Err… I suspect our priors on this subject are very different.
From my perspective you seem to be quibbling over an unintended technical meaning of the word “everyone” while not tracking consequences clearly. I don’t understand how you think littering is coherent example of of how people’s actions do not affect the rest of the world via social signaling. In my mind, littering is the third most common example of a “signal crime” after window breaking and graffiti.
The only way your comments are intelligible to me is that you are enmeshed in a social context where people regularly free ride on community goods or even outright ruin them… and they may even be proud to do so as a sign of their “rationality”?!? These circumstances might provide background evidence that supports what you seem to be saying—hence the inference.
If my inference about your circumstances is correct, you might try to influence your RL community, as an experiment, and if that fails an alternative would be to leave and find a better one. However, if you are in such a context, and no one around you is particularly influenced by your opinions or actions, and you can’t get out of the context, then I agree that your small contribution to the ruin of the community may be negligible (because the people near to you are already ruining the broader community, so their “background noise” would wash out your potentially positive signal). In that case, rule breaking and crime may be the only survival tactic available to you, and you have my sympathy.
In contrast, when I picture littering, I imagine someone in a relatively pristine place who throws the first piece of garbage. Then they are scolded by someone nearby for harming the community in a way that will have negative long term consequences. If the litterbug walks away without picking up their own litter, the scolder takes it upon themselves to pick up the litter and dispose of it properly on behalf of the neighborhood.
In this scenario, the cost of littering is born, personally and directly, by the scolder who picks up the garbage, who should follow this up by telling other people about it, badmouthing the person who littered and claiming credit for scolding and cleaning up after them. This would broadcast and maintain positive norms within the community.
I prefer using norms in part because the major alternatives I’m aware of are either (1) letting the world to “fall to shit” or else (2) fixing problems using government solutions. If positive social customs can do the job instead, that’s a total win to me :-)
Err… I suspect our priors on this subject are very different.
From my perspective you seem to be quibbling over an unintended technical meaning of the word “everyone” while not tracking consequences clearly. I don’t understand how you think littering is coherent example of of how people’s actions do not affect the rest of the world via social signaling. In my mind, littering is the third most common example of a “signal crime” after window breaking and graffiti.
The only way your comments are intelligible to me is that you are enmeshed in a social context where people regularly free ride on community goods or even outright ruin them… and they may even be proud to do so as a sign of their “rationality”?!? These circumstances might provide background evidence that supports what you seem to be saying—hence the inference.
If my inference about your circumstances is correct, you might try to influence your RL community, as an experiment, and if that fails an alternative would be to leave and find a better one. However, if you are in such a context, and no one around you is particularly influenced by your opinions or actions, and you can’t get out of the context, then I agree that your small contribution to the ruin of the community may be negligible (because the people near to you are already ruining the broader community, so their “background noise” would wash out your potentially positive signal). In that case, rule breaking and crime may be the only survival tactic available to you, and you have my sympathy.
In contrast, when I picture littering, I imagine someone in a relatively pristine place who throws the first piece of garbage. Then they are scolded by someone nearby for harming the community in a way that will have negative long term consequences. If the litterbug walks away without picking up their own litter, the scolder takes it upon themselves to pick up the litter and dispose of it properly on behalf of the neighborhood.
In this scenario, the cost of littering is born, personally and directly, by the scolder who picks up the garbage, who should follow this up by telling other people about it, badmouthing the person who littered and claiming credit for scolding and cleaning up after them. This would broadcast and maintain positive norms within the community.
I prefer using norms in part because the major alternatives I’m aware of are either (1) letting the world to “fall to shit” or else (2) fixing problems using government solutions. If positive social customs can do the job instead, that’s a total win to me :-)