Mis-attributing Distributed Decisions to a Single Entity

By Deane Barker •

Also known as: Causal Reductionism

Some decisions are decried as if they sprang forth from a single mind, and that mind is deficient. When, in reality, these decisions were distributed among many minds, so there is no one mind to hold accountable. We attempt to reduce complex decisions to a single cause or reason, when this is often not rational.

Examples

In 2016, many people were upset that no Oscar nominees were black, and anthropomorphized the Academy into a single corrupt institution. In reality, the nominees are the result of 6,000 members voting, so the decision was enormously distributed and thus the problem existed in 6,000 minds at once.

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