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Overcoming Bias Commenter's avatar

Well, I think it's a result of the human mind always trying to see causality, even when there is only random correlation. A bit the same way superstitions arise and foragers are not immune to those. People in key positions are the most visible parts of an organization and our minds tend to see causal links between what these people do and how the organization as a whole fares, I believe foragers would do too. In some ways there also really is a causal link, that this has often more to do with the position than the merits of the person tends to get overlooked (if an organization is built in such a way that everything has to pass a central nexus to be rubber stamped then the organization depends on that nexus and the nexus might use this to justify an extravagant salary, but one has to wonder if that nexus is actually necessary and if it is, how difficult it is to be be sufficiently good at being a nexus, those latter aspects are usually overlooked in every defense of megasalaries and bonuses that I've come across).

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Stephen Diamond's avatar

The overestimation of the performance of people at key positions ... is rooted deeply into human nature

Why do you think so?

Do foragers manifest this overestimation? I doubt it.

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