Rewards are usually a transfer of resources (e.g. me giving you money), which tend to preserve total wealth (or status, or whatever other resource you are thinking about).
Unilateral punishments are usually not transfers of resource, they are usually one party imposing a cost on another party (like hitting them with a stick and injuring them), in a way that does not preserve total wealth (or health, or whatever other resource applies to the situation).
You certainly shouldn’t hit your friend with a stick if he loses $5 of your club’s money. I think this is fairly obvious, and it seems quite improbable that you were assuming that I was suggesting any such thing. So, given that we can’t possibly be talking about injuring anyone, or doing any such thing, how can your point about net-negative punishment apply? The more sensible assumption is that the punishment is of the same kind as the reward.
I think social punishments usually have the same form. Where rewards tend to be more of a transfer of status, and punishments more of a destruction of status (two people can destroy each others reputation with repeated social punishments).
There is also the bandwidth cost of punishment, as well as the simple fact that giving people praise usually comes with a positive emotional component for the receiver (in addition to the status and the reputation), whereas punishments usually come with an addition of stress and discomfort that reduces total output for a while.
In either case, I think the simpler case is made by simply looking at the assumption of diminishing returns in resources and realizing that the cost of giving someone a reward they care 2x about is usually larger than the cost of giving the reward twice, meaning that there is an inherent cost to high-variance reward landscapes.
Could you elaborate on this? I’m not at all sure what this is referring to.
Rewards are usually a transfer of resources (e.g. me giving you money), which tend to preserve total wealth (or status, or whatever other resource you are thinking about).
Unilateral punishments are usually not transfers of resource, they are usually one party imposing a cost on another party (like hitting them with a stick and injuring them), in a way that does not preserve total wealth (or health, or whatever other resource applies to the situation).
You certainly shouldn’t hit your friend with a stick if he loses $5 of your club’s money. I think this is fairly obvious, and it seems quite improbable that you were assuming that I was suggesting any such thing. So, given that we can’t possibly be talking about injuring anyone, or doing any such thing, how can your point about net-negative punishment apply? The more sensible assumption is that the punishment is of the same kind as the reward.
I think social punishments usually have the same form. Where rewards tend to be more of a transfer of status, and punishments more of a destruction of status (two people can destroy each others reputation with repeated social punishments).
There is also the bandwidth cost of punishment, as well as the simple fact that giving people praise usually comes with a positive emotional component for the receiver (in addition to the status and the reputation), whereas punishments usually come with an addition of stress and discomfort that reduces total output for a while.
In either case, I think the simpler case is made by simply looking at the assumption of diminishing returns in resources and realizing that the cost of giving someone a reward they care 2x about is usually larger than the cost of giving the reward twice, meaning that there is an inherent cost to high-variance reward landscapes.