The most obvious kind of conspiracies to expect in the world are ones between your local organized crime, police, and political powers. These powers should each see each other as rivals to their dominance. So to reduce such threats they should should seek to either weaken each other, or to ally with each other. There are rumors that such alliances are common around the world, and there is clear data that they have often happened in the past.
Most investigations start with only a suspicion, based on weak evidence. But that tells you where to look for harder evidence. So weak evidence is in practice very important.
"So what does it tell you if few seem to care enough to even know if such stats are published?" That people do not put much value on knowing whether there is such a conspiracy in the abstract. They want to prevent such conspiracies, which requires finding particular people and changing their behavior. Which is why we reward muckraking reporters and crusading district attorneys with praise and status, but don't reward people who say "your town scored 22% on the corruption scale."
Poll respondents say median estimate of 9% that it exists in their area. As most don't believe it, if it is true that counts as conspiracy to me. https://twitter.com/robinha...
Living in Russia, I can confirm that such alliances are indeed very common, even in a relatively developed country.
However, in my experience they can hardly be called "conspiracies". In most cases, people are aware about affiliation of crime, police and politicians, often with concrete names. But they can't (or don't believe they can) do much about it.
So It does not seem to me that additional info on this topic is highly valuable.
It tells me that humans can't identify a problem and solve it without sufficient social context to motivate them. Why would a cell in the body go find the weak muscle and join it? We are carried by these forces; we do not direct them. You tell the same lesson in a thousand ways. More and more people understand it, but to what end? The tide carries us, enlightened or not.
Information is valuable if it's decision-relevant; if you have no decisions you can make differently based on the data, why would you want it?
[Of course, having 'no influence' is probably not a fair assessment; instead people likely have a 'small influence', and so the data has small value. Even better, this data being public makes it easier to coordinate and add up lots of small influences.]
Yeah, but only if you have the resources to convert that weak evidence to strong! Which most people don't!
Also such information could be dangerous to have if its its not widely shared. But if it's widely shared then it can't be expensive.
Most investigations start with only a suspicion, based on weak evidence. But that tells you where to look for harder evidence. So weak evidence is in practice very important.
If it won't hold up in court, what good is it?
Only interested in very strong evidence, but not anything weaker? Seems an unusual attitude toward evidence.
"So what does it tell you if few seem to care enough to even know if such stats are published?" That people do not put much value on knowing whether there is such a conspiracy in the abstract. They want to prevent such conspiracies, which requires finding particular people and changing their behavior. Which is why we reward muckraking reporters and crusading district attorneys with praise and status, but don't reward people who say "your town scored 22% on the corruption scale."
Poll respondents say median estimate of 9% that it exists in their area. As most don't believe it, if it is true that counts as conspiracy to me. https://twitter.com/robinha...
Living in Russia, I can confirm that such alliances are indeed very common, even in a relatively developed country.
However, in my experience they can hardly be called "conspiracies". In most cases, people are aware about affiliation of crime, police and politicians, often with concrete names. But they can't (or don't believe they can) do much about it.
So It does not seem to me that additional info on this topic is highly valuable.
It tells me that consumers of criminal goods and services are not in a position to complain about the rents extracted.
It tells me that humans can't identify a problem and solve it without sufficient social context to motivate them. Why would a cell in the body go find the weak muscle and join it? We are carried by these forces; we do not direct them. You tell the same lesson in a thousand ways. More and more people understand it, but to what end? The tide carries us, enlightened or not.
You do elections in a way that lets organized crime steal electionsYou should elaborate on that. What "way" is that?
Information is valuable if it's decision-relevant; if you have no decisions you can make differently based on the data, why would you want it?
[Of course, having 'no influence' is probably not a fair assessment; instead people likely have a 'small influence', and so the data has small value. Even better, this data being public makes it easier to coordinate and add up lots of small influences.]
That's too terse for me to follow.
That they don't have the power or influence to do anything about it if there is such corruption?