Why are we rewarded for making things worse?

you can detect misalignment where profit depends on negating artificial friction rather than reducing natural inefficiency or actual production (source tweet) In other words: it’s making money by numbing the pain, NOT solving the root cause. It’s WORSE than doing nothing. The system rewards its own death. Downward spiral. This is a pathology that affects companies, societies, and also individual humans1. In the company case, it looks like a CEO who fires the people reporting problems on the factory floor. This numbs the pain, but the problems get worse. In the individual case, it looks like this: a brilliant man is lonely. He should go make friends. He should fix the problems in him that make him abrasive to others. He doesn’t know how to do that. But he knows how to write / create useful things. He gets rewarded for those things, which bring him fame & fortune, which further isolates him and makes him less relatable. He is rewarded for making his own life worse. Both of these are exam

you can detect misalignment where profit depends on negating artificial friction rather than reducing natural inefficiency or actual production (source tweet) In other words: it’s making money by numbing the pain, NOT solving the root cause. It’s WORSE than doing nothing. The system rewards its own death. Downward spiral. This is a pathology that affects companies, societies, and also individual humans1. In the company case, it looks like a CEO who fires the people reporting problems on the factory floor. This numbs the pain, but the problems get worse. In the individual case, it looks like th