All about the incentives..

While working with statistics, game theory, economics, and decision theory; you will find cases where people seem to make counterproductive decisions even when you know they have to know better. I am not referring to simplifications that yield very close to the optimal results but instead outright seemingly counterproductive decision behavior. Most people think that winning the game, what is best for the family, and/or more money is all people care about. People are much more complicated than that, they are much more motivated by self interest and risk avoidance in the sense of social/political status. They will carefuly consider how their actions will be perceived now and in the future. What is good for the group now, may not be in their best interest for the future.

Doing things counter culture can be very risky especially if you fail. There is kind of a safety net by sticking with the crowd even if you reduce the value of your decisions. In essense, you are calling everyone who has stuck with the status quo a dummy of sorts. There are many cases (medical, sports, business) of this where good ideas had to fight through culture that did not want to accept it. I just read Ghost Map which is about a cholera outbreak in London. Back then, the main theory for illiness was that it was caused by "bad air" which is strange considering people that worked in sewers all day where quite healthy and were not the ones getting ill. Getting doctors to wash their hands has always been an issue throughout medical history. In baseball, it is the sacrifice bunt and the stolen base that comes under fire. People still talk about batting average when it is easily shown that On base percentage is a much better indicator of performance. In football, going for it on 4th down or kicking a field goal is coming under fire by people using statistics/simulations to analyze football decision making. In areas with lots of movement/turnover/high bonus payouts, incentives can distort people's decision making dramatically. For those reasons, be careful when designing bonus programs and evaluating decisions made by people who you would think are always trying to do what is best for the team/company.