That’s not the point though; the point is that agenty actors are understood to be doing higher work as reflected in their position in the hierarchy, and thus are expected to be smarter than their lower counterparts, and be able to make better decisions. That expectation should logically carry higher responsibility and accountability with it, otherwise what distinguishes a soldier from an officer?
You’re conflating responsibility/accountability with things that they don’t naturally fall out of. And I think you know that last line was clearly B.S. (given that the entire original post was about something which is not identical to accountability—you should have known that the most reasonable answer to that question is “agentiness”). Considering their work higher, or considering them to be smarter, is alleged by the post to not be the entirety of the distinction between the hierarchies; after all, if the only difference was brains or status, then there would be no need for TWO distinct hierarchies. There is a continuous distribution of status and brains throughout both hierarchies (as opposed to a sharp distinction where even the lowest officer is significantly smarter or higher status than the highest soldier), so it seems reasonable to just link them together.
One thing which might help to explain the difference is the concept of “agentiness”, not linked to certain levels of difficulty of roles, but rather to the type of actions performed by those roles. If true, then the distinguishing feature between an officer and a soldier is that officers have to be prepared to solve new problems which they may not be familiar with, while soldiers are only expected to perform actions they have been trained on. For example, an officer may have the task of “deal with those machine gunners”, while a soldier would be told “sweep and clear these houses”. The officer has to creatively devise a solution to a new problem, while the soldier merely has to execute a known decision tree. Note that this has nothing to do with the difficulty of the problem. There may be an easy solution to the first problem, while the second may be complex and require very fast decision making on the local scale (in addition to the physical challenge). But given the full scope of the situation, it is easy to look at the officer and say “I think you would have been better off going further around and choosing a different flank, to reduce your squad’s casualties; but apparently you just don’t have that level of tactical insight. No promotion for you, maybe next time”. To the soldier, it would be more along the lines of “You failed to properly check a room before calling it clear, and missed an enemy combatant hiding behind a desk. This resulted in several casualties as he ambushed your squadmates. You’re grounded for a week.” The difference is that an officer is understood to need special insight to do his job well, while a soldier is understood to just need to follow orders without making mistakes. It’s much easier to punish someone for failing to fulfill the basic requirements of their job than it is to punish them for failing to achieve an optimal result given vague instructions.
EDIT: You’ve provided good reason to expect that officers should get harsher punishments than soldiers, given the dual hierarchy. I claim that the theory of “agentiness” as the distinguishing feature between these hierarchies predicts that officers will receive punishments much less severe than your model would suggest, while soldiers will be more harshly punished. In reality, it seems that officers don’t get held accountable to the degree which your model predicts they would, based on their status, while soldiers get held more accountable. This is evidence in favor of the “agentiness” model, not against it, as you originally suggested. The core steps of my logic are: the “agentiness” model predicts that officers are not punished as severely as you’d otherwise expect, while soldiers are punished more severely; therefore, the fact that in the real world officers are not punished as harshly as you’d otherwise expect is evidence for the “agentiness” model at the expense of any models which don’t predict that. If you disagree with those steps, please specify where/how. If you disagree with an unstated/implied assumption outside of these steps, please specify which. If I’m not making sense, or if I seem exceedingly stupid, there’s probably been a miscommunication; try and point at the parts that don’t make sense so I can try again.
That’s not the point though; the point is that agenty actors are understood to be doing higher work as reflected in their position in the hierarchy, and thus are expected to be smarter than their lower counterparts, and be able to make better decisions. That expectation should logically carry higher responsibility and accountability with it, otherwise what distinguishes a soldier from an officer?
You’re conflating responsibility/accountability with things that they don’t naturally fall out of. And I think you know that last line was clearly B.S. (given that the entire original post was about something which is not identical to accountability—you should have known that the most reasonable answer to that question is “agentiness”). Considering their work higher, or considering them to be smarter, is alleged by the post to not be the entirety of the distinction between the hierarchies; after all, if the only difference was brains or status, then there would be no need for TWO distinct hierarchies. There is a continuous distribution of status and brains throughout both hierarchies (as opposed to a sharp distinction where even the lowest officer is significantly smarter or higher status than the highest soldier), so it seems reasonable to just link them together.
One thing which might help to explain the difference is the concept of “agentiness”, not linked to certain levels of difficulty of roles, but rather to the type of actions performed by those roles. If true, then the distinguishing feature between an officer and a soldier is that officers have to be prepared to solve new problems which they may not be familiar with, while soldiers are only expected to perform actions they have been trained on. For example, an officer may have the task of “deal with those machine gunners”, while a soldier would be told “sweep and clear these houses”. The officer has to creatively devise a solution to a new problem, while the soldier merely has to execute a known decision tree. Note that this has nothing to do with the difficulty of the problem. There may be an easy solution to the first problem, while the second may be complex and require very fast decision making on the local scale (in addition to the physical challenge). But given the full scope of the situation, it is easy to look at the officer and say “I think you would have been better off going further around and choosing a different flank, to reduce your squad’s casualties; but apparently you just don’t have that level of tactical insight. No promotion for you, maybe next time”. To the soldier, it would be more along the lines of “You failed to properly check a room before calling it clear, and missed an enemy combatant hiding behind a desk. This resulted in several casualties as he ambushed your squadmates. You’re grounded for a week.” The difference is that an officer is understood to need special insight to do his job well, while a soldier is understood to just need to follow orders without making mistakes. It’s much easier to punish someone for failing to fulfill the basic requirements of their job than it is to punish them for failing to achieve an optimal result given vague instructions.
EDIT: You’ve provided good reason to expect that officers should get harsher punishments than soldiers, given the dual hierarchy. I claim that the theory of “agentiness” as the distinguishing feature between these hierarchies predicts that officers will receive punishments much less severe than your model would suggest, while soldiers will be more harshly punished. In reality, it seems that officers don’t get held accountable to the degree which your model predicts they would, based on their status, while soldiers get held more accountable. This is evidence in favor of the “agentiness” model, not against it, as you originally suggested. The core steps of my logic are: the “agentiness” model predicts that officers are not punished as severely as you’d otherwise expect, while soldiers are punished more severely; therefore, the fact that in the real world officers are not punished as harshly as you’d otherwise expect is evidence for the “agentiness” model at the expense of any models which don’t predict that. If you disagree with those steps, please specify where/how. If you disagree with an unstated/implied assumption outside of these steps, please specify which. If I’m not making sense, or if I seem exceedingly stupid, there’s probably been a miscommunication; try and point at the parts that don’t make sense so I can try again.