I can’t imagine myself being able to objectively cast a vote about funding my room-mate / close friend / partner’s boss / someone who I had a substantial romantic relationship with that ended 2 years ago (especially if the potential grantee is in a desperate financial situation!). I’m skeptical that humans in general can make reasonably objective judgments in such cases.
(emphasis added)
This isn’t a point about the OP, but I thought I’d mention that I think humans can make these choices, if they have the required discipline and virtue, and I think in many situations we see that.
When you’re the CEO of a successful company, you often have very close relationships with the 5-20 staff closest around you. You might live / have lived with them, work with them for hours every day, be good friends with them, etc. And many CEOs make sensible decisions about when to move these people around and fire them—it’s not remotely standard practise to ‘recuse’ yourself from such decisions, you’re the person with the most information about the person and how the organisation works, and if you actually care about those things enough and are competent enough to know your own mind and surround yourself with good people and a healthy environment, many CEOs are massively successful at making these decisions. I think this is true in other groups as well—I expect many people are pretty good at deciding e.g. if a close friend is unhealthy for them and that they want to cut ties.
I agree many people make quite unfortunate decisions here, but it is no iron law of psychology that ‘humans in general’ cannot make ‘reasonably objective judgments’ in such cases.
(emphasis added)
This isn’t a point about the OP, but I thought I’d mention that I think humans can make these choices, if they have the required discipline and virtue, and I think in many situations we see that.
When you’re the CEO of a successful company, you often have very close relationships with the 5-20 staff closest around you. You might live / have lived with them, work with them for hours every day, be good friends with them, etc. And many CEOs make sensible decisions about when to move these people around and fire them—it’s not remotely standard practise to ‘recuse’ yourself from such decisions, you’re the person with the most information about the person and how the organisation works, and if you actually care about those things enough and are competent enough to know your own mind and surround yourself with good people and a healthy environment, many CEOs are massively successful at making these decisions. I think this is true in other groups as well—I expect many people are pretty good at deciding e.g. if a close friend is unhealthy for them and that they want to cut ties.
I agree many people make quite unfortunate decisions here, but it is no iron law of psychology that ‘humans in general’ cannot make ‘reasonably objective judgments’ in such cases.