RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
9mo ago·Edited 9mo ago
Interesting, good post. I made a post about similar ideas a few days earlier albeit much less thoughtfully and well-formed. It's an odd feeling to have someone write the exact same thing you were thinking about but better.
In game theory, there are a bunch of simple strategies like 'switch from always cooperate to defect if the other guy defects first'. But when you introduce uncertainty, if there's a chance of mistakes (pressing cooperate and getting defect) then things get more complicated. Depending on the rate of error, some strategies that would otherwise be uncompetitive become workable - always cooperate can actually compete in some cases!
I reckon that introducing uncertainty worsens the case for immigration. In the real world we can't quite be sure whether someone's credentials are real, whether their education is legit and earned, what sort of standards they'll work at... until we employ them. Skill levels are hard to determine since everyone wants to look as skillful as they can. Ascertaining skill is sort of possible but not perfect in a single nation-state since you can tell what a good resume looks like, what a good university is, you can pick up on diction and various personality facets in interviews since you know your countrymen best. And people are less likely to lie and cheat extensively and expertly if there's no great financial incentive to do so.
But if your income and quality of life is rising fourfold if you get the job or the university admission, then you'll try a lot harder to get in! You'll pull strings, draw on connections, pounce on places where incentives are imperfectly aligned. There are real problems with cost-cutting outsourcing resulting in lower quality products, in illegible factors that are hard to ascertain beforehand. We can imagine how changing the error-rate alters the dominant strategy from the employer's point of view. And then there are political factors that make it harder to sort people by skill level. Right now in Australia there's 'same work, same pay' legislation being discussed. Some people do the same work much better than others and logically deserve more pay.
Right now in Australia there's 'same work, same pay' legislation being discussed. Some people do the same work much better than others and logically deserve more pay.
Seems to me like it would be easy to do an end-run around this by giving high performing employees a slightly different job title while they're still doing the same work.
I remember seeing this done regularly when my company submitted the immigration forms for workers. The purpose of the form was to prove that me (the immigrant) is necessary to the company and no American can be hired instead of importing a filthy foreigner. Obviously, since the company has been employing me for years already, they wanted me to keep working for them, only in the US (and same for other people they were relocating). So they made a job description matching our jobs and skills exactly, so the chance there would be a person with the same skills and experience (who also would see the ad and want to apply) is negligible. Of course, it worked - they published the ads, waited the appropriate time, nobody applied, and they honestly wrote in the immigration forms that people they want to relocate are unique and irreplaceable.
Another common practice is adding qualifiers - you've got Engineer, then Senior Engineer, then Senior Staff Engineer, then Distinguished Senior Staff Engineer, then Distinguished Senior Staff Engineering Fellow, and you can go on with it forever, and obviously each of these is a totally different job.
I've also heard that the over-specifying thing is trivially easy to do in academia. To the point that there are basically no restrictions on importing qualified academic talent. For academia they just write job requirements looking for a person that has written on topics X, Y, and Z. And they will make each of those topics basically the title paper of the academic they want to hire. The end result being that literally only one person in the world is qualified for the job ... the person they want to hire.
Yes, but also no. It's definitely practice to over-specify it towards a specific person and that gives the person a giant edge. But if a super-star scientist (relatively speaking) comes around and applies for the job, they will often be hard-pressed to turn them down. This is quite rare however, and generally benefits the institutions (either they get exactly the person they want, or some kind of super-star).
I think it's a good thing (probably being an immigrant skews my perspective, but still I think it's an objectively good thing). I understand the fears about importing cheap labor worsening conditions of current workers, and maybe sometimes it is true. But I don't think academia is the place where it is true. I didn't spend much time in academia to have relevant experience but in general that seems to be the case.
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Notes -
Interesting, good post. I made a post about similar ideas a few days earlier albeit much less thoughtfully and well-formed. It's an odd feeling to have someone write the exact same thing you were thinking about but better.
In game theory, there are a bunch of simple strategies like 'switch from always cooperate to defect if the other guy defects first'. But when you introduce uncertainty, if there's a chance of mistakes (pressing cooperate and getting defect) then things get more complicated. Depending on the rate of error, some strategies that would otherwise be uncompetitive become workable - always cooperate can actually compete in some cases!
I reckon that introducing uncertainty worsens the case for immigration. In the real world we can't quite be sure whether someone's credentials are real, whether their education is legit and earned, what sort of standards they'll work at... until we employ them. Skill levels are hard to determine since everyone wants to look as skillful as they can. Ascertaining skill is sort of possible but not perfect in a single nation-state since you can tell what a good resume looks like, what a good university is, you can pick up on diction and various personality facets in interviews since you know your countrymen best. And people are less likely to lie and cheat extensively and expertly if there's no great financial incentive to do so.
But if your income and quality of life is rising fourfold if you get the job or the university admission, then you'll try a lot harder to get in! You'll pull strings, draw on connections, pounce on places where incentives are imperfectly aligned. There are real problems with cost-cutting outsourcing resulting in lower quality products, in illegible factors that are hard to ascertain beforehand. We can imagine how changing the error-rate alters the dominant strategy from the employer's point of view. And then there are political factors that make it harder to sort people by skill level. Right now in Australia there's 'same work, same pay' legislation being discussed. Some people do the same work much better than others and logically deserve more pay.
Seems to me like it would be easy to do an end-run around this by giving high performing employees a slightly different job title while they're still doing the same work.
I remember seeing this done regularly when my company submitted the immigration forms for workers. The purpose of the form was to prove that me (the immigrant) is necessary to the company and no American can be hired instead of importing a filthy foreigner. Obviously, since the company has been employing me for years already, they wanted me to keep working for them, only in the US (and same for other people they were relocating). So they made a job description matching our jobs and skills exactly, so the chance there would be a person with the same skills and experience (who also would see the ad and want to apply) is negligible. Of course, it worked - they published the ads, waited the appropriate time, nobody applied, and they honestly wrote in the immigration forms that people they want to relocate are unique and irreplaceable.
Another common practice is adding qualifiers - you've got Engineer, then Senior Engineer, then Senior Staff Engineer, then Distinguished Senior Staff Engineer, then Distinguished Senior Staff Engineering Fellow, and you can go on with it forever, and obviously each of these is a totally different job.
I've also heard that the over-specifying thing is trivially easy to do in academia. To the point that there are basically no restrictions on importing qualified academic talent. For academia they just write job requirements looking for a person that has written on topics X, Y, and Z. And they will make each of those topics basically the title paper of the academic they want to hire. The end result being that literally only one person in the world is qualified for the job ... the person they want to hire.
Yes, but also no. It's definitely practice to over-specify it towards a specific person and that gives the person a giant edge. But if a super-star scientist (relatively speaking) comes around and applies for the job, they will often be hard-pressed to turn them down. This is quite rare however, and generally benefits the institutions (either they get exactly the person they want, or some kind of super-star).
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I think it's a good thing (probably being an immigrant skews my perspective, but still I think it's an objectively good thing). I understand the fears about importing cheap labor worsening conditions of current workers, and maybe sometimes it is true. But I don't think academia is the place where it is true. I didn't spend much time in academia to have relevant experience but in general that seems to be the case.
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