I’m apparently going to make about $70 from today. I don’t think I have created anything remotely near $70 of value, but I note that the idea of getting money did in fact incentivize me to put effort into LessWrong. If I expected to continue to get $1/karma in the future, I think I would spend multiple hours a week putting actual effort into hopefully higher-value LessWrong content.
I am not very good at directing my monkey brain, so it helped a lot that my System 1 really anticipated getting money from spending time on LessWrong today. Offering monetary rewards for especially high value posts doesn’t motivate me, because I don’t System-1 anticipate being able to make those in the near future (even if I think I should be able to develop the skill.) Voting power or whatever also doesn’t make me feel motivated; money is uniquely good at that.
There’s probably better systems than “literally give out $1/karma” but it’s surprisingly effective at motivating me in particular in ways that other things which have been tried very much aren’t.
I’m apparently going to make about $70 from today. I don’t think I have created anything remotely near $70 of value, but I note that the idea of getting money did in fact incentivize me to put effort into LessWrong. If I expected to continue to get $1/karma in the future, I think I would spend multiple hours a week putting actual effort into hopefully higher-value LessWrong content.
I am not very good at directing my monkey brain, so it helped a lot that my System 1 really anticipated getting money from spending time on LessWrong today. Offering monetary rewards for especially high value posts doesn’t motivate me, because I don’t System-1 anticipate being able to make those in the near future (even if I think I should be able to develop the skill.) Voting power or whatever also doesn’t make me feel motivated; money is uniquely good at that.
There’s probably better systems than “literally give out $1/karma” but it’s surprisingly effective at motivating me in particular in ways that other things which have been tried very much aren’t.