The freelancer.com data makes explicit something that fraud researchers have observed for decades in messier, anecdotal form: the counterfeit doesn't need to be better than the genuine article. It only needs to be indistinguishable from it at the moment of decision. Once it achieves that, it doesn't just win individual transactions — it destroys the signal infrastructure that made honest transactions possible for everyone else. What you're describing isn't just market disruption. It's the economics of debasement: when the fake currency floods the system, honest currency stops circulating.
Probably the way most institutions feel when they discover they've been their own best forger — somewhere between denial and the slow recognition that the optimisation that felt like growth was actually debasement. The tragedy is that it's almost never malicious at the origin. It's a sequence of locally rational decisions, each one small enough to seem harmless, until the signal is gone.
Interesting. Anecdotally I see that first order signalling in most textual interactions being less valuable of someone's ability to 'perform the job'. Seeing how people are able to articulate and perform in meetings is a great second order and more valuable signal, than their board paper, or product initiation doc for example.
Do you have any evidence of this signalling change in academic paper proposals?
It’s definitely happening for research proposals. Some funders are responding by introducing (or firming up their commitment to) interviews - which aligns with what you say.
This is exactly what I predicted in that EACL 2023 keynote !
Glad to see you'll be around Cambridge, hope to see you around at some point
You should see the data we're collecting from research funders about this (e.g. results like this https://osf.io/preprints/metaarxiv/d8gcu_v1 , and more)
holy shit...this is extremely compelling, great paper
The freelancer.com data makes explicit something that fraud researchers have observed for decades in messier, anecdotal form: the counterfeit doesn't need to be better than the genuine article. It only needs to be indistinguishable from it at the moment of decision. Once it achieves that, it doesn't just win individual transactions — it destroys the signal infrastructure that made honest transactions possible for everyone else. What you're describing isn't just market disruption. It's the economics of debasement: when the fake currency floods the system, honest currency stops circulating.
the remarkable thing is that freelancer.com introduced this innovation themselves. I wonder how, in retrospect, they feel about it
Probably the way most institutions feel when they discover they've been their own best forger — somewhere between denial and the slow recognition that the optimisation that felt like growth was actually debasement. The tragedy is that it's almost never malicious at the origin. It's a sequence of locally rational decisions, each one small enough to seem harmless, until the signal is gone.
Interesting. Anecdotally I see that first order signalling in most textual interactions being less valuable of someone's ability to 'perform the job'. Seeing how people are able to articulate and perform in meetings is a great second order and more valuable signal, than their board paper, or product initiation doc for example.
Do you have any evidence of this signalling change in academic paper proposals?
It’s definitely happening for research proposals. Some funders are responding by introducing (or firming up their commitment to) interviews - which aligns with what you say.