The point of no return
I have been enjoying the conversation on this post about the kind of sociological tendencies we can observe and how we react to changes in society (at least that is what I think the discussion is about).
As a result I wanted to share some experiences of my workplace. A fairly large chunk of my work involves negotiating with people in conflict, usually over a monetary claim. Wherever this leads to court proceedings, at some stage or other the parties end up in a room (or a couple of rooms) to see if they can negotiate a resolution without going to a court hearing. This is typically pretty tedious, with offers and counter-offers being ferried back and forth with conditions and counter-conditions being traded.
Anyway, at some time during the day (because sometimes these processes last at least a day), everyone reaches a point where you are fairly confident that the matter will settle, even if you are still relatively speaking a long way from a resolution. This is because the distance between your positions becomes small enough that it is not worth continuing the litigation. For example, A claims the sum of $150K from B. In negotiations we get to a position where A is willing to accept $110K and B is willing to pay $80K. In effect, if they were to continue the action, they would be fighting over the difference between their positions - $30K. This is not chicken feed by any means, but for most people not worth the cost of going and preparing for trial and conducting a trial.
So then, there is a point in any dispute where, even though it might be absolutely unthinkable to A that he would accept anything less than $110K and vice versa, it is nevertheless likely that somehow or other they will come to a resolution, because it is close enough that it is simply not worth making a fuss over.
I think that this is true of the sort of change we have been discussing. Some of you might be aware of the experiment conducted by Stanley Milgram (see the link for details) in which 65% of subjects were found to be willing to continue to administer electric shocks up to 450 volts apparently to another human being behind a partition who, appeared to have reacted with pain, begged to stop and then ceased to respond.
The moral of the story is that, once we have accepted a departure from our principled position, it can become harder and harder to pick a point at which to make a stand. Once you have been willing to administer a 150 volt shock, how different is it to administer at 160 volt shock? Once you have accepted a 10% discount on your debt, why not a 15% discount?
One of the characteristics of Milgram’s experiment was that the subjects were told to continue the experiment by an apparently authoritative third party experimenter wearing a white coat. Subjects justified their decision to continue on the basis that they were told to do so and that the experimenter had taken responsibility for the decision. This is where this situation becomes cloudy in my view.
In my office there is a big difference emotionally between those people who decide what factors they will take into account in a settlement and apply their commercial interests accordingly as opposed to those that feel that every concession is a failure, something somehow forced from them by the situation (those are the Milgram subjects). Likewise, if you had someone who believed with a clear mind that, say, suspected terrorists should not be permitted the right to a lawyer, then this is different from the person who says “Well, of course, this is an unusual situation and they tell me that this is necessary to continue to address the challenges of today’s sophisticated criminals”.
Do you agree?