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Comment by sitkack | Hacker News Reader

If humanity is to mature, we should be an open book when it comes to incentives and build a world purposefully with all incentives aligned to the outcomes we collectively agree upon.

https://fs.blog/great-talks/psychology-human-misjudgment/

Charlie Munger's Misjudgment #1: Incentive-caused Bias https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h-2yIO8cnvw

https://fs.blog/bias-incentives-reinforcement/

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(I keep mentioning this but no one seems to be picking up on it.) There is an algorithm that was developed in the late 80's in the context of therapy that could be used to align incentives and collectively agree on outcomes.

The algorithm is a simple recursive procedure where the guide or therapist evokes the client's motivation or incentive for an initial behaviour and then for each motivation in turn until a (so-called) "core state" is reached. In crude pseudo-code it would be something like:

    FOO = <some "presenting problem">
    M = evoke_motivation(FOO)
    until is_core_state(M):
        M = evoke_motivation(M)

Generalizing, motivations form a DAG that bottoms out in a handful of deep and profound spiritual "states". These states seem to be universal. Walking the DAGs of two or more people simultaneously until both are in core states effectively aligns incentives automatically, at least that's what I suspect would happen.

(I have no affiliation with these folks: Core Transformation Process https://www.coretransformation.org/ )

NLP and related stuff is not taken all that seriously among main stream scientists, you should probably say.

That's definitely true and there's lots of craziness around it. However, the best estimates for therapy and it's effects suggest that it's mostly a provider effect rather than anything in the theory.

Which is to say, a lot of this stuff works because you expect it to.

In re: this "NLP is pseudoscience" business, I've lost patience with it. First, I'm living proof of NLP's efficacy. Second, I don't go around suggesting homeopathy or astrology or pyramid power, okay? Like Ron Swanson "my recommendation is essentially a guarantee."

In terms of a Venn diagram the region representing people who have experience with NLP and the region representing people who think NLP is pseudoscience are disjoint, they do not overlap. As in I have never found anyone who claims that NLP is pseudoscience who has also admitted to having any experience with it. That is not science, eh? To the extent that mainstream scientists don't take NLP seriously they make themselves ridiculous. So yeah, in this one instance, ignore the scientists and look at the strange thing anyway, please? Humor me?

Now NLP is not scientific (yet) and it doesn't pretend to be (although many promoters do talk that way, and that's wrong and they shouldn't do that) and in fact there's a video online (I'll link to if I find it) where the co-founder addresses this point and says "it's not scientific".

However it does work. So it seems imperative to do science to it!?

At the time it was developed there were dozens of schools of psychology on the one hand[1] and academic psychologists on the other and the two groups did not talk to each other. NLP ran afoul of the academic psychologists in the mid 1980's and they closed ranks against it and haven't bothered themselves with it since. Again, I think it would be fantastic if we would do science to it and figure out what these algorithms are actually doing.

In any event the important thing is that the tools and techniques that have been developed are rigorous and repeatable. E.g. this "Core Transformation Process" works. That's primary data on which the science of psychology should operate not ignore.

[1] E.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esalen_Institute | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_Potential_Movement | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humanistic_psychology

I don't think that's really going to work. People won't list all their incentives, because some of them are implicit and others are embarrassing or "creepy". Others will absolutely judge you for what incentivizes your actions, therefore hiding them is the status quo.

If you say that your incentive for working out is to look good and be popular with the ladies then people will judge you for it, even if it's exactly the truth. If you say that you work out "for health" everyone will applaud you for what you're doing. And yet the outcome is going to be the same.

I could be wrong, but I took the parent's comment to mean that we should design incentive structures transparently, instead of obscuring them or outright ignoring the whole concept when engineering society.

At this point I'm so used to this that I mentally translate "for health" into "to look good for the opposite sex".

It’s funny how those incentives are so well aligned.

That's reductive, some of use are doing it to look good for the same sex!

You got it backwards. It's not about being transparent about what you want to achieve, it's about being transparent about what others expect you to achieve on your current position.

To check my understanding: say your current position is "unemployed." You would think that the expectation for you is to "get a job", but to get a job is extremely difficult. You have to navigate an almost adversarial job market and recruiting process, often for months. It's essentially a massive negative incentive, considering all of the effort and grief involved. So, the incentives aren't aligned with the desired outcome; the skittishness of each individual hiring company to make sure that they don't get screwed by a bad hire has warped the entire dynamic. Is this a good example?

>outcomes we collectively agree upon.

lol, what are the chances?

The average Joe is interested in Dem vs Rep or what the latest show on Netflix.

The average researcher is worried about his livelihood, tenure etc.

We do achieve some things, though usually not by spending time pondering questions like,

> lol, what are the chances?

This is a weird take, assuming the average researcher cannot be an average Joe, and also that average people aren't also worried about their livelihood...you might want to revisit your view of the world.

No, it's not. A researcher might an average Joe, but that doesn't mean that the average researcher is the same as the average Joe.

The initial comment makes the 2 mutually exclusive. You reframing it doesn't change what the original comment said. You also blew past the more important of the 2 points: that regular people care about their livelihoods as well.

“Average joe”. Humanity evolves slowly over long periods. The average joe today is far more educated than one from 200 years ago.

Far more educated. But certainly not smarter.

And it's not at all clear if that education does anything other than magnify their intellectual predispositions. The smart people can make great strides, but the stupid will be stupid louder and harder. And the average may well just be... more average.

IQ levels has risen on average because of nutrients, not using lead and education.

An increase in blood lead from 10 to 20 micrograms/dl was associated with a decrease of 2.6 IQ

> Q levels has risen on average because of...

...nobody really knows why

Risen by a few points. Statistically significant but not really meaningful.

…and to still believe that IQ levels measure something meaningful is pretty average Joe anyway. Could be the rise of videogames for all we know.

IQ score rises (Flynn effect) are most likely spurious and do not reflect any increase in actual on-the-spot problem-solving ability.

IQ scores were never intended to be used to compare across cohorts. To do so is invalid.

Average Joe does not care about politics…

If one only cares about democrats vs dems (or left vs "far right" in Europe) one also doesn't REALLY care about politics.

Caring = caring to understand how the system works and how the incentives work for participants in it.

If I'm super generous I would guess maybe 0,1 percent of the population cares by that definition.

I think you're a little too harsh in that judgement. I'd say it's at least 1%. Possibly even 5%.

It still means that they are massively, massively outweighed by loud tribalism.

There's a problem that if you care, as an average person, it's hard to do much with it. Every few years you can vote left or right, which unless you happen to live in a marginal constituency or swing state, has no effect.

>Every few years you can vote left or right,

If you're talking about the US, you can vote center-right (Democratic) or far right (Republican). There is no viable left wing party in the US.

This can't be said often enough. We have two right wing parties in the US. That's it.

These posts are tiresome. They all boil down to "my view should be the middle".

You could just as well claim the Democrats are far left and the republicans center left.

This is often done by contrasting the US with Europe, as if Europe is a political gold standard.

The political "spectrum" is not a range of subjective opinions, it's a range of objectively documented ideas.

I don't know how well they can fit in a unidimensional scale though.

>These posts are tiresome. They all boil down to "my view should be the middle".

I don't claim that my views are, or should be, "the middle".

In fact, I didn't share my views at all.

Rather, I contrasted the US Republican Party with the US Democratic Party through the lens of the political spectrum.

Perhaps you think your views are "middle-of-the-road" and maybe they are. I have no idea what you think or believe.

But making the claim you did added absolutely nothing to the discussion, nor did it address anything I wrote. And more's the pity.

From whose perspective and what are we considering right and left? The Democratic party is left of center on social issues, even compared to Europe.

>he Democratic party is left of center on social issues, even compared to Europe.

Actually, the Democratic Party is mostly libertarian (or classically liberal, if you like, which is, inherently right wing) on social issues -- preferring to allow people to make their own choices WRT their bodies rather than seeking government control of reproductive health and other forms of bodily autonomy.

Individual rights and personal agency are not "left wing," except in the eyes of the authoritarian far right (or far left) who seek control over all else.

So no. The Democratic Party has a solidly center-right agenda/ideology -- no collectivism, individual rights not curtailed by the state, freedom of thought and religion, etc.

Despite what some folks may say, there are no Marxists in the US Democratic Party.

That's not to say that the Democratic Party is the ideal. Far from it. But to place them on the absolute "left" is ridiculous on its face.

It's only "left wing" as compared with the far right (read: evangelical christians, white nationalists, xenophobes, etc.) Republican Party who want to limit women's reproductive choices, force the religious doctrines of the Christian church down everyone's throats and spout xenophobic and long debunked genetic tropes related to melanin content.

If humanity is to mature, we must be critical and take responsibility for ourselves, particularly when the alignment of others are concerned. Such as starting by disagreeing with everything, and validate for one's own.

Sounds like regulation to me ;)

I totally agree with you

What something bottom up, transparent in rules and reward structure and able to iterate quickly instead of something top down?

Also agree with the GP.

> with all incentives aligned to the outcomes we collectively agree upon

Some things are simply not possible.

> If humanity is to mature

Recognizing and working within the constraints is maturity

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