Iceman
Through Friendship and Ponies
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User ID: 589
Iceman
Through Friendship and Ponies
4mo ago
The point of having the phrase "the purpose of a system is what it does" is to point out that intentions don't matter. Yes, someone intended X to be the outcome, but the system reliably does Y instead, and very quickly, other actors start relying on the Y-outcomes of the system because The Purpose of a System is What It Does, and rely on it to continue to do Y.
In this case, people intended for these NGOs to solve homelessness, but because of game theory and principal agent problems, it, uh, does other things. But those intentions are irrelevant because we now have a machine that redistributes funds for moral maze like reasons and a whole bunch of people who rely on this system to keep doing that.
Iceman
Through Friendship and Ponies
2yr ago
Surely that can't be right?
Why can't that be right? What model of the world precludes it?
I watched from the inside as a major FANG company got taken over, where the culture changed from technical excellence to 'social responsibility' or whatnot. So why shouldn't one expect that Merely Reddit got captured by a social cabal?
I reject the idea that purpose has connotations of intention, and suspect that a large part of contention around the obvious truism that "The Purpose of a System is What It Does" comes from this conflation. If I were to say "The purpose of the mitochondria is to generate ATP, which is then consumed by the rest of the cell to power it," this sentence is properly using 'purpose' by evaluating What The System Does, in a case where there could not be an intention.
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