u/StasArshanski

Most choice architecture operates within existing market structures — nudging people toward better decisions inside systems that assume rational actors. But what if the system itself was redesigned from the ground up to account for how humans actually think?

I've been working on a paper that takes eight well-documented neurological constraints and treats them as design parameters rather than problems to fix:

1. Dual-process cognition — System 1 handles ~95% of decisions. The architecture assumes autopilot as the default state.
2. Dominance hierarchies — Power literally changes the brain within days (Keltner's research). The architecture uses mandatory rotation as neurological hygiene.
3. Tribal bias — The amygdala fires in 30ms on in-group/out-group detection. The architecture uses tribal loyalty for auditing-group cohesion, with cross-group rotation to prevent calcification.
4. Temporal discounting — Limbic beats prefrontal in nearly all time-preference conflicts. The architecture hardcodes long-term constraints at the protocol level where no human decision-maker can override them.
5. Status addiction — Same dopamine circuit as cocaine (Zink et al.). The architecture redirects status-seeking toward verified impact via multidimensional reputation — no single leaderboard to game.
6. Cognitive load limits — 4 plus or minus 1 items (Cowan). Interfaces are designed for bounded attention.
7. Conformity pressure — Dissent registers as physical pain (Eisenberger). The architecture mandates anonymous preliminary filing and devil's advocate roles.
8. Meditation ceiling — Population-level effect sizes of d = 0.2-0.3. The architecture doesn't bet on training people to think better.

The core move is what I'm calling "neurological judo" — redirecting primate drives rather than suppressing them. Loss aversion becomes a corruption deterrent (symmetric stakes in oversight). Status addiction becomes a quality incentive (reputation tied to verified outcomes). Tribal loyalty becomes institutional resilience (auditing groups compete to catch fraud).

The claim: you don't need 100% rational participants. You need 5% vigilance within a well-constrained 95% autopilot, at Dunbar-compatible scale.

This is part of a larger paper proposing a protocol-based economic architecture that separates funding (algorithmic), measurement (supermajority-updated), and execution (competing non-profits) — but the neurological design layer is the part I think this community would find most interesting.

Full paper (formal models, adversarial scenarios, pharmaceutical walkthrough, 16 system limits): https://stuk88.github.io/post-scarcity-architecture/

1,000-word summary: https://stuk88.github.io/post-scarcity-architecture/pitch.html

Curious whether anyone has seen other attempts to design institutional architecture specifically around bounded rationality constraints rather than just nudging within existing institutions. Thaler and Sunstein's work opened the door, but it feels like most applied behavioral economics still treats the market structure as given. What would it look like to not take that as given?