.... without which we'd still be drinking the piss'n'shit we spilt into the waterways before we acknowledged the value of research and the fact that our chain is only as strong as its weakest link, ...
and how to recognize and resist all the #PerverseIncentives which lead to certain misery and failure.
The Perverse Incentives of Vibe Coding
https://fredbenenson.medium.com/the-perverse-incentives-of-vibe-coding-23efbaf75aee
#HackerNews #VibeCoding #PerverseIncentives #TechCulture #SoftwareDevelopment #HackerNews
I'm not an "organizer" and I have spent 50 years avoiding "leadership," but I do think about it sometimes. I often think about the pitfalls and hurdles of #organizing for any positive social change. On my mind lately is how personal motivations and incentives can interact with systemic/structural things to make change difficult.
Because I'm in #higherEd, I'm thinking about two things rn:
#University administrators (deans, provosts, presidents, directors, etc.) consistently act like Republican Senators or corporate CEOs when they make policy decisions and interact with "underlings". They can be seen as filling spots that might otherwise have been filled by people who would act in the public interest; they frequently prevent public-interest actions. The #profit-driven US system has installed them there, blocking change from the #faculty and #students from going "higher," and blocking information, resources and also possibly change from coming "down" to the students and faculty. Administrators, I think, have crippling career expectations, often unwritten, that lead them to act almost according to a script, while also clinging to their positions with a deathgrip and often developing a bad case of chip-on-the-shoulder #authoritarianism while doing it.
The #facebook group "the professor is out" (TPIO) is for faculty in toxic situations wanting advice and support in #leavingAcademia. Great. However, within a year or two of the group's formation, it was very popular so the creators (apparently) quit or lost their day jobs and seem to have made TPIO their entire income stream. They started selling #merch, coaching, workshops, etc. And they started blocking messages threatening their income, like offers of help from "competing" entities and posts questioning the wisdom of guiding all fleeing academics into doing #dataScience or #UX for the companies that fund the politicians defunding higher ed. The mods gotta pay rent, and now the only way they do this (not to mention staying alive if they get sick) is to generate income from this group.
That's all. It's just a tangled, not always helpful #system. It has evolved to protect itself, in interesting (and frustrating) ways.
#ArtificialIntelligence has a #PerverseIncentives problem. Current models require vast amounts of hardware, energy and data to train. But this is what enables big tech organisations to maintain their market dominance. More efficient models would make it easier to compete with them. So they have no reason to make models better, only bigger.
@DAIR
We can;t access github but just what you describe is interesting. It would seem that #onlineGaming *itself* creates problems, or #perverseIncentives.
It's a shame, but expected, we suppose.
If as this writer claims, many housing complexes operate on collective meters, forcing them to install individual ones should be a priority. #PerverseIncentives https://mybroadband.co.za/news/energy/499557-load-limiting-confusion.html
John Plender (FT) on the problem of CEO & top executives share-based 'incentive schemes:
Research (he discusses) has shown 'the bonus culture largely explains the decline in investment in the US & UK along with low productivity growth.
In a sane world CEO pay would be primarily in cash with equity used only for truly exceptional performance.... The astonishing failure of corporate governance & investor stewardship over executive pay will not be remedied any time soon'!
Now we have a Labor government we can finally get to the bottom of the crappy privatisation contracts with Sydney bus services. Years of pain and not a thing done about it! Because that would have exposed this ludicrous situation of it being better for them financially to cancel a bus than let it run late. And other illogical non-incentives.
Please note, the article says they have financial incentives relating to customer service. I'm not sure if that covers complaints about canceled and late buses, but it would seem sensible for us to complain like Karens from Hell. (Please don't complain about the drivers though).
#NSW #SydneyBuses #PerverseIncentives
What if a business "going public" (#IPO) meant being converted into a cooperative? The #founder gets their cash payout for building something of value to the community by actually *selling* it to the community? Power to the people!
I want to see laws passed that help promote and incentivize this option.
#Cooperatives reduce:
* #Inequality
* #EconomicInstability
* #PerverseIncentives
* #ConflictsOfInterest
The #profit made by a cooperative goes back into the #community, and their #leadership decisions are made by the community, because they are #CommunityOwned.
That means they'll listen if you say #climate matters. They'll care if you want to look out for the #disadvantaged in your community. They won't try to rake you over the coals with #PriceGouging. They won't try to trick you with #FalseAdvertizing. They won't try to manipulate you into #overspending or #ImpulseBuys. Because "they" are YOU.
Fascinating #sensemaking discussion about the #existentialRisk of #Moloch's #perverseIncentives, #climatecrisis, zero-sum games, #AI, and #complexity
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KCSsKV5F4xc
What an amazing location! Thanks so much for having me.
---
RT @ebmatthews
Day 1 of an early career workshop: “Surviving and Thriving in Academia”, led by @yoginho. Today the problems (e.g #cultofproductivity, #perverseincentives) were framed, and tomorrow we come with solutions. I would highly recommend this to departments @EawagResearch, and abroad. https://t.co/qELicq2GYC
https://twitter.com/ebmatthews/status/1593373672194048005
@obra but look how red that bar is! There's a product manager somewhere who smashed their OKR last quarter! #perverseIncentives
Hi Joel,
We think this quote by you was most salient, validating suspicions expressed on Fedi almost a year ago that #Mastodon is being coopted to serve the #PopularityModel and #influencers with access to #botFarms:
> the "spirit of mastodon" is also to not show boosts and favorites until a toot is fully opened to discourage mob mentality and such, and yet the official app has those... It looks like a Twitter client
It ought to be fixed, asap.
This will create #perverseIncentives that will affect all users
Popular people will get more popular.
It will mean that people will start focusing on the numbers which is not only a distraction from the message but means ppl will start saying things such as, "Please LIKE to show you care, or BOOST to share." wasting, characters read time and effort for all.
More network/server resources wasted expended on producing totals.
@Argus
Then there's a UBI that goes up slightly with age.
#environmentalStewardship #conservation #perverseIncentives #invasiveSpecies
This #Christmas, give a big thanks to all the people who fought against #Monsanto while being labelled #conspiracyTheorists.
They could be the reason you are not dead.
#corporations #perverseIncentives #sharePrice #revolvingDoor #politicalDonations #corporateStateTotalitarianism
The reason why a reverseLottery for the #extremelyWealthy is needed, is because it introduces #uncertainty - or "Constructive Ambiguity".
If everything #tax related is 'set in stone' so to speak, the extremely wealthy will hire the best #taxLawyers to go up to the thresholds of what is "#legal".
By introducing a #SlidingScaleOfUncertainty, those #perverseIncentives start to go out the window.
It just won't be worth playing these myopic #taxAvoidance tricks.
So apparently a combination of the various #scamdemic "relief" legislative packages passed in the U.S. will effectively take Federal income taxes to zero at $75k and below, 1.8% below $100k for ~2 years.
Any other self-employed entrepreneurs out there up for giving #Buyden and his cronies a lesson in #perverseincentives and #unintendedconsequences?
U.S.#inflation numbers are gonna become lolz (bad way lolz) if we deliberately reduce our productivity per their incentives... 😈 🤣 :bitcoin: 🚀
@xerz
Have you seen "Take Back Your Power" (2017). Our civilisation literally doesn't know when to reduce its impact.
#takeBackYourPower #investigativeJournalism #electricGrid #documentary #film #filmsForAction #resistance #overconsumption #stimulus #bailout #perverseIncentives
