THE HIVE MIND FALLACY

Principle: organizations are not influenced by incentives weighting on it; instead, their behavior is determined by the incentives weighting on the decision makers inside them.

This is because organizations have no agency; no hive mind.

Thread,
1/N
2/ Let me explain with a metaphor.

When we talk about a colony of bees, we often believe it has a collective will (the "hive mind").

However, it never takes decisions itself.
Instead, its bees take INDIVIDUAL decisions, whose result converges on a group behavior.
3/ The same applies to companies. How often do we read headlines such as "Apple decided to design a car"?

However, Apple doesn't have agency.
Its managers do.

The decision was the result of individual managers taking decisions based on their individual information & incentives.
4/ This matter because group incentives never affect group behavior unless they are translated to individual incentives.

If the government creates a policy fining companies that pollute, companies will keep polluting unless the fine somehow affect its managers.
5/ The hive mind fallacy: our tendency to believe that groups have agency.

Instead, group behavior is determined by the individual decisions of its components, each acting based on what it knows and on its individual incentives.
6/ We can describe the behavior of a group at the group level; but to explain it, we must study it at the individual level.

(and considering the interactions between individuals, of course)
7/ By the way, the hive mind fallacy also applies to markets.

There is no such thing as "the market did X"; only "market participants did X".

(Or, more precisely, "the market did X" can only describe an outcome but not explain it.)

• • •

Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to force a refresh
 

Keep Current with Luca Dellanna

Luca Dellanna Profile picture

Stay in touch and get notified when new unrolls are available from this author!

Read all threads

This Thread may be Removed Anytime!

PDF

Twitter may remove this content at anytime! Save it as PDF for later use!

Try unrolling a thread yourself!

how to unroll video
  1. Follow @ThreadReaderApp to mention us!

  2. From a Twitter thread mention us with a keyword "unroll"
@threadreaderapp unroll

Practice here first or read more on our help page!

More from @DellAnnaLuca

31 Mar
THE DISTRIBUTED BRAIN

Why do we fall prey of illusions such as the one below?

The answer lies in how our brain is wired

(thread, 1/N) Image
2/ Let's look at a fragment of the previous image.

It looks coherent and could plausibly exist. Image
3/ Also the other two fragments, when examined one by one, look plausible. ImageImage
Read 11 tweets
31 Mar
THE DISTRIBUTED BRAIN

Why do we fall prey of illusions such as the one below?

The answer lies in how our brain is wired

(thread, 1/N) Image
2/ Let's look at a fragment of the previous image.

It looks coherent and could plausibly exist. Image
3/ Also the other two fragments, when examined one by one, look plausible. ImageImage
Read 8 tweets
29 Mar
MEGA-THREAD OF ALL THE TIMES VIRUS LABS "LOST" DANGEROUS PATHOGENS

1/ SARS is documented to have escaped virus labs multiple times; twice from the same one

2/ The Institut Pasteur lost 2349 vials of SARS and once transported vials on a regular plane breaking protocols

(thread)
(I will post all sources at the end of the thread)
3/ More than 100 US labs with bioterror pathogens had faced federal sanctions for safety violations…

…and regulators allowed them to keep conducting experiments while failing inspections, sometimes for years.
Read 19 tweets
28 Mar
Today begins Autism Awareness Week, so I'll share the most important screenshots from my book on autism (available for free at gum.co/twtamg or as a paperback on Amazon amzn.to/3cqZLug)

1/ First, an example to visualize autistic perception (continues below)
2/ The second of three pages describing the example
3/ The third page
Read 5 tweets
28 Mar
SARS escaped a lab multiple times. Twice from the same one.

Regardless of the origins of COVID, the narratives that one is a bad person for suggesting that viruses can escape from labs is dangerous.

If labs are a risk, pretending they’re safe for ideological reasons is insane.
On the same topic, the tweet below and this article (a list of known lab incidents; who knows how many are unknown) (ht @trishankkarthik for the link):
eu.usatoday.com/in-depth/opini…
This paragraph in particular is shocking and everyone should be aware of it.
Read 6 tweets
27 Mar
Hypothesis: "Resistance to change" is BS.

It's not that we resist change. It's that we don't fancy doing things we didn't experience being good for us.

It has nothing to do with new or old – as a proof, we are quick to try something new when we experienced it being good.

1/4
2/ The thing is, we might know that trying the new thing makes sense, but unless we emotionally experienced it being good, we won't try it.

But it hasn't anything to do with it being new. Even if it were old, we'd only do it if we emotionally thought it'd be good for us.
3/ Hence, my hypothesis that resistance to change is BS.

It's a confabulation for why we are likely not to do something new. But it hasn't to do with it being new.

It's just selection bias: what is new is more likely to lack some factor which is required for its adoption.
Read 4 tweets

Did Thread Reader help you today?

Support us! We are indie developers!


This site is made by just two indie developers on a laptop doing marketing, support and development! Read more about the story.

Become a Premium Member ($3/month or $30/year) and get exclusive features!

Become Premium

Too expensive? Make a small donation by buying us coffee ($5) or help with server cost ($10)

Donate via Paypal Become our Patreon

Thank you for your support!

Follow Us on Twitter!