Boat Theft

Reading about the boat theft theory immediate brought to mind the dynamics of a dysfunctional team, the inverse of what the theory is all about, but there are common threads that are worth considering.

The dysfunctional team dynamic and the Boat Theft Theory of Consciousness both revolve around the strategic management of information in ambiguous social environments. In the Boat Theory, consciousness is proposed to enable tacit coordination through omission, such as avoiding direct questions about theft to maintain plausible deniability among group members. 

Similarly, in teams with unclear responsibilities, individuals exploit ambiguity to avoid blame or seize opportunities, using back-channeling and covert communication much like the Yanomamö’s unspoken agreement not to incriminate each other. In each case, the lack of clear rules or roles creates a space where people rely on subtle, often unspoken, strategies to navigate the situation.

However, while the Boat Theory focuses on cooperative deception for mutual benefit, like group members tacitly agreeing to break a rule together, dysfunctional teams often shift toward zero-sum competition. In such teams, conflicting incentives and the absence of shared goals mean that back-channeling and back-stabbing become tools for personal gain rather than collective advantage. This difference highlights that, although both scenarios depend on the ability to separate actions from explicit social labeling, the team context often turns these mechanisms into sources of division and mistrust rather than cooperation.