Time-Symmetric Authority: Anticipated Evaluation, Power, and Collective Search

Podcast · English · Español latinoamericano · Nederlands · 普通话 · Türkçe · Deutsch Teams use demonstrated achievement to decide whose work should guide collective search. Yet a member’s best discovery and current proposal need not be the same. Following its author can therefore direct others toward work whose promise the earlier achievement does not establish. We develop a theory of time-symmetric authority in which demonstrated usefulness and anticipated relevance jointly allocate present power. A common anticipated standard both guides individual search and helps assign influence to developing proposals. Reallocation can change what others try, what they retain, and the evidence for subsequent allocations. In an agent-based model, we hold guidance and influence shares constant while changing their assignment. Under informative guidance, anticipated fit improves mean discovery relative to retained-achievement and current-performance allocation. A minority of much better discoveries outweighs more frequent, smaller losses. An independent timing experiment shows a mean advantage of early over late use within the tested horizon. Yet at the lower matched coefficient budget, the guided arrangement underperforms unguided retained-achievement search in the independent replication. TSA distinguishes the value of using guidance to allocate power from the case for adopting that guidance. The model assumes accepted deference rather than explaining how it develops. Manuscript (PDF) · Replication files (Python)