This sounds like a strategic misstep, and I’m guessing it was caused either by a hyperalert status manager in your brain or a bad experience at the hands of a bully (intentional or otherwise) in the past.
I estimate that (prepare for uncharitable phrasing) asking anyone with your mindset to try to self-modify to be okay with other people taking steps to make everyone happier in this way is a smaller cost than a norm of “don’t bring [cookies], rationalists will turn around and blame everyone who didn’t bring them if you dare”.
But yeah I think spending points to teach people not to defect against a bring-cookies-if-you-wanna norm (aka thank them, aka don’t look askance at the but-I-don’t-wanna) is waaay better than spending points to disallow a bring-cookies-if-you-wanna norm.
I’m okay with other people supporting norms that I don’t support, and with following a norm that I don’t support, if it happens to be accepted in a group. But there should be freedom to register disapproval of a norm, even when it ends up accepted (let alone in this case, where it apparently wasn’t accepted). There is no call to self-modify anyone.
What felt annoying to me and triggered this subthread was that in Said’s story there were only people who supported the norm he appeared to be promoting, and people who preyed on the commons. Disapproval of the norm was not a possibility, on pain of being bundled together with the defectors. This issue seems to me more important than the question of which norm is the right one for that setting (that is, which norm should have been supported).
That’s fair. There are definitely norms I think help overall (or situationally help) that I wish didn’t help overall because I don’t like them. For example tolerance of late arrivals. I hate it, and also if we didn’t tolerate it my most valuable group would never have existed.
That’s strategic voting as opposed to voting-as-survey. What if nobody wants cookies, but most people vote for them in expectation that others would appreciate them? Voting-as-survey should be able to sort this out, but strategic voting suffers from confirmation bias. Everyone is bringing cookies, so apparently people like them. But with strategic voting this is begging the question, there might have been no attempt to falsify the assumption.
Thus I don’t even see how it can be clear whether the cookies norm is better for the group that the no-cookies norm, and so whether the strategic vote should support the cookies. (In the case of cookies specifically, getting eaten is some sort of survey, but in general strategic voting breeds confusion.)
The norm that everyone should occasionally sell some food for status. (I understand that many groups like the activity, in which case it’s a good norm. Personally I don’t like eating at social gatherings, or food-derived status, or being confused for a defector, so I don’t like there being a norm like that.)
There’s a clever trick to this effect. You can say thank you for others’ sake without eating! Wouldn’t that just throw a spanner into their Machiavellian calculations on who owes whom.
You can hardly simultaneously describe the relevant dynamic as “selling food for status” and admit that many people/groups enjoy sharing food at social gatherings; these are mutually inconsistent characterizations.
ETA: It goes almost without saying that “sell some food for status” is an unnecessarily tendentious description, all by itself…
Huh? Where is the contradiction? Giving status for things you appreciate is enjoyable, as well as receiving status for a good deed. Not to mention all the delicious food generated by presence of the norm. It’s clearly selling because not paying for the food (with a generalized “thank you” and possibly reciprocal participation in the norm) is defection. But there is nothing wrong with a good market!
“Everyone should occasionally sell some food for status” is not what’s being discussed. Your phrasing sounds as though Said said everyone was supposed to bring cookies or something, which is obviously not what he said.
What’s being discussed is more like “people should be rewarded for making small but costly contributions to the group”. Cookies in-and-of-themselves aren’t contributing directly to the group members becoming stronger rationalists, but (as well as just being a kind gift) it’s a signal that someone is saying “I like this group, and I’m willing to invest basic resources into improving it”.
If such small signals are ignored, it is reasonable to update that people aren’t tracking contributions very much, and decide that it’s not worth putting in more of your time and effort.
I agree with the more general point about importance of tracking and rewarding contributions, but in this subthread I was specifically discussing cookies and difficulties with graciously expressing my lack of appreciation for them.
rewarded for making small but costly contributions
There is nothing good about contributions being costly. With signaling, the cost should pay for communication of important things that can’t otherwise be communicated, because incentives don’t allow trust; here that piece of critical intelligence would be posession of cooking skill and caring about the group. The cost is probably less than the cost of time spent in the meeting, so the additional signal is weak. If you like cooking, the cost might actually be negative. If you are not poor, the signal from store-bought food is approximately zero. (As signaling is about a situation without trust, it’s not the thought that counts. I’m not saying that signaling is appropriate here, I’m considering the hypothetical where we are engaged in signaling for whatever reason.)
And it should actually matter whether the contributions are appreciated. So I guess it’s possible that there is a difference in how people respond to costly signals, compared to useful contributions of indeterminate cost.
The cost is probably less than the cost of time spent in the meeting, so the additional signal is weak. If you like cooking, the cost might actually be negative.
Once upon a time, I liked programming. Time spent not programming was uncomfortable, and any opportunity to involve programming with other activities was welcome. If I could program some cookies for a meetup, I would describe the cost of that as negative. Thus by analogy I’m guessing that a person who similarly likes cooking would perceive the cost of cooking (not counting the price of ingredients) as negative. Maybe I liked programming to a ridiculous degree?
(Not sure where this fits in the thread or if it does, so—sorry for offtop. At least one of ours has contracted the virus, AFAIK. He told me after we have talked for a bit about another business, I asked him to comment on something and he said sure, he’d have done it sooner but for covid… I have offered our local LW people to help pay for testing if anybody needs it, without any additional questions or conclusions. So far nobody has asked for it and I do hope this means something good, like “we’re mostly healthy and have money” and not something bad, like “we would have asked for help but it’s not done”. Even to be able to offer anything meaningfully, I need people “to bring cookies”.)
This sounds like a strategic misstep, and I’m guessing it was caused either by a hyperalert status manager in your brain or a bad experience at the hands of a bully (intentional or otherwise) in the past.
I estimate that (prepare for uncharitable phrasing) asking anyone with your mindset to try to self-modify to be okay with other people taking steps to make everyone happier in this way is a smaller cost than a norm of “don’t bring [cookies], rationalists will turn around and blame everyone who didn’t bring them if you dare”.
But yeah I think spending points to teach people not to defect against a bring-cookies-if-you-wanna norm (aka thank them, aka don’t look askance at the but-I-don’t-wanna) is waaay better than spending points to disallow a bring-cookies-if-you-wanna norm.
I’m okay with other people supporting norms that I don’t support, and with following a norm that I don’t support, if it happens to be accepted in a group. But there should be freedom to register disapproval of a norm, even when it ends up accepted (let alone in this case, where it apparently wasn’t accepted). There is no call to self-modify anyone.
What felt annoying to me and triggered this subthread was that in Said’s story there were only people who supported the norm he appeared to be promoting, and people who preyed on the commons. Disapproval of the norm was not a possibility, on pain of being bundled together with the defectors. This issue seems to me more important than the question of which norm is the right one for that setting (that is, which norm should have been supported).
That’s fair. There are definitely norms I think help overall (or situationally help) that I wish didn’t help overall because I don’t like them. For example tolerance of late arrivals. I hate it, and also if we didn’t tolerate it my most valuable group would never have existed.
That’s strategic voting as opposed to voting-as-survey. What if nobody wants cookies, but most people vote for them in expectation that others would appreciate them? Voting-as-survey should be able to sort this out, but strategic voting suffers from confirmation bias. Everyone is bringing cookies, so apparently people like them. But with strategic voting this is begging the question, there might have been no attempt to falsify the assumption.
Thus I don’t even see how it can be clear whether the cookies norm is better for the group that the no-cookies norm, and so whether the strategic vote should support the cookies. (In the case of cookies specifically, getting eaten is some sort of survey, but in general strategic voting breeds confusion.)
What norm do you think I was (or appeared to be) promoting?
The norm that everyone should occasionally sell some food for status. (I understand that many groups like the activity, in which case it’s a good norm. Personally I don’t like eating at social gatherings, or food-derived status, or being confused for a defector, so I don’t like there being a norm like that.)
There’s a clever trick to this effect. You can say thank you for others’ sake without eating! Wouldn’t that just throw a spanner into their Machiavellian calculations on who owes whom.
You can hardly simultaneously describe the relevant dynamic as “selling food for status” and admit that many people/groups enjoy sharing food at social gatherings; these are mutually inconsistent characterizations.
ETA: It goes almost without saying that “sell some food for status” is an unnecessarily tendentious description, all by itself…
Huh? Where is the contradiction? Giving status for things you appreciate is enjoyable, as well as receiving status for a good deed. Not to mention all the delicious food generated by presence of the norm. It’s clearly selling because not paying for the food (with a generalized “thank you” and possibly reciprocal participation in the norm) is defection. But there is nothing wrong with a good market!
“Everyone should occasionally sell some food for status” is not what’s being discussed. Your phrasing sounds as though Said said everyone was supposed to bring cookies or something, which is obviously not what he said.
What’s being discussed is more like “people should be rewarded for making small but costly contributions to the group”. Cookies in-and-of-themselves aren’t contributing directly to the group members becoming stronger rationalists, but (as well as just being a kind gift) it’s a signal that someone is saying “I like this group, and I’m willing to invest basic resources into improving it”.
If such small signals are ignored, it is reasonable to update that people aren’t tracking contributions very much, and decide that it’s not worth putting in more of your time and effort.
I agree with the more general point about importance of tracking and rewarding contributions, but in this subthread I was specifically discussing cookies and difficulties with graciously expressing my lack of appreciation for them.
There is nothing good about contributions being costly. With signaling, the cost should pay for communication of important things that can’t otherwise be communicated, because incentives don’t allow trust; here that piece of critical intelligence would be posession of cooking skill and caring about the group. The cost is probably less than the cost of time spent in the meeting, so the additional signal is weak. If you like cooking, the cost might actually be negative. If you are not poor, the signal from store-bought food is approximately zero. (As signaling is about a situation without trust, it’s not the thought that counts. I’m not saying that signaling is appropriate here, I’m considering the hypothetical where we are engaged in signaling for whatever reason.)
And it should actually matter whether the contributions are appreciated. So I guess it’s possible that there is a difference in how people respond to costly signals, compared to useful contributions of indeterminate cost.
I’m sorry, but this is a ridiculous claim.
Once upon a time, I liked programming. Time spent not programming was uncomfortable, and any opportunity to involve programming with other activities was welcome. If I could program some cookies for a meetup, I would describe the cost of that as negative. Thus by analogy I’m guessing that a person who similarly likes cooking would perceive the cost of cooking (not counting the price of ingredients) as negative. Maybe I liked programming to a ridiculous degree?
In folksier terms, what’s being discussed is rationalists’ often-strange relationship to common courtesy (i.e. Lindy social dynamics).
Just so.
(Not sure where this fits in the thread or if it does, so—sorry for offtop. At least one of ours has contracted the virus, AFAIK. He told me after we have talked for a bit about another business, I asked him to comment on something and he said sure, he’d have done it sooner but for covid… I have offered our local LW people to help pay for testing if anybody needs it, without any additional questions or conclusions. So far nobody has asked for it and I do hope this means something good, like “we’re mostly healthy and have money” and not something bad, like “we would have asked for help but it’s not done”. Even to be able to offer anything meaningfully, I need people “to bring cookies”.)