DESIGN • Aug 13, 2020
Design for the selfish
I am now reading a book called “The Selfish Gene” by Richard Dawkins. This book has a reputation for being depressing and Boy, It didn't disappoint. Just because something is either depressing or weird, we shouldn’t dismiss the truth. Truth is way weirder and depressing than fiction indeed. This is not the point here.
I found a couple of profound quotes in the introduction of this book and they are is meaningful on multiple levels. The entire book is loosely based on this premise but this quotation captures it well.
“Much as we wish to believe otherwise, universal love and welfare (altruism) of a species as a whole are concepts that don’t make any evolutionary sense”
"Let's try to teach generosity and altruism because we are born selfish"
I don’t know you would agree with this or not, but I am starting to believe this is the truth and maybe you should too. I have always known this but this book made me understand this on a much deeper level to the roots of it.
A person is never altruistic to anyone outside his/her inner circle and he/she is altruistic to his/her inner circle just because it is almost always in his/her own interests. This is something very hard to digest for many people, but it seems, this is the truth.
If you want to argue otherwise, I am putting forward some counter-arguments of my own for a few so-called altruistic behaviors. You would altruistically do anything for your child because it is in your gene’s interest to do so. You give a beggar 5 or 10 rupees because you want to feel superior and get gratification from it. You might serve tirelessly for NPOs like NSS and YRC and you do it for the image and self-gratification associated with it. I am not saying we consciously make selfish decisions to take part in these altruistic behaviors. It is, for the most part, unconscious; a better word would be self-delusional.
By words selfishness and altruism, I mean in behavioral sense and not a moral sense. If a person’s psychology is innately selfish how can we design a world which expects him/her to act altruistically or even rationally? By design, I am implying the design of complete systems and not products and the modern definition of design is very broad too. You will understand it a bit more clearly as you progress through this article.
For the past few months, every time I am in the front in a traffic signal stop, I have been conducting this “experiment”. In the absence of a police officer, almost always some dude in a pulsar ignores the signal and runs out first, and everyone then follows him. What I did was, when I was at the front, I restrained myself no to break the signals after someone breaks it. Then something interesting happened. Just because I was not moving all the vehicles in about a 10-meter radius didn’t move. All of them were going somewhere and needed to be on time and it is in their interest to break the signal. But they all stopped and waited for the signal despite some of the vehicles ignored them. They waited for their self-image. neither out of fear nor out of conscientiousness. They waited just because they didn’t want to come up as a reprobate in front of a complete stranger. Of course, I cannot say this is a foolproof social experiment, But I am pretty confident that this is what happened.
Another scenario proved this more indisputably. In some European countries (I don’t remember what it is), they conducted the election by mail, due to some reason. The vote by mail system was a well designed one (In terms of reducing resistance for the users). All they had to do is pick up the mail from the home mailbox and fill a form and put it back in the same mailbox.
What do you think would have happened to the Voter Turnout?
Conventional wisdom suggests, because of reduced effort and time (net resistance) from the voter’s standpoint, the voter turnout must have been close to 100%, at least, much better than the normal voter booth numbers (60-70%). But the Voter turnout was less than 20%. The implication here is that people vote, not because they want to vote, but because for obtaining the social benefits that voting confers on them (Increased prestige and social image as a good citizen). How many of you have posted a photo on Instagram with the voting ink on the finger after voting? This is the real reason for which people vote.
Like this, many of the systems expect us to behave either altruistically or rationally but many don’t realize that system must be designed for selfish people.
Some of them exploit this too. An apt example would be the medical community. We(the normal people) always respect Doctors and expect them to behave altruistically. Some of us even believe that they act altruistically. But, more often than not, they act on their own self-interests; either for money or time.
This is inadvertent, but we got it right big time in this case; with some deception, some complexity, a lot of media, and a lot of fear.
Masks for COVID 19. These masks we use will not prevent the COVID virus (They are too small) from entering your body but it just makes the infected people spread the disease less by diffusion (I have attached a video for a more detailed explanation). Since no one knows who is infected and who is not, governments are mandating everyone to wear it. Truly, If everyone knew this, not a lot of the people will be wearing masks, infected and uninfected alike. But since we have a hard-wired aversion towards diseases and certainly, media doesn’t help, we all are scared shitless and wearing masks (under misunderstanding). We wear masks selfishly.
Even blood donation campaigns do a good job in this front. The entire system is designed to make you feel that you have saved someone else's life and at the same time, you will enjoy health benefits (There is some truth in both). The certificate they give you, the way they welcome and treat you, the posters with all those quips are all testament to that and the system works.
But it can be designed into almost every system out there Traffic rules, police, law, Income taxes, schools, Colleges, Medical system, Industries, big organizations both internally and externally, and even the so-called 100% altruistic systems like charity and philanthropy. Have you ever cared about the WHO's 800rs donation ad campaign? I presume not. Because it doesn't appeal to your interests. Designing a system that makes us feel good to pay income taxes- like voting- is among the best ways to increase the country's working capital. This is also the best way of thinking about designing to solve the climate change problem.
If we can design to appeal to selfish interests, we can make a more efficient and in some twisted way a better world; Certainly, we don't want everyone to know this.
The Selfish Gene book amazon
https://www.amazon.in/Selfish-Gene-Oxford-Landmark-Science/dp/0198788606