We need some reckoning with the racist past, but reparations encourage the wrong kind of reckoning.
In fact, founder Richard Talens believes that the quantified self devices of today actually encourage the wrong strategy of "eat less, move more".
This can encourage the wrong type of risk taking and, as we saw in the case of forex manipulation, collusion to make the numbers stack up in the banks' - and the traders' - favour.
"The research credit benefits the wrong companies and encourages the wrong kind of research," said Mr. Rashkin, a tax expert and executive at Marvell Technology, a company based in Santa Clara, Calif.
It's also devastating if you get them wrong, because then you're encouraging the wrong behaviors.
The event although of sporting nature, is to our mind the wrong sort of test for waiters, encouraging the wrong sort of prowess Almost any waiter is capable of dashing off, carrying a tray.
Now, there are arguments that the RAE encourages the wrong sort of work - low-risk, guaranteed publication stuff.
U.S. society encourages the wrong path for its brightest members, sending them in fields like financial engineering and the legal profession.
But chop-socky piffle such as Brian Trenchard-Smith's The Man from Hong Kong were also a byproduct of the tax breaks that had encouraged the wrong types of people.
A younger man at the gathering in Bad Homburg on Thursday night complained that German social policies were encouraging the "wrong families" to have children, an apparent reference to non-Germans.
