To the extent that I’ve experienced these kinds of problems, their core cause has been that I haven’t had the time or energy to answer my messages, not that there would have been particularly many of them or because of any information asymmetry. So I wouldn’t use this service because I don’t recognize the problem that it’s describing from my own experience.
Though I want to ask: if people know that you have this problem, as things stand currently, they might just avoid messaging you (since they don’t have any way of compensating you for marginally making the burden on you worse)? Moreover, your time and energy are presumably exchangeable for money (though not indefinitely so)?
So it still seems paid emails might help with that?
(PS. I don’t think it’s only about information asymmetries and having too many emails, though I realise the OP quite strongly implies that. Might rewrite to reflect that.)
Moreover, your time and energy are presumably exchangeable for money (though not indefinitely so)?
I guess to some extent, but it feels like the world is already full of things that I could be getting money for if I had the time and energy to pursue them on top of other things that I am already doing. I feel like monetary rewards for answering messages that I wouldn’t have answered otherwise would have to be relatively significant to have an impact, like upwards from 20€ or something. But then in that case I would start feeling concerned that people who didn’t want to spend that much money messaging me would feel discouraged from doing so.
Also, if I try to simulate in my head the experience of getting a paid email, it feels like a signal that the message isn’t worth responding to? Like, some part of my mind has the model “if the sender knew that this was an important message, then they could count on me responding to it, so if they feel the need to add a monetary incentive they must know that this isn’t very important”. Or something—I’m not sure if I endorse that reasoning on an intellectual level, but it seems to trigger some kind of an emotional association to things like using money to buy status when you don’t have other qualities that would earn you status. (In contexts like romantic relationships or an author paying money to a vanity press to self-publish when they can’t get a real publisher to agree to publish their work and pay them.)
Re: this part in your post -
This could be avoided if people who genuinely believed their stuff was important could pay some money as a costly signal of this fact.
As I understand it, the point of a costly signal is that it’s supposed to be relatively more affordable if you actually have that quality. If you have lots of health, then you can avoid to burn health on things which aren’t directly useful, more than people with little health can. But the amount of money that you have, seems independent of how important your stuff is? Your could be a millionaire who wanted my opinion on something totally unimportant. You say that actual crackpots might be less likely to pay, but I would expect that if anything they would be even more likely to pay.
As I understand it, the point of a costly signal is that it’s supposed to be relatively more affordable if you actually have that quality.
Yeah. In hindsight the terminology of “costly signal” is a bit unfortunate, because the payment here would actually work a bit like Mario’s jump or LessWrong karma—it’s a very simple mechanism which can co-opted to solve a large number of different problems. In particular, the money is not intended to be burnt (as would be the case with status signals, or proof-of-work as mentioned in some other comments), but actually paid to you.
Overall appreciate you writing up those points, they’re pretty helpful in understanding how people might (and might not) use this.
To the extent that I’ve experienced these kinds of problems, their core cause has been that I haven’t had the time or energy to answer my messages, not that there would have been particularly many of them or because of any information asymmetry. So I wouldn’t use this service because I don’t recognize the problem that it’s describing from my own experience.
Thanks, this is a good data-point.
Though I want to ask: if people know that you have this problem, as things stand currently, they might just avoid messaging you (since they don’t have any way of compensating you for marginally making the burden on you worse)? Moreover, your time and energy are presumably exchangeable for money (though not indefinitely so)?
So it still seems paid emails might help with that?
(PS. I don’t think it’s only about information asymmetries and having too many emails, though I realise the OP quite strongly implies that. Might rewrite to reflect that.)
I guess to some extent, but it feels like the world is already full of things that I could be getting money for if I had the time and energy to pursue them on top of other things that I am already doing. I feel like monetary rewards for answering messages that I wouldn’t have answered otherwise would have to be relatively significant to have an impact, like upwards from 20€ or something. But then in that case I would start feeling concerned that people who didn’t want to spend that much money messaging me would feel discouraged from doing so.
Also, if I try to simulate in my head the experience of getting a paid email, it feels like a signal that the message isn’t worth responding to? Like, some part of my mind has the model “if the sender knew that this was an important message, then they could count on me responding to it, so if they feel the need to add a monetary incentive they must know that this isn’t very important”. Or something—I’m not sure if I endorse that reasoning on an intellectual level, but it seems to trigger some kind of an emotional association to things like using money to buy status when you don’t have other qualities that would earn you status. (In contexts like romantic relationships or an author paying money to a vanity press to self-publish when they can’t get a real publisher to agree to publish their work and pay them.)
Re: this part in your post -
As I understand it, the point of a costly signal is that it’s supposed to be relatively more affordable if you actually have that quality. If you have lots of health, then you can avoid to burn health on things which aren’t directly useful, more than people with little health can. But the amount of money that you have, seems independent of how important your stuff is? Your could be a millionaire who wanted my opinion on something totally unimportant. You say that actual crackpots might be less likely to pay, but I would expect that if anything they would be even more likely to pay.
Yeah. In hindsight the terminology of “costly signal” is a bit unfortunate, because the payment here would actually work a bit like Mario’s jump or LessWrong karma—it’s a very simple mechanism which can co-opted to solve a large number of different problems. In particular, the money is not intended to be burnt (as would be the case with status signals, or proof-of-work as mentioned in some other comments), but actually paid to you.
Overall appreciate you writing up those points, they’re pretty helpful in understanding how people might (and might not) use this.