Filtered dossier

Hidden Numbers

Quantities that hide a rule you never agreed to.

  • 12 / 12
  • No visual on file
    Market Signals Entry #0417

    Why open-sourcing a product is a competitive act

    Giving away one layer of a stack lowers what anyone can charge for it. That is useful precisely when your revenue sits on a different layer.

    Adept
    The hidden part #0417

    Deciding which layer to give away is deciding which layer nobody can charge for. Firms commoditise next to their own margin, not away from it.

    Open file
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    Incentive Design Entry #0400

    Why removing an incentive rarely restores the earlier behaviour

    An incentive supplies a reason and overwrites the one already there. Withdrawing the payment does not reinstate what it replaced.

    Adept
    The hidden part #0400

    An incentive does not sit on top of the previous reason. It replaces it, and withdrawal leaves the replacement in place with the price set to zero.

    Open file
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    Incentive Design Entry #0399

    The reason a leaderboard demotivates the middle

    A ranking motivates whoever can plausibly move on it. For everyone whose position is settled, it removes the reason to try at all.

    Master
    The hidden part #0399

    A ranking motivates only where position is contestable. For the settled middle it publishes the news that effort will not change the outcome.

    Open file
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    Incentive Design Entry #0398

    Why deadlines improve output and lower ambition

    A deadline is met by narrowing the work, not by accelerating it. Delivery improves and the discarded scope leaves no record of having existed.

    Adept
    The hidden part #0398

    A deadline does not make work faster. It makes work smaller, and the discarded version never enters the record to be missed.

    Open file
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    Incentive Design Entry #0397

    The reason a promotion can be a demotion

    A promotion is awarded for performance in one job and delivered as a different job. The evidence used to select is evidence about the role being left.

    Adept
    The hidden part #0397

    Promotion selects on evidence from the job being left. Nobody collected evidence about the job being entered, and the acceptance is not that evidence.

    Open file
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    Incentive Design Entry #0396

    Why volunteers outperform paid workers on some tasks

    Payment does not add to an existing reason for doing something. It can replace it, and the replacement is often smaller than what it displaced.

    Novice
    The hidden part #0396

    A small payment does not sit alongside the original reason for doing something. It replaces it, and then has to compete on its own terms.

    Open file
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    Incentive Design Entry #0395

    The reason an unmeasured task disappears

    Effort is allocated across tasks that compete for the same hours. Measuring one of them does not add attention; it moves attention off the others.

    Master
    The hidden part #0395

    Measuring one task does not create effort. It withdraws it from whatever was competing, and the loss is invisible because unmeasured work has no series to fall.

    Open file
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    Incentive Design Entry #0394

    Why a strong guarantee shifts behaviour on both sides

    A guarantee moves the cost of a bad outcome from one party to another. Both parties then face different prices for care, and both respond.

    Adept
    The hidden part #0394

    A guarantee does not remove the cost of a bad outcome. It reassigns it, and every party whose price of care changed will adjust.

    Open file
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    Incentive Design Entry #0393

    The reason peer review rewards caution

    A reviewer who wrongly rejects is never identified. A reviewer who wrongly accepts is named in the record, and the two errors are not priced alike.

    Novice
    The hidden part #0393

    The two errors of review are not priced alike. A missed discovery is anonymous and a published mistake is attributable, so caution is the cheaper mistake.

    Open file
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    Incentive Design Entry #0391

    The reason a subsidy raises the price of the subsidised

    Who receives a payment and who keeps it are separate questions. Where supply cannot expand, the payment is absorbed into the price instead.

    Adept
    The hidden part #0391

    A subsidy is paid to whoever is named and kept by whoever holds the scarce side. Where supply cannot move, the price does.

    Open file
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    Statistical Illusions Entry #1127

    Why the winner’s curse inflates first results

    Winner's curse makes the first significant result look stronger than it really is, because extreme estimates are the ones that win.

    Master
    The hidden part #1127

    When many noisy estimates compete, the winner is often the most exaggerated one.

    Open file
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    Statistical Illusions Entry #1126

    Why Berkson bias bends the sample

    Berkson bias makes two independent traits look related because the sample was filtered by a shared gate, not by reality.

    Adept
    The hidden part #1126

    A filter can create a relationship that the population never had.

    Open file