What is it about?
In some situations a number of people each have the ability to undertake an initiative that would have significant effects on everyone, such as revealing a secret, releasing a new technology, or launching climate geo-engineering. This may be a good or a bad idea. We show that if they act on their own personal judgment as to whether the initiative is a good idea, then the initiative will happen more often than is optimal (even if the people are all purely motivated by an altruistic concern for the common good). This is because the likelihood of somebody being overoptimistic grows with the number of agents. We call this the "unilateralist’s curse", and it arises in many situations, To lift the curse, we propose various principles of conformity, that make people in such situations to hold back because they know there is a risk that they are the mistaken ones.
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Why is it important?
The unilateralist curse applies to many policy-relevant issues: handling secret or dangerous information, releasing GMOs, geoengineering, new technologies or any action that will affect everybody. Handling these issues well requires counteracting the curse, sometimes by building institutions that help coordinate these issues.
Perspectives
This is a simple observation, but not as widely known as it should be. Reining in yourself when you think you have a great idea that may improve the world is tough: however, if the curse applies it is smart to be more cautious than it looks rational to be if you were the only one with the idea or project.
Dr Anders Sandberg
University of Oxford
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: The Unilateralist’s Curse and the Case for a Principle of Conformity, Social Epistemology, January 2016, Taylor & Francis,
DOI: 10.1080/02691728.2015.1108373.
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