities. (I'm not really sure on how it works, but I trust Jackson).
If increasingly rich high-net-worth individuals lead to more and more private investing (vs public), what are the implications on society? I'm not really sure, but it seems like a question worth asking. There's obviously tradeoffs to everything. The upside is probably (on average) better corporate governance-- having a few high-educated and invested (#SkinInTheGame) investors seems preferable to a crowd of less-informed retail investors reacting to headlines. It's (arguably) better signaling of fundamentals -- which should encourage more decisions maximizing the MR/LR value [2] of the company (as opposed to SR -- see: most huge public companies eventually becoming de facto banks to hit whatever quarterly earnings is required by the crowd -- a portfolio of assets is much more malleable in the SR, but ultimately self-destructive).
The downside is less PR-strategy investment. One theory is public markets keep companies accountable in the sense that they magnify the damage of a bad headline. Public companies (on average? should get more granular) invest more in PR / avoiding bad headlines than private companies because their valuation, at any given moment, is more sensitive to political/headline winds. Public markets are good for society to the extent that bad headlines correlate with socially-suboptimal activity (in some industries, journalists do a great job of calling out clear harm that could be avoided at a low cost) (in others, they do not integrate enough counterfactual analysis). To an extent, journalism has always been about entertaining (vs informing) -- the question of the moment is whether television and social media has made this trend worse. In most cases, I do not trust Twitter to complete a nuanced analysis of companies and their effects on society (vs the counterfactual). E.g. Policies centered around appeasing Twitter will tend to differ from smart, disinterested policy.
However, one could imagine a future where headlines have little to no impact on company decision-making. That's scary. If wealth is increasingly concentrated in a few private investors hands, and those private investors are not worried about how journalists/Twitter will respond to their company decisions, there is clear moral hazard (vs the counterfactual). The less companies are concerned with PR strategy, the more regulation becomes important (in theory). In practice, regulation is most effective in diverting behavior of companies with high upfront fixed costs (a possible win for climate change!) and/or cheap capital (#bankified #opportunitycost). If a company has low fixed costs, they are more likely to simply move their operations to a less-regulated part of the world. The net impact of a more regulated (and less PR-driven) world would vary by industry. Another complicating factor is regulatory capture, but that's a subject for another post.
Reimagining Criminal Justice
In the US, juries are comprised of twelve more-or-less randomly selected people. This is a completely arbitrary number -- chosen by the Welsh king Morgan of Gla-Morgan ~1300 years ago, because Jesus had twelve apostles.
The optimal jury size (from an epistemic value standpoint) is probably not 12 for every crime. I.e. The marginal cost and benefit of a thirteenth juror varies by type of crime. There is nothing special about a group of 12 making the best (~most accurate) decision. If there was, we'd see boards of directors, executive suites, etc all comprised of groups of 12.
Some crimeRs would arguably be better decided by smaller juries (E.g. maybe sensitive subjects like assault/self-defense claims would better be decided by a group of 3 that invested time in getter to know each other well). When it comes to tough decisions at the executive level of an organization, small groups of people who know and trust each other well are best practice (this is why corporations invest millions in corporate bonding, retreats, etc). The theory is people will be less-likely to self-censor (in order to avoid offending strangers) if the people they are deliberating with are NOT strangers. For other crimes, perhaps it's optimal to not have this "jury group bonding" effect because people will self-censor themselves to not offend people they want to like them (see: preference falsification).
For financial crimes, the best outcome would likely be determined by a panel of experts or a prediction market of 10,000 decently-qualified people who bet on the outcome (?). The best panel for deciding whether an assault was self-defense or not is probably a panel of people who are familiar with street fighting/norms (?). Of course, it's difficult to find people with specific subject matter expertise who do not have vested interests in either side winning the case, but with proper incentivizing (with cash prizes?) this bias could be limited. E.g. Jury members could vote with different confidence intervals what they thought the group of (subject matter experts) would vote on -- their alignment with the the group could determine the cash prizes (?) (the ethics of this are dependent on how much our preferences are really just reflections of social preferences; the evidence is overwhelming, see: The Knowledge Illusion -- in practice, most people want to believe they are "individuals" so this utopian scenario would be shut down, at least in democratic societies. To the extent individual preferences diverge from what people think the group wants to hear, there IS a real difference between what a group decides and what is "right" -- the greater the n, the greater this difference #Twitter). The "vested interest" bias could also be limited by striking jury members, but there are clear moral hazard issues (like vote trading between public defenders and prosecutors, to give one example).
HOWEVER, all these considerations maximize SR optimal-decision-making. In the MR/LR, such a complicated system would probably be exploited by sneaky lawyers/vested interests (as the rules of the game get updated and re-updated; see: regulatory capture). Because the sneakiest/most well-paid lawyers would have a clear advantage, one's success in the courtroom would become even more correlated with personal/company wealth. The number 12, then, levels the playing field in a sense. But it also makes decisions much more correlated with inappropriate biases/stereotypes of "everyday" people (who, in the absence of specific subject matter expertise, tend to overweight uncorrelated factors, such as a given defendant's income, race, character, charisma emotional appeal, etc). The rules of evidence attempt to limit these biases, but they are massively imperfect and sticky ("criminal justice reform" tends to be a 4th or 5th voter issue, if it makes the list at all + it's incredibly complicated, which means politicians can extract the same voter boost whether or not the headline actually changes things in practice).
So it's a tradeoff. LR stability for SR sub-optimal and predictably biased decisions. Arguably, we WANT path-dependence restricting change. High switching costs and big barriers to entry (for judges, for example) solidify the status quo. While we might like to start from scratch and implement a super consistent/durable incentive-based system resistant to political uprising, the one-time reality shift. Institutional change, by definition, has to be incremental, and unfortunately that doesn't excite masses of voters as much as it excites niche subsets that can subtlety make a ROI from lobbying for seemingly-prosocial adjustments. Absent a complete overhaul of campaign finance, the first-order effects/shifts may be fixed -- it might be better-off to shift the spotlight to second-order (intended and unintended) effects.