Cheap Confession

On what language models made cheap, what they left exactly as expensive as it was, and why the difference is the whole argument A scheduling manager writes the rule that shifts get posted on Thursday for the following Monday. From where she sits, it is obviously good: it gives three days’ notice where there used to be none, it is fair because it applies to everyone, and it took her four months to get approved. From where the single parent on the floor sits, Thursday-for-Monday is why she cannot hold a second job, and the fairness is the problem — it applies to everyone, which means it was designed for nobody. Neither of them is lying. Neither of them is confused. They have different access to the rule’s consequences, and the authority to write the rule sits with the person least exposed to them. That is the whole problem, and everything below is an attempt to live with it. Observational asymmetry The familiar version of this is the blind men and the elephant: everyone has partial…