That it’s “not free” is a trivial claim (very few things are truly free), but that it costs very little, to—not even encourage moving upward along that axis, but simply to avoid encouraging the opposite—to keep your thumb off the scales, as much as possible—this seems to me to be hard to dispute.
because this is not a reliable proxy for the thing we actually care about
Could you elaborate? What is the thing we actually care about, and what is the unreliable proxy?
That it’s “not free” is a trivial claim (very few things are truly free), but that it costs very little, to—not even encourage moving upward along that axis, but simply to avoid encouraging the opposite—to keep your thumb off the scales, as much as possible—this seems to me to be hard to dispute.
Could you elaborate? What is the thing we actually care about, and what is the unreliable proxy?