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Accountability sinks

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Re: Accountability sinks

#11

Post by TZubiri »

chamomeal wrote: post #9
sitkack wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Our meat is bought from the butcher, delivered to the chef so it comes not as an animal, but part of a tasty dish. If we eat meat, we should kill it ourselves.

I get a lot of shit for saying this, but I agree completely! I don’t think there’s anything inherently wrong with eating animals. But I have a particularly carnivorous friend who thinks hunting is for sociopaths, because he “loves animals”. If I wouldn’t harvest it, I won’t eat it. And I definitely would be too timid to slaughter a freaking cow lol

The man who issues the sentence must swing the sword

Re: Accountability sinks

#12

Post by gmuslera »

Taleb's Skin in the Game seem to be related to this, but from a different optic. Goodhart's Law is also mentioned, but is not the core argument. In the end, is about agency, who have it, and system dynamics to get rid of responsibility.

Re: Accountability sinks

#14

Post by cj »

This article seems to redefine the word "accountability". In the first sentence:

> In The Unaccountability Machine, Dan Davies argues that organizations form “accountability sinks,” structures that absorb or obscure the consequences of a decision such that no one can be held directly accountable for it.

Why not just call it "no-consequence sinks"?

It's somewhat of an oxymoron to say "accountability" isn't working because there's no consequence. Without any consequence there is no accountability. So why call it accountability in the first place?

This article is describing something along the lines of "shared accountability" which, in project management, is a well known phenomenon: if multiple people are accountable for something, then no one is accountable.

If someone is accountable for something that they can't do fully themselves, they are still accountable for setting up systems (maybe even people to help) to scale their ability to remain accountable for the thing.

Re: Accountability sinks

#15

Post by alilleybrinker »

Cathy O'Neil's "Weapons of Math Destruction" (2016, Penguin Random House) is a good companion to this concept, covering the "accountability sink" from the other side of those constructing or overseeing systems.

Cathy argues that the use of algorithm in some contexts permits a new scale of harmful and unaccountable systems that ought to be reigned in.

https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/241363/weapons-of-m...

Re: Accountability sinks

#16

Post by cj »

TZubiri wrote: post #8

I was thinking about something similar today. Sometimes accountability can be a blocker, for example for hiring. If you have 1 candidate, it's an easy call, if you have 3 candidates, you evaluate in less than a week. If you have 200 candidates, you need to hire somebody to sift through the resumes, have like 5 rounds on interview and everybody chiming in, whoever pulls the trigger or recommends someone is now on the…

> If you have 200 candidates, you need to hire somebody to sift through the resumes, have like 5 rounds on interview and everybody chiming in, whoever pulls the trigger or recommends someone is now on the hook for their performance.

That's not how accountability works, in the traditional sense.

What you described is Person A (accountable for hiring) hiring person B (responsible for screening and evaluating candidates). Person A is still accountable for the results of Person B. If Person B hired a sh*t candidate, it still lands on Person A for not setting up an adequate hiring system.

Being accountable for something doesn't forbid you from delegating to other people. It is very common for 1 person to be accountable for multiple people's work.

Re: Accountability sinks

#17

Post by aeturnum »

When I was a grad student in STS I was considering doing a project on how software can function as an "agency adjuster" where individuals come to bear the risks of something (generally an economic transaction) and the majority of the profits go to the owner of the software. In many ways Uber & related services are about allowing individuals to take on very low-probability high-acuity downside risk for a small fee.

Re: Accountability sinks

#18

Post by lstodd »

cj wrote: post #16
TZubiri wrote: post #8

I was thinking about something similar today. Sometimes accountability can be a blocker, for example for hiring. If you have 1 candidate, it's an easy call, if you have 3 candidates, you evaluate in less than a week. If you have 200 candidates, you need to hire somebody to sift through the resumes, have like 5 rounds on interview and everybody chiming in, whoever pulls the trigger or recommends someone is now on the…

> If you have 200 candidates, you need to hire somebody to sift through the resumes, have like 5 rounds on interview and everybody chiming in, whoever pulls the trigger or recommends someone is now on the hook for their performance. That's not how accountability works, in the traditional sense. What you described is Person A (accountable for hiring) hiring person B (responsible for screening and evaluating candidates…

heh never works that way. an experienced bureucrat like you describe always has a shit-deflecting canopy. so whatever decisions he personally took are never attributable to him personally.

it just so happened.

Re: Accountability sinks

#20

Post by from-nibly »

TZubiri wrote: post #8

I was thinking about something similar today. Sometimes accountability can be a blocker, for example for hiring. If you have 1 candidate, it's an easy call, if you have 3 candidates, you evaluate in less than a week. If you have 200 candidates, you need to hire somebody to sift through the resumes, have like 5 rounds on interview and everybody chiming in, whoever pulls the trigger or recommends someone is now on the…

You can still be on the hook for rolling a 100 sided die. And in some cases that's effectively all you can do. At the end of the day it's a trolley problem (the real one, not deciding between two bad things, but looking at how people typically define reponsibility)

One way or another you gotta own the decisions you make and deal with it. Even if the decision is to let someone else make the decision.

The issue is that, yes, absolving yourself of accountability sure does free you to scale in ways previously thought unimaginable, it doesn't mean you absolve yourself of responsibility. The cure is keeping accountability in favor of scaling which means a much smaller scale to everything we have been doing.

Another way to think about it. If you said you would give me 1 million dollars but I had to fully own up to what 1000 random people do in the next 24 hours I'd say thats a pretty raw deal. Basically no chance that a million will cover the chaos that a few of those 1000 people could cause. What some people do is take the million and then figure out how to rid themselves of the reponsibility.

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