We didn’t (or rather, shouldn’t) intend to reward or punish those “ancestor nodes”. We should intend to reward or punish the results.
I’m afraid this sentence doesn’t parse for me. You seem to be speaking of “results” as something which to which the concept of rewards and punishments are applicable. However, I’m not aware of any context in which this is a meaningful (rather than nonsensical) thing to say. All theories of behavior I’ve encountered that make mention of the concept of rewards and punishments (e.g. operant conditioning) refer to them as a means of influencing behavior. If there’s something else you’re referring to when you say “reward or punish the results”, I would appreciate it if you clarified what exactly that thing is.
I don’t see what could be simpler. Alice does something. That action has some result. We reward Alice, or punish her, based on the results of her action. There is nothing unusual or obscure here; I mean just what I say.
(There are cases where we do not want to take this approach, but they tend to both be controversial and to be unusual in certain important respects.)
Edit: And if you’re trying to use operant conditioning, of all things, to decide what social norms to have on a forum devoted to the art of rationality, then you’ve already admitted defeat, and this entire project is pointless.
I’m afraid this sentence doesn’t parse for me. You seem to be speaking of “results” as something which to which the concept of rewards and punishments are applicable. However, I’m not aware of any context in which this is a meaningful (rather than nonsensical) thing to say. All theories of behavior I’ve encountered that make mention of the concept of rewards and punishments (e.g. operant conditioning) refer to them as a means of influencing behavior. If there’s something else you’re referring to when you say “reward or punish the results”, I would appreciate it if you clarified what exactly that thing is.
I don’t see what could be simpler. Alice does something. That action has some result. We reward Alice, or punish her, based on the results of her action. There is nothing unusual or obscure here; I mean just what I say.
(There are cases where we do not want to take this approach, but they tend to both be controversial and to be unusual in certain important respects.)
Edit: And if you’re trying to use operant conditioning, of all things, to decide what social norms to have on a forum devoted to the art of rationality, then you’ve already admitted defeat, and this entire project is pointless.