[extropy-chat] Fear of Death Much Worse Than You Think

[Adrian Tymes]

--- Robin Hanson <rhanson at gmu.edu> wrote:
> This is a very standard approach, and so it must work on average,

;)  Just because something is standard doesn't mean it usually works,
and especially that it works well.  It just means that it's standard.

This is especially the case with the practices of any large
institution, where making the higher-ups feel good or the pressures of
getting work done despite irrelevant demands from on high can trump
pointing out that a bad idea is bad and doing something about it: the
individual performance gains from not using bad ideas are overridden by
the costs of getting less than optimal practices changed (especially
when the practices that most commonly get challenged really were
improvements from what the institution originally did, and get defended
as such by the higher-ups who perceive elements of the old ways in any
new suggestions).