I have trouble understanding what’s going on in people’s heads when they choose to follow policy when that’s visibly going to lead to horrific consequences that no one wants. Who would punish them for failing to comply with the policy in such cases? Or do people think of “violating policy” as somehow bad in itself, irrespective of consequences?
On my model, there are a few different reasons:
Some people aren’t paying enough attention to grok that horrific consequences will ensue, because Humans Who Are Not Concentrating Are Not General Intelligences. Perhaps they vaguely assume that someone else is handling the issue, or just never thought about it at all.
Some people don’t care about the consequences, and so follow the path of least resistance.
Some people revel in the power to cause problems for others. I have a pet theory that one the strategies that evolution preprogrammed into humans is “be an asshole until someone stops you, to demonstrate you’re strong enough to get away with being an asshole up to that point, and thereby improve your position in the pecking order”. (I also suspect this is why the Internet is full of assholes—much harder to punish it than in the ancestral environment, and your evolutionary programming misinterprets this as you being too elite to punish.)
Some people may genuinely fear that they’ll be punished for averting the horrific consequences (possibly because their boss falls into the previous category).
Some people over-apply the heuristic that rules are optimized for the good of all, and therefore breaking a rule just because it’s locally good is selfish cheating.
On my model, there are a few different reasons:
Some people aren’t paying enough attention to grok that horrific consequences will ensue, because Humans Who Are Not Concentrating Are Not General Intelligences. Perhaps they vaguely assume that someone else is handling the issue, or just never thought about it at all.
Some people don’t care about the consequences, and so follow the path of least resistance.
Some people revel in the power to cause problems for others. I have a pet theory that one the strategies that evolution preprogrammed into humans is “be an asshole until someone stops you, to demonstrate you’re strong enough to get away with being an asshole up to that point, and thereby improve your position in the pecking order”. (I also suspect this is why the Internet is full of assholes—much harder to punish it than in the ancestral environment, and your evolutionary programming misinterprets this as you being too elite to punish.)
Some people may genuinely fear that they’ll be punished for averting the horrific consequences (possibly because their boss falls into the previous category).
Some people over-apply the heuristic that rules are optimized for the good of all, and therefore breaking a rule just because it’s locally good is selfish cheating.
You might also be interested in Scott Aaronson’s essay on blankfaces.