I come from a state that raises corn and cotton and cockleburs and Democrats, and frothy eloquence neither convinces nor satisfies me. I am from Missouri. You have got to show me. (Why Missouri is “Show Me State”
Robin, you might enjoy the TV show "Outnumbered". It is a sitcom about a British family. There is a curious young daughter who constantly embarrasses her parents by asking awkward questions that violate social norms https://www.youtube.com/wat...
The backstabbing youngster plot is unlikely to work for a purely biological reason that has nothing to do with rebelliousness: that any living thing, once it has learnt to behave in a certain manner and is rewarded for that, tends to continue behaving in the same manner, and the longer this history of reinforcement, the less likely it is to abandon the previous course of action, especially in favor of something with relatively high stakes which it had never done before.
So it's highly unlikely that anyone who commits to such a backstabbing tactic now will still have that commitment after several years of successfully working for that system and being continuously rewarded for that.
The problem isn't overcoming status imitation - it's necessary for continuation of natural selection. The problem instead is eliminating means by which status is obtained other than by merit, and by merit I mean competency at productivity and capitalization in both the private and commons - which is measureable. The "new clerecy" of undemonstrated experts is organized like the old chinese bureaucracy, not by demonstrated excellence in productivity and capitalization under adversarial competition as in arts, commerce, coommons, or war, but by recitation of a pseudoscientific faith most of which is counter revolution begun immediately against darwin, then against all of european civilization, and institutionalized after the second world war as the Four Big Lies. (Endless growth, Nature of Man, Malleability of Man, Necessity Continuing Natural Selection.). It's releatively easy to outlaw non-productive gains just as we have outlawed all other non-productive gains throughuot history. But doing so requires we also outlaw false promises of freedom from the lawas of the universe promised in the Four Big Lies.
So mechanistically speaking, what mechanisms might account for this?* High status people use their power to resist being measured* Status seekers, wishing to curry favor with high status people, avoid criticizing them or evaluating them objectively* Those who criticize or offer objective evaluations tend to be low status. Two reasons. First, if they were high status, they likely would've obtained this high status through currying favor. And criticizing/objectively evaluating is the opposite of currying favor. Second, if they were high status, they would be invested in the status quo, which would make them reluctant to offer criticism/objective evaluation which might disrupt it.
This suggests a few strategies:* Bribe individual high status people to implement objective measurement programs. The idea is to offer them so much money that their incentive to accept the money exceeds their level of investment in the status quo.* Encourage rebellious youngsters to play the game and curry favor when young, but stab the status quo in the back and implement criticism/objective measurement once they've accumulated sufficient power. Of course there is a big risk that as they age they might lose their rebellious temperament...
I think it's worth examining case studies of "status patronage" systems which were eventually dealt severe blows. For example, you mention "managed funds over index funds" and "their expensive new med treatment will cure us". But index funds and evidence-based medicine have both been very successful relative to the previous status quo. So, how did that happen?
I would guess that part of it was that these movements were spearheaded by particular high status "backstabbers", e.g. Jack Bogle was originally a top manager at a mutual fund (but was fired for a poor decision--perhaps this inspired him to seek revenge on his peers.) That suggests the strategy of trying to identify disaffected/alienated elites and convince them that they should express their disaffection/alienation by endorsing some means by which their colleagues can be objectively evaluated.
Don't forget about Moneyball or the rise of "data science" either. As usual I think you're too cynical Robin :-)
If you're not already familiar with it, you might check out the works of Alasdair Chalmers MacIntyre such as "After Virtue". I think it connects likely with a lot of your points here, and in my opinion he makes a pretty convincing argument that the way we assign status using a moral framework of liberal individualism is bound to generate just the outcome you describe. The solution is to basically reboot the virtue ethics and teleology framework first summarized by Aristotle and developed basically through the Renaissance, when it was then unfortunately abandoned because we thought Newtown and Galileo's scientific and mechanistic worldviews could also be applied to ethics and morality.
The idea that we've gotten more status mad over the long term is plainly wrong. It used to be that one guy would be given the power of life and death over all other people just by the accident of his birth. There is a difference between two kinds of status: (1) the old kind, which I'll call "aristocratic status" and model as purely based on who you were; (2) the new kind, which I'll call "professional status" and model as being based on some kind of competence.Now, the fact that both aristocratic and professional status are both forms of status means that they do share many faults. People want them for the status, rather than because they are truly aristocratic or professional; and having obtained the status, it is easy to abuse it and behave in ignoble or unprofessional ways. Nonetheless, professional status still seems to me like the best model we have for making the world better. Because of all the little children who run around yelling "Willies!" only one in a thousand actually has anything to teach us. The rest are just yelling "willies." To drop out of analogy for a moment, that means that most of the people who say the status quo is wrong are simply cranks.It's possible (in theory) that our professional systems are cracking up under the pressure of the internet and modern life in general; there are certainly historical moments when the models for assigning professional status shift. And it's possible that even retaining the current professional status systems, it would be better to have a lot more kids pointing out the emperor's nakedness. We're getting more, with the bloggers and the Nate Silvers and Fox News and the TikTok commentariat... perhaps we're still well below optimum level. But I can't see how ending the concept of professional status (a) would help; or (b) would be possible, among us pattern-seeking lifeforms.
Like @Canadiak says, or even more fundamentally, the market itself is based on gossip-shared-judgments, because it measures human judgments which are gossip-shared.
An efficient market makes gossip-sharing stronger because it equilibrates into everyone holding the same "market portfolio," i.e. everyone (of importance) holding same set of gossip-shared judgments.
One simple way to make gossip shared judgments weaker is to have more fragmented markets, which was the default during much of the 20th century. Globalization & the internet combined everybody into a single market during the last 20 yrs, and so made the gossip winners much more dominant.
Instead of attacking the creation of status, you'd have more impact by hindering the widespread "distribution" of that status.
Robin H. has written before about iatrogenic disease, and one number is 400,000 die of it each year in the US. If so, then it was the third leading cause of death last year after heart disease and cancer, and AHEAD OF COVID! You notice there is no federal government-driven, nationwide program to fight iatrogenic disease like is for Covid. Doctors and hospitals have a good racket for protecting themselves from that scrutiny. And there aren't the profits in fighting iatrogenic disease for the controlling billionaires like there are for pushing vaccines.
I think Hanson's entire point is that often the market grossly over values the worth of prestigious advice as opposed to giving the highest prices to the most effective advice.
Respectfully, the "market" sets the worth of advice, not the expert. Confusing "gossip-shared judgments" with the $1,000 per hour paid by an informed purchaser of advice misinformed. Reputation for expertise is earned over time and if you want to find the most expert physician, for example, look for the ones not currently accepting new patients or who have 6 month waiting lists.
Yeah, but does past good performance of funds raise the probability of good future performance? Or is it more like someone who had a good night at the roulette table?
Robin, you might enjoy the TV show "Outnumbered". It is a sitcom about a British family. There is a curious young daughter who constantly embarrasses her parents by asking awkward questions that violate social norms https://www.youtube.com/wat...
The backstabbing youngster plot is unlikely to work for a purely biological reason that has nothing to do with rebelliousness: that any living thing, once it has learnt to behave in a certain manner and is rewarded for that, tends to continue behaving in the same manner, and the longer this history of reinforcement, the less likely it is to abandon the previous course of action, especially in favor of something with relatively high stakes which it had never done before.
So it's highly unlikely that anyone who commits to such a backstabbing tactic now will still have that commitment after several years of successfully working for that system and being continuously rewarded for that.
The problem isn't overcoming status imitation - it's necessary for continuation of natural selection. The problem instead is eliminating means by which status is obtained other than by merit, and by merit I mean competency at productivity and capitalization in both the private and commons - which is measureable. The "new clerecy" of undemonstrated experts is organized like the old chinese bureaucracy, not by demonstrated excellence in productivity and capitalization under adversarial competition as in arts, commerce, coommons, or war, but by recitation of a pseudoscientific faith most of which is counter revolution begun immediately against darwin, then against all of european civilization, and institutionalized after the second world war as the Four Big Lies. (Endless growth, Nature of Man, Malleability of Man, Necessity Continuing Natural Selection.). It's releatively easy to outlaw non-productive gains just as we have outlawed all other non-productive gains throughuot history. But doing so requires we also outlaw false promises of freedom from the lawas of the universe promised in the Four Big Lies.
So mechanistically speaking, what mechanisms might account for this?* High status people use their power to resist being measured* Status seekers, wishing to curry favor with high status people, avoid criticizing them or evaluating them objectively* Those who criticize or offer objective evaluations tend to be low status. Two reasons. First, if they were high status, they likely would've obtained this high status through currying favor. And criticizing/objectively evaluating is the opposite of currying favor. Second, if they were high status, they would be invested in the status quo, which would make them reluctant to offer criticism/objective evaluation which might disrupt it.
This suggests a few strategies:* Bribe individual high status people to implement objective measurement programs. The idea is to offer them so much money that their incentive to accept the money exceeds their level of investment in the status quo.* Encourage rebellious youngsters to play the game and curry favor when young, but stab the status quo in the back and implement criticism/objective measurement once they've accumulated sufficient power. Of course there is a big risk that as they age they might lose their rebellious temperament...
I think it's worth examining case studies of "status patronage" systems which were eventually dealt severe blows. For example, you mention "managed funds over index funds" and "their expensive new med treatment will cure us". But index funds and evidence-based medicine have both been very successful relative to the previous status quo. So, how did that happen?
I would guess that part of it was that these movements were spearheaded by particular high status "backstabbers", e.g. Jack Bogle was originally a top manager at a mutual fund (but was fired for a poor decision--perhaps this inspired him to seek revenge on his peers.) That suggests the strategy of trying to identify disaffected/alienated elites and convince them that they should express their disaffection/alienation by endorsing some means by which their colleagues can be objectively evaluated.
Don't forget about Moneyball or the rise of "data science" either. As usual I think you're too cynical Robin :-)
Ah, I suppose because they, out of all conman's pitches, are, almost by definition, the ones that we will be made happy by believing!
Not every conman's pitch is worth believing! Consistent evolved delusions are different.
But you've said before that in some ways we are happy because we are deluded. When is it a good idea to let sleeping dogs lie?
I believe investment advisers' annual results are uncorrelated over the years, showing that the roulette analogy is correct.
If you're not already familiar with it, you might check out the works of Alasdair Chalmers MacIntyre such as "After Virtue". I think it connects likely with a lot of your points here, and in my opinion he makes a pretty convincing argument that the way we assign status using a moral framework of liberal individualism is bound to generate just the outcome you describe. The solution is to basically reboot the virtue ethics and teleology framework first summarized by Aristotle and developed basically through the Renaissance, when it was then unfortunately abandoned because we thought Newtown and Galileo's scientific and mechanistic worldviews could also be applied to ethics and morality.
The idea that we've gotten more status mad over the long term is plainly wrong. It used to be that one guy would be given the power of life and death over all other people just by the accident of his birth. There is a difference between two kinds of status: (1) the old kind, which I'll call "aristocratic status" and model as purely based on who you were; (2) the new kind, which I'll call "professional status" and model as being based on some kind of competence.Now, the fact that both aristocratic and professional status are both forms of status means that they do share many faults. People want them for the status, rather than because they are truly aristocratic or professional; and having obtained the status, it is easy to abuse it and behave in ignoble or unprofessional ways. Nonetheless, professional status still seems to me like the best model we have for making the world better. Because of all the little children who run around yelling "Willies!" only one in a thousand actually has anything to teach us. The rest are just yelling "willies." To drop out of analogy for a moment, that means that most of the people who say the status quo is wrong are simply cranks.It's possible (in theory) that our professional systems are cracking up under the pressure of the internet and modern life in general; there are certainly historical moments when the models for assigning professional status shift. And it's possible that even retaining the current professional status systems, it would be better to have a lot more kids pointing out the emperor's nakedness. We're getting more, with the bloggers and the Nate Silvers and Fox News and the TikTok commentariat... perhaps we're still well below optimum level. But I can't see how ending the concept of professional status (a) would help; or (b) would be possible, among us pattern-seeking lifeforms.
Like @Canadiak says, or even more fundamentally, the market itself is based on gossip-shared-judgments, because it measures human judgments which are gossip-shared.
An efficient market makes gossip-sharing stronger because it equilibrates into everyone holding the same "market portfolio," i.e. everyone (of importance) holding same set of gossip-shared judgments.
One simple way to make gossip shared judgments weaker is to have more fragmented markets, which was the default during much of the 20th century. Globalization & the internet combined everybody into a single market during the last 20 yrs, and so made the gossip winners much more dominant.
Instead of attacking the creation of status, you'd have more impact by hindering the widespread "distribution" of that status.
Robin H. has written before about iatrogenic disease, and one number is 400,000 die of it each year in the US. If so, then it was the third leading cause of death last year after heart disease and cancer, and AHEAD OF COVID! You notice there is no federal government-driven, nationwide program to fight iatrogenic disease like is for Covid. Doctors and hospitals have a good racket for protecting themselves from that scrutiny. And there aren't the profits in fighting iatrogenic disease for the controlling billionaires like there are for pushing vaccines.
I think Hanson's entire point is that often the market grossly over values the worth of prestigious advice as opposed to giving the highest prices to the most effective advice.
Respectfully, the "market" sets the worth of advice, not the expert. Confusing "gossip-shared judgments" with the $1,000 per hour paid by an informed purchaser of advice misinformed. Reputation for expertise is earned over time and if you want to find the most expert physician, for example, look for the ones not currently accepting new patients or who have 6 month waiting lists.
Respectfull
Yeah, but does past good performance of funds raise the probability of good future performance? Or is it more like someone who had a good night at the roulette table?