“someone complimented me out of the blue, and it was a really good compliment, and it was terrible, because maybe I secretly fished for it in some way I can’t entirely figure out, and also now I feel like I owe them one, and I never asked for this, and I’m so angry!”
A blogpost I remember but can’t find. The author talks about the benefits of favour economy. E.g. his friend could help him move at much lower total cost, than the market price for moving. This is because the market has much higher transaction cots than favours among friends. The blogpost also talks about how you only get to participate in the favour economy (and get it’s benefits) if you understand that you’re expected to return the favours, i.e. keep track of the social ledger, and make sure to pay your depts. Actually you should be overpaying when returning a favour, and now they owe you, and then they over pay you back, resulting in a virtual cycle of helping each other out. The author mentions being in a mutually beneficial “who can do the biggest favour” competition with his neighbour.
3)
And EA friend who told me that they experienced over and over in the EA community that they helped people (e.g. letting them stay at their house for free) but where denied similar help in return.
4)
A youtuber (who where discussing this topic) mentioned their grand mother who always gives everyone in the family lots of food to take home, and said that she would probably be offended if offered something in return for this help.
Todays thoughts:
I think there are pros and cons that comes with internally tracking a social ledger for favours. I also think there are things that makes this practice better or worse.
On receiving compliments
In the past, when ever I got a compliment, I felt obligated to give one back, so instead of taking it in, I started thinking as fast I as could what I could compliment back. At some point (not sure when) I decided this was dumb. Now if I get a compliment I instead take a moment to take it in, and thank the other person. I wish others would do this more. If I give someone a compliment, I don’t want them to feel obligated to complement me back.
On paying forward instead of paying back
Some people experience the EA community as being super generous when it comes to helping each other out. But other have the opposite experience (see point 3 above). I’ve personally experienced both. Partly this is because EA is large and diverse, but partly I think it comes from thronging out the social ledger. I think the typical EA attitude is that you’re not expected to pay back favours, you’re expected to pay it forward, into what ever cause area you’re working on. People are not even attempting to balancing the ledger of inter-personal favours, and therefore there will be imbalance, some people receiving more and some giving more.
I think there are lots of other pay-it-forward communities. For example any system where the older “generation” is helping the younger “generation”. This can be parents raising their kids, or a marshal arts club where the more experienced are helping train the less experienced, etc.
I think a many of these are pretty good at paying the favour givers in status points. In comparison I expect EA to not be very good at giving status for helping out others in the community, because EA has lots of other things to allocate status points to too.
How to relate to the ledger
I think the social ledger defiantly have it’s use, even among EA types. You need friends you can turn to for favours, which is only possible in the long term if you also return the favours, or you’ll end up draining your friends.
In theory we could have grant supported community builders act as support for everyone else, with no need to pay it back. But I rather not. I do not want to trust the stability of my social network to the whims of the EA funding system.
To have a healthy positive relation with the social ledger,
You have to be ok with being in debt. It’s ok to owe someone a favour. Being the sort of person that pays back favours, don’t mean you have to do it instantly. You are allowed to wait for your friend to need help from you, and not worry about it in the mean time. You’re also allowed to more or less actively look out for things to do for them, both is ok. Just don’t stress over it.
Have some slack, at least some times. I have very uneven amount of slack in my life, so I try to be helpful to others when I have more, and less so when I have less. But someone who never have slack will never be able to help others back.
You can’t be too nit-picky about it. The social ledger is not an exact thing. As a rule of thumb, if both you and your friend individually get more out of your friendship than you put in, then things are good. If you can’t balance it such that you both get more out than you put in, then you’re not playing a positive sum game, and you should either fix this, or just hang out less. It’s supposed to be a positive sum game.
You can’t keep legers with everyone. Or maybe you can? I can’t. That’s too many people to remember. My brain came with some pre-installed software to keep track of the social leger. This program also decides who to track or not, and it works well enough. I think it turns on when someone has done a favour that reaches some minimum threshold?
There are also obviously situations where keeping track of some leger don’t make sense, and you should not do it, e.g. one-off encounters. And sometimes paying forward instead of paying back is the correct social norm.
Give your favours freely when it’s cheap for you to do so, and when you don’t mind if the favour is not paid back. Sometimes someone will return the favour.
The pre installed brain soft where
This probably varies a lot from person to person, and as all the mental traits it will be due to some mix of genetics and culture, and random other stuff.
For me, I’m not choosing whether to keep a social ledger or not, my brain just does that. I’m choosing how to interact with it and tweak it’s function, by choosing what to pay attention to.
The way I experience this is that I feel gratitude when I’m in debt, and resentment when someone else have too much unacknowledged debt to me.
The gratitude makes me positively disposed to that person and more eager to help them.
The resentment flaggs to me that something is wrong. I don’t need them to instantly re-pay me, but I need them to acknowledge the debt and that they intend to pay it back. If not, this is a sign that I should stop investing in that person.
If they disagree that I’ve helped them more than they helped me, then we’re not playing a positive sum game, and we should stop.
If they agree that I helped them more, but also, they don’t intend to return the favour… hm...? Does this ever happen? I could imagine this happening if the other person has zero slack. I think there are legit reasons to not be able to return favours, especially favours you did not ask for, but I also expect to not attempt to not want to build a friendship in this situation.
...thanks for reading my ramblings. I’ll end here, since I’m out of time, and I think I’ve hit diminishing return on thinking about this...
I always reply “That’s very kind of you to say.” Especially for compliments that I disagree with but don’t want to get into an argument about. I think it expresses nice positive vibes without actually endorsing the compliment as true.
On paying forward instead of paying back
A good mission-aligned team might be another example? In sports, if I pass you the ball and you score a goal, that’s not a “favor” because we both wanted the goal to be scored. (Ideally.) Or if we’re both at a company, and we’re both passionate about the mission, and your computer breaks and I fix it, that’s not necessarily “a favor” because I want your computer to work because it’s good for the project and I care about that. (Ideally.) Maybe you’re seeing some EAs feel that kind of attitude?
I agree that the reason EAs are usually not tracking favours is that we are (or assume we are) mission aligned. I picked the pay-it-forward framing, because it fitted better with other situation where I expected people not to try to balance social legers. But you’re right that there are situations that are mission aligned that are not well described as paying it forward, but some other shared goal.
Another situation where there is no social ledger, is when someone is doing their job. (You talk about a company where people are passionate about the mission. But most employs are not passionate about the mission, and still don’t end up owing each other favours for doing their job.)
I personally think that the main benefit of mental health professionals (e.g. psychologies, coaches, etc) is that you get to have a one sided relationship, where you get to talk about all your problem, and you don’t owe them anything in return, because you’re paying them instead. (Or sometimes the healthcare system, is paying, or your employer. The important thing is that they get paid, and helping you is their job.)
(I much rather talk to a friend about my problems, it just works better, since they know me. But when I do this I owe them. I need to track what cost I’m imposing them, and make sure it’s not more than I have the time and opportunity to re-pay.)
The desire to display gigawatt devotion with zero responsibility is the standard maneuver of our times, note the trend of celebrity soundbite social justice, or children’s fascination with doing the extra credit more than the regular credit, and as a personal observation this is exactly what’s wrong with medical students and nurses. They’ll spend hours talking with a patient about their lives and feelings while fluffing their pillow to cause it to be true that they are devoted—they chose to act, chose to love—while acts solely out of ordinary duty are devalued if not completely avoided.
(I’m pretty sure the way to read Sady Porn (or Scott’s review of it) is not to treat any of the text as evidence for anything, but as suggestions of things that may be interesting to pay attention to.)
It’s slightly off-topic… but I think it’s worth mentioning that I think the reason ‘extra credit’ is more exciting to tackle is that it is all potential upside with no potential downside. Regular assignments and tests offer you a reward if you do them well, but a punishment if you make mistakes on them. Extra credit is an exception to this, where there is explicitly no punishment threatened, so you can just relax and make a comfortable effort without worrying that you are trying insufficiently hard. This makes it more like play and peaceful exploration, and less like a stressful trial.
Indeed, my opinion is that education should have much less in the way of graded homework and tests. Tests should be for special occasions, like the very end of a course, and intended to truly measure the student’s understanding. Classwork (e.g. problem sets or working through a series on Khan academy or Brilliant) should award points for effort, just like lectures award participation credit for attending. Homework should be banned (below university level). If the school can’t educate you within the allotted time, it is failing its job.
Instead of tracking who is in debt to who, I think you should just track the extent to which you’re in a favouring-exchanging relationship with a given person. Less to remember and runs natively on your brain.
Thoughts on social ledgers
Some data points:
1)
From Book Review: Sadly, Porn—by Scott Alexander (astralcodexten.com)
2)
A blogpost I remember but can’t find. The author talks about the benefits of favour economy. E.g. his friend could help him move at much lower total cost, than the market price for moving. This is because the market has much higher transaction cots than favours among friends. The blogpost also talks about how you only get to participate in the favour economy (and get it’s benefits) if you understand that you’re expected to return the favours, i.e. keep track of the social ledger, and make sure to pay your depts. Actually you should be overpaying when returning a favour, and now they owe you, and then they over pay you back, resulting in a virtual cycle of helping each other out. The author mentions being in a mutually beneficial “who can do the biggest favour” competition with his neighbour.
3)
And EA friend who told me that they experienced over and over in the EA community that they helped people (e.g. letting them stay at their house for free) but where denied similar help in return.
4)
A youtuber (who where discussing this topic) mentioned their grand mother who always gives everyone in the family lots of food to take home, and said that she would probably be offended if offered something in return for this help.
Todays thoughts:
I think there are pros and cons that comes with internally tracking a social ledger for favours. I also think there are things that makes this practice better or worse.
On receiving compliments
In the past, when ever I got a compliment, I felt obligated to give one back, so instead of taking it in, I started thinking as fast I as could what I could compliment back. At some point (not sure when) I decided this was dumb. Now if I get a compliment I instead take a moment to take it in, and thank the other person. I wish others would do this more. If I give someone a compliment, I don’t want them to feel obligated to complement me back.
On paying forward instead of paying back
Some people experience the EA community as being super generous when it comes to helping each other out. But other have the opposite experience (see point 3 above). I’ve personally experienced both. Partly this is because EA is large and diverse, but partly I think it comes from thronging out the social ledger. I think the typical EA attitude is that you’re not expected to pay back favours, you’re expected to pay it forward, into what ever cause area you’re working on. People are not even attempting to balancing the ledger of inter-personal favours, and therefore there will be imbalance, some people receiving more and some giving more.
I think there are lots of other pay-it-forward communities. For example any system where the older “generation” is helping the younger “generation”. This can be parents raising their kids, or a marshal arts club where the more experienced are helping train the less experienced, etc.
I think a many of these are pretty good at paying the favour givers in status points. In comparison I expect EA to not be very good at giving status for helping out others in the community, because EA has lots of other things to allocate status points to too.
How to relate to the ledger
I think the social ledger defiantly have it’s use, even among EA types. You need friends you can turn to for favours, which is only possible in the long term if you also return the favours, or you’ll end up draining your friends.
In theory we could have grant supported community builders act as support for everyone else, with no need to pay it back. But I rather not. I do not want to trust the stability of my social network to the whims of the EA funding system.
To have a healthy positive relation with the social ledger,
You have to be ok with being in debt. It’s ok to owe someone a favour. Being the sort of person that pays back favours, don’t mean you have to do it instantly. You are allowed to wait for your friend to need help from you, and not worry about it in the mean time. You’re also allowed to more or less actively look out for things to do for them, both is ok. Just don’t stress over it.
Have some slack, at least some times. I have very uneven amount of slack in my life, so I try to be helpful to others when I have more, and less so when I have less. But someone who never have slack will never be able to help others back.
You can’t be too nit-picky about it. The social ledger is not an exact thing. As a rule of thumb, if both you and your friend individually get more out of your friendship than you put in, then things are good. If you can’t balance it such that you both get more out than you put in, then you’re not playing a positive sum game, and you should either fix this, or just hang out less. It’s supposed to be a positive sum game.
You can’t keep legers with everyone. Or maybe you can? I can’t. That’s too many people to remember. My brain came with some pre-installed software to keep track of the social leger. This program also decides who to track or not, and it works well enough. I think it turns on when someone has done a favour that reaches some minimum threshold?
There are also obviously situations where keeping track of some leger don’t make sense, and you should not do it, e.g. one-off encounters. And sometimes paying forward instead of paying back is the correct social norm.
Give your favours freely when it’s cheap for you to do so, and when you don’t mind if the favour is not paid back. Sometimes someone will return the favour.
The pre installed brain soft where
This probably varies a lot from person to person, and as all the mental traits it will be due to some mix of genetics and culture, and random other stuff.
For me, I’m not choosing whether to keep a social ledger or not, my brain just does that. I’m choosing how to interact with it and tweak it’s function, by choosing what to pay attention to.
The way I experience this is that I feel gratitude when I’m in debt, and resentment when someone else have too much unacknowledged debt to me.
The gratitude makes me positively disposed to that person and more eager to help them.
The resentment flaggs to me that something is wrong. I don’t need them to instantly re-pay me, but I need them to acknowledge the debt and that they intend to pay it back. If not, this is a sign that I should stop investing in that person.
If they disagree that I’ve helped them more than they helped me, then we’re not playing a positive sum game, and we should stop.
If they agree that I helped them more, but also, they don’t intend to return the favour… hm...? Does this ever happen? I could imagine this happening if the other person has zero slack. I think there are legit reasons to not be able to return favours, especially favours you did not ask for, but I also expect to not attempt to not want to build a friendship in this situation.
...thanks for reading my ramblings. I’ll end here, since I’m out of time, and I think I’ve hit diminishing return on thinking about this...
I always reply “That’s very kind of you to say.” Especially for compliments that I disagree with but don’t want to get into an argument about. I think it expresses nice positive vibes without actually endorsing the compliment as true.
A good mission-aligned team might be another example? In sports, if I pass you the ball and you score a goal, that’s not a “favor” because we both wanted the goal to be scored. (Ideally.) Or if we’re both at a company, and we’re both passionate about the mission, and your computer breaks and I fix it, that’s not necessarily “a favor” because I want your computer to work because it’s good for the project and I care about that. (Ideally.) Maybe you’re seeing some EAs feel that kind of attitude?
I agree that the reason EAs are usually not tracking favours is that we are (or assume we are) mission aligned. I picked the pay-it-forward framing, because it fitted better with other situation where I expected people not to try to balance social legers. But you’re right that there are situations that are mission aligned that are not well described as paying it forward, but some other shared goal.
Another situation where there is no social ledger, is when someone is doing their job. (You talk about a company where people are passionate about the mission. But most employs are not passionate about the mission, and still don’t end up owing each other favours for doing their job.)
I personally think that the main benefit of mental health professionals (e.g. psychologies, coaches, etc) is that you get to have a one sided relationship, where you get to talk about all your problem, and you don’t owe them anything in return, because you’re paying them instead. (Or sometimes the healthcare system, is paying, or your employer. The important thing is that they get paid, and helping you is their job.)
(I much rather talk to a friend about my problems, it just works better, since they know me. But when I do this I owe them. I need to track what cost I’m imposing them, and make sure it’s not more than I have the time and opportunity to re-pay.)
Related: Citation form Sady Porn from Scott Alexanders’s review
(I’m pretty sure the way to read Sady Porn (or Scott’s review of it) is not to treat any of the text as evidence for anything, but as suggestions of things that may be interesting to pay attention to.)
It’s slightly off-topic… but I think it’s worth mentioning that I think the reason ‘extra credit’ is more exciting to tackle is that it is all potential upside with no potential downside. Regular assignments and tests offer you a reward if you do them well, but a punishment if you make mistakes on them. Extra credit is an exception to this, where there is explicitly no punishment threatened, so you can just relax and make a comfortable effort without worrying that you are trying insufficiently hard. This makes it more like play and peaceful exploration, and less like a stressful trial.
Indeed, my opinion is that education should have much less in the way of graded homework and tests. Tests should be for special occasions, like the very end of a course, and intended to truly measure the student’s understanding. Classwork (e.g. problem sets or working through a series on Khan academy or Brilliant) should award points for effort, just like lectures award participation credit for attending. Homework should be banned (below university level). If the school can’t educate you within the allotted time, it is failing its job.
Instead of tracking who is in debt to who, I think you should just track the extent to which you’re in a favouring-exchanging relationship with a given person. Less to remember and runs natively on your brain.