Human Nature And The "Bad Actors" Problem

The phrase "bad actors" is not a reference to Ashton Kutcher, Adam Sandler, etc. 

Instead, the phrase refers to those who use nominally value-neutral "technologies" (like the internet or mortgage-backed securities) to exploit others. Basically, we're talking about predators here.

Yesterday a reader linked-in a video on human nature which I watched for a while. It's very interesting. Those discussing the subject all sought to counter simplistic reductionist statements like "it's all in the genes" or "the selfish gene." We've all heard these kind of reductionist arguments. Instead, the researchers in the video cited environmental factors like upbringing and biological factors like epigenetics during development to explain the astonishing individual variation we see within the human population. One can then argue further that human nature is a mirage because of there's so much individual variation, as expressed behaviorally.

My own view is that individual variation may appear to be large, but it is clearly bounded (finite), and that variation can therefore be categorized in useful ways. As a result, there is an identifiable suite of human behaviors at the level of large populations, or at the species level. And that is where you need to look if you want to understand human nature.

There is also the statistical argument which I used in the first Flatland essay—the fact that .01% of the human population is actively trying to preserve other species merely implies that 99.99% are either killing them off, even if it is not their "intention" to do so, or doing nothing to prevent it. We are interested in the vast majority, not the tiny minority which expresses some rare individual variation. These arguments complement one another.

Which brings me to bad actors.

A government study released a few days ago found that people are becoming leery about using the internet for various purposes. And why is that? Here's the Christian Science Monitor report on the study.

Nearly half of Americans refrain from online activities such as banking or shopping out of security and privacy fears, according to a survey released Friday by a federal telecommunication agency.

Forty-five percent of households surveyed said that security and privacy concerns —including identity theft, fraud, data collection, and loss of control of personal data — discouraged them from conducting online banking and shopping or posting about controversial or political matters on social networks, the National Telecommunication and Information Administration (NTIA) reported.

Identify theft, fraud, and covert data collection have caused people to distrust the internet. And that's a sensible position to take—using the internet puts you at risk.

Needless to say, there are other humans putting everyone else at risk. They are bad actors in this context, the proverbial rotten apples. And at this point, human nature will kick in and we'll get statements like the following—

If it weren't for a few rotten apples, the internet would be safe for everyone.

That's the usual defense.

Or take the [proverb] about "a few bad apples," the reflexive defense whenever misconduct surfaces in the midst of some organization, from Enron to Abu Ghraib to Haditha to the mortgage meltdown. It's an ancient bit of counsel, whether it's said of bad apples or rotten ones, or of bushels, barrels, baskets or bins. Benjamin Franklin had it as "the rotten apple spoils his companion," which goes back to Shakespeare's time.

Right. That's how it works and not just in organizations. It also applies to societies or implicit "societies" like that made up of users of the internet.

I apologize in advance for being so obvious here, but there is problem with this nonsense—

In a sufficiently large human population, there always exists a group of bad actors (rotten apples) who spoil things for everybody else. Experience tells us that their existence is 100% guaranteed.

Long story short, the internet created new and novel ways for bad actors to act badly, Put another way, it created a new "bad acting niche" which inevitably got filled, in this case via identity theft, online deception and fraud, invasive spying (data collection), etc. This depressing development was completely predictable.

Relating this to human nature, we find that, although there appears to be enormous individual variation in large human populations, we can confidently predict that there will always be a subset of individuals who are "rotten apples" in any context in which the opportunity for bad acting exists.

How large is that subset in any particular context? Who knows? All we know is that this subset will exist, and it will be big enough to perturb the behavior of many, many others, as in this internet security case. Many people will be directly harmed by these predatory bad actors. If this bad actor segment of the population always exists—this type of person always exists in sufficient numbers—appeals to individual variation don't explain it.

The encouraging part is that most human actors are not bad. Unfortunately, that doesn't get us off the hook.

And that is why I believe the individual variation argument with regard to human nature is interesting, but largely misses the point.

Here's the video which prompted this post.

 

Comments

[LJR]

It's not just the 'actors' but the system filters that allow those actors to rise to positions of power.

When the dominant view is that the ends justify the means then it's no surprise that monsters rise to power.

The variability in humanity amounts to little if the system wide filters (read Corporations & Governments) select for what decent folks consider pathological pursuits of power and wealth.

I can think of no adequate individual response to this state of affairs. By adequate I mean a response where the "agency" of the individual can make a likely difference for the "better" in a somewhat predictable manner. So we individually vacillate, wring our hands and prognosticate.

Arguments about the "bad actors" misses the point if the fail to acknowledge the role of cultural & societal filters.

As Hofstatder put it in EGB - ants can't talk to the ant hillary.