Replica Theory is a tiny model I use that makes a lot of accurate predictions about society:
When people are in a situation where they’re as rewarded for doing an easier, fake version of something as they are for doing the real, valuable version, you’ll usually find that most of the activity is fake.
There are two types of “fake” activity in the way I’m using the word:
(1) Activity that doesn’t achieve anything useful at all.
Example: a treatment that claims to cure a disease but doesn’t actually help the patients who use it.
(2) Activity that claims (and is widely believed to be) about X but is really about Y.
Example: the FDA says that it won’t approve some European sunscreens because of a lack of sufficient safety data. Some people (including my dermatologist!) claim – and I don’t know whether they are right – that the real reason is that the FDA doesn’t want the difficult challenge of standing up to entrenched sunscreen interests that would lose out from allowing these newer sunscreens.
This theory can be further extended to Delusional Replica Theory:
Most (but not all) of those doing the fake activity won’t really believe they are producing B.S. and will find arguments (to convince themselves and others) for why their activity isn’t fake. However, on some level, they may still have doubts about the authenticity of what they’re doing.
Here are a few snarky applications of Delusional Replica Theory:
1. Some major parts of the education sector ignore the science of learning and don’t seem to have figured out what the goals of education should be. Yet you don’t need to teach valuable skills/information to have a successful school or to be a successful teacher.
(Hint: the goals shouldn’t be to memorize things that you are bound to soon forget, nor should they be to give mostly useless knowledge in exchange for a decade of debt.)
2. A substantial portion of the crypto industry fails to provide the value claimed. Yet people buy anyway.
(Why have a regular company with a regular database when a blockchain achieves the same thing much less effectively?)
3. Some parts of the finance industry offer negative value services. Yet people buy them because they mistake them for value-added services.
(Want a loan for a product that won’t make your life any better, an extremely risky stock option you don’t understand, or an expensive way to invest in the stock market?)
4. Many multi-level marketing (MLM) companies extract money from their own contractors. But they manage to get numerous people to sign up by showing examples of the few who have made lots of money and by frequent allusions to how their offerings can help you achieve your dreams.
(Usually, people who work for a company get paid by the company, not the other way around! For most MLM companies, a shockingly low percentage of those involved make a decent amount of money.)
5. Many supplement companies provide pills that don’t do what they claim and sometimes that don’t even contain the dosages or ingredients they claim. But they manage to sell them anyway since it’s hard to tell if a supplement is working.
(Are you in the market for a slightly dangerous placebo?)
6. A non-negligible percent of social science can’t seem to be replicated using the same study design on a similar population. But since reviewers don’t know that a result is not going to be replicable, unreplicable results still get published.
(I estimate this at ~40% of papers in top journals.)
I’d be interested to know: what is a real-world example you’ve seen where Replica Theory may apply? That is, what’s an area where you think much of the activity is fake due to people being rewarded for doing a fake, easier version of activity as much as they are rewarded for doing the real thing?
This essay was first written on October 27, 2021, and first appeared on this site on February 18, 2022.
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