Burden of Responsibility for Maximising Utility
This article is an outcome of reflections on the paradoxical forces that, perhaps, determine the realisation of maximum utility of an interaction. The core question that has for years hovered my mind, and hence has led to this penning of thoughts, is, “Who drives the value of an interaction between two entities in a system?”
Assuming that there are only 2 entities in the universe (A and B) to whom should we ascribe the burden of responsibility for maximising utility of the interaction between A and B in the universe. Few very common, real life examples, that essentially provoked this thought and article:
Among an interviewer and interviewee, who is responsible for yielding a perfect recruitment?
Among a teacher and student (or a mentor and mentee), who is more responsible for yielding the best education?
Who is responsible for a perfect match between two prospective romantic/life partners?
Between a doctor and a patient, who is responsible for the best treatment?
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In an ecosystem of resources and organisms, who is responsible for the survival and thrival of an organism?
After a lot of (non-statistical) largely intuitive observations and reflections, I have started to lean towards ascribing the burden to the “originator” of the interaction. If the system is so created that there is a clarity regarding who caused the interaction to get established, I would put the burden of responsibility for optimal interaction on the “originator”. It may seem abvious, however, honestly this took a lot of confusion and ambiguity to be overcome.
Imagine the case of the interaction between an interviewer and interviewee. Conventional wisdom says, the performance of an interviewee would decide the outcome of the recruitment. Undoubtedly, it does. However, the burden of responsibility of the (negative or positive) performance, should lie on the interviewer. An interviewer is the primary user of this two entity system. Interviewer knows what they want, hence as originator of the interaction they should bear the responsibility of its outcome as well. An interviewee essentially responds to the queries and reacts according to the environment created by the interviewer. Few minutes or hours of interactions do not define the competence of an interviewee carying a diverse personality; all that it is reflective of is the alignment of “acceptance criteria” established by the interviewer with the interviewee. If an interviewee is not faring well in one dimension, it is upto the interviewer to “prompt” a new dimension and “probe” the quality of the emergent interaction. If an interviewer decides not to probe any further, the outcome of the interaction gets decided. Many dimensions of the interviewee might remain unprobed, and it thus becomes essential to ensure that interviewee leaves with the realisation that the interviewer had limitations in fully assessing them, not that they lacked skill/competence. This is regardless of how “poor” the interviewer assessed the interaction. It is absolutely impossible to use few minutes for ascribing a tag of adequacy on a person evolved out of years of personal, educational and professional journeys.
This logically extends to educational institutions/teachers who precede the induction or admission of students. The responsibility of best education thus lies on the teachers irrespective of the diversity of the students.
The case of romantic/prospective/life partners is peculiar. It may seem like both are accountable for the optimal interaction. And, this is partly true. The ambiguity arises because of the phased and extended nature of the interaction. Unlike short lived interviews, sessional student-teacher interactions, romantic partners undergo interaction in phases often extending to years. The ascription of responsibility thus evolves. An early phase where one partner approaches the other, the entire responsibility of the outcome falls on the shoulder of the approacher. The approacher must create an environment where the other person feels welcomed, appreciated, aligned, or in sync. This could be an exaggerated environment (humans have the tendency to perform) or a raw authentic one (humans rather get drawn to authenticity). Subsequently, once the alignment takes place, the responsibility either continues (unsustainable), shifts (unsustainable) or gets shared (sustainable).
Surprisingly, the same holds true for doctor-patient interaction. More often than not, this interaction is long lasting and hence the similarity with romantic partners. The originator of the interaction is often a patient and hence in the early phase, entire responsibility of the optimal initial outcome lies on the patient (being true and open to the doctor about history, symptoms, environment). Subsequently once the interaction ages, the responsibility lies on the doctor to ensure extended probing, aligned medication (even if for temporary symptom relief) and creating an environment where patient feels encouraged to share without reservation and adopt the treatment regimen with minimal resistance. The dynamicity thus emerges and responsibility gets shared over time until cure/sustainable treatment.
Finally (for this article), a rather complex case of resources and organisms in an ecosystem. This comes from my field of research. Survival of the fittest ascribes entire responsibility on the organism. An environment is generic, open for all. The responsibility of drawing maximal utility out of the resources must lie on the organism. The genomic (DNA) and phenomic (traits) status of an organism decides how it interacts with the environment and what would be the outcome of it. However, the paradox about what originated first, the lack of agency at one end (environment) is what creates difficulty in ascribing the responsibility. Of course, a school of thought would say that environment was created first, life came much later. Life didn’t arise unless the environment was favorable for the life to originate (at least on this earth). This should ascribe the responsibility on the environment. However, let’s acknowledge the lack of agency of change on the environment. The environment doesn’t change at its will. Organism on the other hand can evolve in response to what it faces in the environment (again, survival of the fittest). In fact, organisms can reshape the environment to their benefit (or against other organisms). Even without evolutionary change, the very fact that organisms have agency (reasoning and intention to react), the burden on them must be elevated for the outcomes of their intentional interactions with the environment. Much of these interactions decide their long term survival and thrival. Hence, with or without evolutionary basis of survival of the fittest, relying solely on the fact that environment lacks agency, I lean to ascribe the burden of responsibility for optimal utility of the environment (resources) on the organism. The latter may also be viewed from the ascription of origin of interaction, under the confounding fact of the agency, to the organism.
Hence, in an interaction, if an entity holds the agency, and by virtue of that agency, the entity can be assumed to have originated the interaction, it would perhaps be fair to ascribe the burden of responsibility of the outcome to the said entity. Open to hear your thoughts on this and evolve this “largely philosophical” thought better/further.
