Inscrutability and power
2016-05-25 — 2020-02-17
Wherein organisations are compelled to fabricate tidy impact narratives for complex work, and executives are revealed to prefer malleable decision frameworks that preserve political advantage.
Twin to selling uncertainty.
Explode on Impact by Toby Lowe
TL:DR — It is impossible for organisations to “demonstrate their impact” if they work in complex environments. Asking them to do so requires them to create a fantasy version of the story of their work. This corruption of data makes doing genuine change work harder because it is difficult to learn and adapt from corrupted data.
Decision Theory Remains Neglected - by Robin Hanson
I say that their motives are more political: execs and their allies gain more by using other more flexible decision making frameworks for key decisions, frameworks with more wiggle room to help them justify whatever decision happens to favour them politically. Decision theory, in contrast, threatens to more strongly recommend a particular hard-to-predict decision in each case. As execs gain when the orgs under them are more efficient, they don’t mind decision theory being used down there. But they don’t want it up at their level and above, for decisions that say if they and their allies win or lose.