Scientific Definition
Reporting wrongdoing is personally costly; staying silent is personally rational.
Plain-English Definition
Reporting wrongdoing is personally costly; staying silent is personally rational.
Feynman Explanation
The system survives by paying the cost of silence.
Core Principle
Reporting wrongdoing is personally costly; staying silent is personally rational.
Mechanisms
Pending editorial review.
Reporting wrongdoing is personally costly; staying silent is personally rational.
Pending editorial review.
Pending editorial review.
Reporting infrastructure is necessary but never sufficient.
Pending editorial review.
Pending editorial review.
Inputs (Triggers)
Pending editorial review.
Outputs (Behaviors)
Pending editorial review.
Behavioral Signature
The system survives by paying the cost of silence.
Examples
- Most major corporate fraud cases.
- Reporting infrastructure is necessary but never sufficient.
Pending editorial review.
Famous Experiments
Pending editorial review.
Design Principles
- Anonymous channels. Real protection. Visible rewards for reporters.
Measurement Approaches
Pending editorial review.
Evidence
Pending editorial review.
Pending editorial review.
The Perverse Incentive Lens™
How this behavior is exploited — and how to redesign around it.
- Anonymous channels. Real protection. Visible rewards for reporters.
Pending editorial review.
Pending editorial review.
Interactive Mini Network
Click any neighbor to re-center the graph and follow the threads of connection.
Knowledge Graph Neighbors
Auto-linked to the rest of the Human Behavior Taxonomy by family, domain, dimension, and shared keywords.
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Donors penalize 'overhead' and starve capacity that produces outcomes.
A reward designed to reduce X produces more X.
Squeezing all slack from a system optimizes throughput but eliminates resilience.
'Equal value' exchanges incentivize subjective appraisal gaming to trade low-utility land for high-value public assets.
When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.
Deep specialization improves local output but breaks cross-domain understanding.
Greedy improvement loops climb hills that aren't the highest hill.
When rewards don't match stated values, culture quietly decays toward what is rewarded.
Insulation from risk changes the risks people take.