Q: Wait, does that mean that if I give you a Cheerful Price, I’m obligated to accept the same price again in the future?
No, because there may be aversive qualities of a task, or fun qualities of a task, that scale upward or downward with repeating that task. So the price that makes your inner voices feel cheerful about doing something once, is not necessarily the same price that makes you feel cheerful about doing it twenty times.
I feel like this needs a caveat about plausible deniability. Sometimes the price goes up or down for reasons that I don’t want to make too obvious. Like if it turns out you have bad breath, or if my opportunity cost involves mingling with attractive people, or if you behaved badly yesterday and our peergroup has wordlessly coordinated to lightly socially embargo you for a week and I don’t want to be seen violating that. Anticipating some complication like that (consciously or not), I might want to hedge my initial price, or if that’s mentally taxing, just weasel out of giving the cheerful price at all.
This is maybe all accounted for when you say that cheerful prices may not work for someone if Tell culture doesn’t work for them. I think plausible deniability tends to be pretty important though, even among nerds who virtue signal otherwise.
I feel like this needs a caveat about plausible deniability. Sometimes the price goes up or down for reasons that I don’t want to make too obvious. Like if it turns out you have bad breath, or if my opportunity cost involves mingling with attractive people, or if you behaved badly yesterday and our peergroup has wordlessly coordinated to lightly socially embargo you for a week and I don’t want to be seen violating that. Anticipating some complication like that (consciously or not), I might want to hedge my initial price, or if that’s mentally taxing, just weasel out of giving the cheerful price at all.
This is maybe all accounted for when you say that cheerful prices may not work for someone if Tell culture doesn’t work for them. I think plausible deniability tends to be pretty important though, even among nerds who virtue signal otherwise.