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The advice is: do not bet. Suppose you download a gambling app that bets on games where the outcome is similar to a coin flip. You start receiving emails from someone associated with the app (so they bypass your spam filters). Each day for 20 days you receive an email predicting the outcome of the game. Each of the 20 predictions is correct. What do you do? Nothing. What you are unaware of (but should suspect) is that on the first email, the sender has sent out 8 million emails making a prediction (it is a popular gambling app). 4 million of those predicted the home team wins and the other 4 million predicted the visiting team wins. The next day the emails only goes out to those that received the correct prediction. Rinse. Repeat. And you happen to be an (un)lucky recipient of the 21st email distribution. The world you live in is no weirder than the world a Powerball Lottery winner lives in.
For one so foolish as to not realize the timing of this pronouncement. Hello? The 90s are calling.
Assuming the bureaucracy is hierarchical, the maximizer may vary depending on the level. At the lower levels, a process-maximizer may best model behavior. Map versus territory. Akin to a mis-aligned AI paperclip-maximizer, reward is based on adherence to process, results do not matter. Mid-hierarchical levels are budget-maximizers. Body-count may be a surrogate. The bureaucratic topology that emerges and morphs at these mid-levels is where things become chaotic for the higher levels. Perhaps entrenchment, power, consensus, and hubris-maximizers join the dance. Predicting behavior at these higher levels may be more a matter of profiling than modeling. Regardless, the bureaucracy as a whole is more like an oil tanker than a jet ski. Its behavior in the near term is rather obvious.