The ancient world heavily favored aristocrats for important social positions. Yes, they were probably on average more competent in many ways, but many have claimed that good family connections were favored more strongly than can be explained by this effect.
There is zero corruption where it matters most: at the policy-making level, which Congress controls. Approval of Beijing's policies is 94%. Approval of Washington's policies is 28%
Local government approval has risen from 62% in 2012, to 70% in 2021, closing to American local government approval of 72%.
I suspect that Robin is proposing we place more trust in prediction markets and maybe the sort of ordinary-seeming people that Tetlock identified as superforecasters. I'm sure he'd worry less about this if status were closely tied to having a track record of being consistently right.
The higher you are the deeper you can fall - and that is its own incentive to be generally pro-social. The more so the more people might want to see you fall. Unfortunately, it this incentive doesn't scale proportionally.
I think if you try to calculate the enormous losses (approximately - order of magnitude type of thing) it would help people understand what you are saying.
Which hold do you think he used? I think you are combining sources that disagree about which hold he used and thus deducing falsehoods. The court made no ruling on facts like that, because its job is to blame individuals, not to produce coherent knowledge.
More education is a signal of competence for a reason. Trying to use hard proof of who is most trustworthy instead of vaguer signals is much easier said than done.
I think we are suffering enormous losses from trusting based on status, instead of using other methods.
Chinese officials have always had the highest status in their country, but they are chosen on the basis of intelligence and competence.
Today, applicants for government careers need an IQ of 140 just to get an interview. Those who are accepted are immediately sent to the poorest available village and told to increase incomes by 50% to earn their first promotion.
Seems almost tautological - hard to imagine a significant separation between trust and status. Widespread trust in someone low status would be sufficient to make that person high status.
In the Chauvin/Floyd case I found it interesting that though some prisons had banned the hold Chauvin used and it was not banned by the police Dpt and Chauvin was known by the dpt to have used it before, but the Police chief was not held partly culpable. Seems like classism to me.
In his book on quality Philip B. Crosby says something close to the opposite, the lower workers should not get the blame for poor quality.
On the other side higher status people do seems to be more long term thinkers and thus more moral in many ways.
“I think we are suffering enormous losses from trusting based on status, instead of using other methods.” The other methods may be seen as (even more) untrustworthy, or as requiring unrealistic amounts of monitoring/attention by the public. High-status people are more in the public eye, so that monitoring their behavior is less costly; and status is itself a matter of reputation, so that egregious or blatantly unsuccessful behavior lowers one’s status. Also, many acts apparently of *trusting* high-status people—e.g., buying a product endorsed by high-status people—are partly acts of trying to raise one’s own status by *associating with* those with high status. (But, yes, over-trusting of high-status people produces a lot of inferior results.)
*Which* lower status person should you trust? Aren't most low status people in an org actually lower use+reliability than the higher ecehlon? Many low-status people are in the grip of a delusional narrative: those above them err badly in not elevating them. But if given the chance, they would flounder
There is zero corruption where it matters most: at the policy-making level, which Congress controls. Approval of Beijing's policies is 94%. Approval of Washington's policies is 28%
Local government approval has risen from 62% in 2012, to 70% in 2021, closing to American local government approval of 72%.
I suspect that Robin is proposing we place more trust in prediction markets and maybe the sort of ordinary-seeming people that Tetlock identified as superforecasters. I'm sure he'd worry less about this if status were closely tied to having a track record of being consistently right.
And yet, every level of the Chinese bureaucracy is drowning in petty corruption. It seems to me like the Party is selecting for the wrong traits.
Yes, exactly: a politician may ruin the Republic but if I ask a favor it costs him little to help me and might injure him if he were to refuse.
That sounds very effective. Can you point to a source or study of the effectiveness?
The higher you are the deeper you can fall - and that is its own incentive to be generally pro-social. The more so the more people might want to see you fall. Unfortunately, it this incentive doesn't scale proportionally.
I think if you try to calculate the enormous losses (approximately - order of magnitude type of thing) it would help people understand what you are saying.
But interestingly there are high status people seen as untrustworthy - some poorly behaved pop stars for example.
Which hold do you think he used? I think you are combining sources that disagree about which hold he used and thus deducing falsehoods. The court made no ruling on facts like that, because its job is to blame individuals, not to produce coherent knowledge.
More education is a signal of competence for a reason. Trying to use hard proof of who is most trustworthy instead of vaguer signals is much easier said than done.
I think we are suffering enormous losses from trusting based on status, instead of using other methods.
Chinese officials have always had the highest status in their country, but they are chosen on the basis of intelligence and competence.
Today, applicants for government careers need an IQ of 140 just to get an interview. Those who are accepted are immediately sent to the poorest available village and told to increase incomes by 50% to earn their first promotion.
Focus on institutions, not individuals...professional codes of conduct...cultures of integrity...
Seems almost tautological - hard to imagine a significant separation between trust and status. Widespread trust in someone low status would be sufficient to make that person high status.
In the Chauvin/Floyd case I found it interesting that though some prisons had banned the hold Chauvin used and it was not banned by the police Dpt and Chauvin was known by the dpt to have used it before, but the Police chief was not held partly culpable. Seems like classism to me.
In his book on quality Philip B. Crosby says something close to the opposite, the lower workers should not get the blame for poor quality.
On the other side higher status people do seems to be more long term thinkers and thus more moral in many ways.
“I think we are suffering enormous losses from trusting based on status, instead of using other methods.” The other methods may be seen as (even more) untrustworthy, or as requiring unrealistic amounts of monitoring/attention by the public. High-status people are more in the public eye, so that monitoring their behavior is less costly; and status is itself a matter of reputation, so that egregious or blatantly unsuccessful behavior lowers one’s status. Also, many acts apparently of *trusting* high-status people—e.g., buying a product endorsed by high-status people—are partly acts of trying to raise one’s own status by *associating with* those with high status. (But, yes, over-trusting of high-status people produces a lot of inferior results.)
*Which* lower status person should you trust? Aren't most low status people in an org actually lower use+reliability than the higher ecehlon? Many low-status people are in the grip of a delusional narrative: those above them err badly in not elevating them. But if given the chance, they would flounder