Trusting the Process

Here’s a reasonably sophisticated argument.

(I’m not saying that it’s right.)

1. Trust the Process means, care about process over actual results.
   

2. But a process is only as good as the results it tends to produce.
   

3. So really, care about probable results over actual results.
   

4. But that means we don’t really care about process for its own sake! Process is just useful for the results it probably brings.
   

5. Plus, we’re condemned to live in the actual world. So who cares about what probably would have happened?
   

6. If I get unlucky and a good process makes me worse-off in the real world, what good was trusting the process?

So do we not really care about process, just the results we hope to get?

More radically, is trusting the process really just a useful form of strategic self-deception?

Hold that thought.

I’m writing while in between health insurance and off my meds. On July 10th, I defended my PhD from IU with no revisions requested. And I’ve been in paperwork hell ever since.

IU won’t give me the paperwork stating that I’ve earned my PhD until one particular administrator confirms that I’ve formatted my dissertation correctly.

And I have! After waiting a month for their initial round of feedback, I responded within two hours by vertically centering my Dedication page and bumping the expected date of completion from July to August.

Now, finally, everything is formatted correctly.

But IU still hasn’t confirmed that my reformatting was successful. Since I “messed up,” I have to go back to the bottom of the queue and wait my turn.

Meanwhile, Johns Hopkins can’t enroll me in their health insurance until I have proof of degree. And by the way, I only have until Monday to present that proof if I want to get my first September paycheck!

Fortunately, there’s a shortcut: I just have to get that same IU administrator to write a letter stating that I have no outstanding barriers to degree. But of course, they still haven’t confirmed that my dissertation’s reformatted correctly!

aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaagh

When institutions talk to one another, we expect hijinks.

Why is that?

Well, there are already enough problems internal to each institution. Over time, webs of fixed, inflexible procedures glob together, many of which no longer serve their initial or intended purposes.

• These procedures are local—they were cobbled together to serve the purposes of particular actors at particular historical choice points in each institution’s history.

• And they’re contingent—they could easily be otherwise. In fact, it’s almost unfathomable how much yesterday’s random chance ends up determining today’s fixed procedure!

So when one institution talks to another, their local, contingent procedures usually don’t align very well. And individuals jumping from one institutional context to another sometimes get ground up in the gears.

Anyway, given my chronic autoimmune inflammatory problems, I’ve been wracked with physical pain this past week.

(And yes, I have been spending way more time in the bathroom, thanks IU!)

Unrelated musical interlude:

Enter another institution, the State of Maryland, which just decriminalized cannabis last year. And as it turns out, getting legally stoned in Maryland is two orders of magnitude cheaper than paying the pretend prices drugs apparently cost when you aren’t technically employed. And it helps, a little bit.

Finally, the Ideal Resolution to all my problems.

These institutional collisions happen all the time.

Health insurance itself is a great example.

During World War II, the US government instituted a wage freeze, which sent employers scrambling for levers to pull to attract talent. By offering to bundle benefits like health insurance, they realized they could toe the letter of the law while increasing effective compensation. And by the end of the war a few years later, national enrollment in health insurance had swelled from 9% to 23%.

But as more and more folks became insured, the list prices of drugs became unhinged from the day-to-day prices those folks had to pay. If you’re selling drugs, you’re incentivized to push your list price higher to make more money, knowing that insurance will pay the difference. And if you’re buying drugs, you probably don’t notice any difference day-to-day, as long as you’re insured.

But the moment you find yourself stuck outside the institution of health insurance, the problems become really obvious.

A similar thing happened once everyone started paying by card instead of cash. Credit card fees lead merchants to increase their prices, particularly on cheaper or lower-margin items. If you pay with your card, you might not even notice. But if you pay in cash, you not only pay the higher price, you don’t even get the benefits of credit card rewards!

Suddenly, credit card companies have effectively devalued the cash printed by the government. Oops.

When one institution’s procedures collide with another institution’s, neither side can just back down and toss out their procedures. At scale, these procedures are important for keeping each institution internally organized. Plus, these procedures impose a certain level of predictability about how your institutional interactions will go—at least while you’re dealing with each institution one at a time!

So even if problems are obvious, responsibility for them may not be.

Let’s revisit our sophistical—oops, I mean sophisticated—argument from earlier.

1. Trust the Process means, care about process over actual results.

   But even if I fully trust one process, why should I trust how it collides with the processes of independently managed institutions?

   
   

2. But a process is only as good as the results it tends to produce.

   But can’t doing the right thing be its own reward? Surely processes have virtues beyond their expected effectiveness.

   
   

3. So really, care about probable results over actual results.

   What about who I actually am and what I actually do in the real world? Doesn’t that mean anything?

   
   

4. But that means we don’t really care about process for its own sake! Process is just useful for the results it probably brings.

   Or maybe we do independently care about which processes we’re invested in.

   
   

5. Plus, we’re condemned to live in the actual world. So who cares about what probably would have happened?

   Aww you poor existentialist you, but yes I am feeling condemned lately.

   
   

6. If I get unlucky and a good process makes me worse-off in the real world, what good was trusting the process?

   If the process was worth standing by, at least you showed yourself to be the kind of person who stuck to your principles.

Of course, not all processes are worth standing by, and when institutions collide, things can really go off the rails. Sticking too closely to established procedure may show more inflexibility or naïveté than genuine integrity.

And that’s when it helps to know someone who understand the process well enough to navigate through or even bend it.

Anyway, last night I performed in a really fun improv show. And afterwards, it turned out that one of the other performer’s job is…helping people enroll in Medicaid.

In fact, he’d basically overseen the rollout of Obamacare...in Indiana, of all places. So he told me to shoot him an email.

Wow.

I guess you gotta trust the process.