How threats of punishment choke information flow in groups

I once took a Male Allies Against Sexual Violence course, and they cautioned us against saying to female friends "if a guy ever assaults you, lmk and I'll fuck him up" because they'd observed this usually seemed to lead to *not* speaking due to not wanting to instigate violence. t.co/MX5k8opegU

Jun 26, 2020

Key implication: extreme punishments lead to lack of information flow, which destroys the ability to collectively make sense of things together, and to piece together small experiences into whole picture. (Many other factors impede info flow too, incl skepticism towards sharer!)

Diminished information flow makes it hard to pick up on many things, from benign: • eg "Allon has awkward quirk but would be receptive to feedback, let's tell him so he can adjust." …to insidious… • "Bort has been subtly threatening whole office, not just me. Needs to leave."

If you can't talk about your messy situations in a relatively relaxed & open way with other people involved, then it's… A: hard to detect those situations in the first place B: hard to tell whether someone is: • clueless • egoic but open to change • utterly sociopathic

This stuff is hard. There's no easy answer. Lots of information flow gets stifled for various other reasons and this is just one factor. It's important to be aware of though. More generally, to be aware that any system of punishment creates incentives to distort information.

I have a whole other not-yet-published rant about how the graspy way that many people treat "confidentiality" also disrupts information flow and undermines peoples' capacity for building self-trust & other-trust, and learning tact… ~=this 👇, generalized

Malcolm Ocean 🏴‍☠️ @Malcolm_Ocean · Dec 2, 2019

@othercriteria Seems to me that Chatham House rule is a tradeoff that is good for exactly one thing, and in all other situations is anti-helpful. The one thing is analyzing complex & controversial topics among a group of loosely-affiliated individuals. This is what Chatham House is for.

Can't resist some Donella Meadows Leverage Points links here. Naturally this tweetstorm is about #6: Structure of information flow…

Malcolm Ocean 🏴‍☠️ @Malcolm_Ocean · May 19, 2020

Leverage Point 6: structure of information flows (who does & does not have access to information) usually the leverage point here is in restoring the flow of information that has been blocked to avoid accountability eg companies may pollute less if required to publish emissions

…but it's also, in particular, a great illustration of why her list of 12 leverage points is ordered as it is, with certain levels downstream of others. Here the punishments (#5) incentivize certain information flows (#6)…

Malcolm Ocean 🏴‍☠️ @Malcolm_Ocean · May 19, 2020

Leverage Point 5: the rules of the system (eg incentives, punishments, constraints) All previous leverage points are subject to the rules of the context they're in. The real incentives: de facto, not de jure. > "Suppose a class got graded as a group, instead of as individuals"

There are of course a few much more powerful yet leverage points related here. I particularly want to mention mindset/paradigm. What's needed is assumptions that encourage & protect high-quality complex conversation.

Malcolm Ocean 🏴‍☠️ @Malcolm_Ocean · May 19, 2020

Leverage Point 2: the mindset/paradigm out of which the system arises The meaning-context in which to debate goals, rules., is in the shared ideas in the minds of society, unstated because everyone already knows them. Hard to change but (unlike 🚉🏭🏦) can flip in an instant 👁️