To clarify, what sort of skewed incentives do you have in mind, or incentives for what? Like spending too much time writing more posts? Or like shifting your beliefs and arguments in worse ways to match the incentives on the Forum?
FWIW, I currently see the former as a bigger deal than the latter, though still not a huge deal. I mentioned it in this comment.
Also, I think there’s a third way that this drawback might not apply: The incentives associated with posting on the Forum could simply be better aligned with the good than the incentives that the person would be influenced by otherwise, even if not especially closely aligned with that in an absolute sense. We’re already influenced by some incentives.
Also, I think there’s a third way that this drawback might not apply
Yeah, I thought about that and meant it to be included (somewhat sloppily) in the “closely aligned” proviso.
Or like shifting your beliefs and arguments in worse ways to match the incentives on the Forum?
Or shifting your attention.
I think things like upvotes and comments here provide multiple incentive gradients which seem possibly harmful. For example, I think based on a vague gestalt impression that the Forum tends to:
Encourage confidence and simplicity over nuance at some margin less than the IMO optimal
Disproportionately reward critiques and “drama” of a certain sort
Discourage highly technical content
Encourage familiar content and content areas
Many of these claimed problems are very understandable and seem hard to avoid in this kind of setting. People like things they’re familiar with (looseley: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mere-exposure_effect); understanding and evaluating highly technical content either demands more time from readers or outright limits the audience size; if you don’t have the expertise to evaluate and contextualize claims, confident claims seems more informative than cautious ones; etc.
Obviously, my claims here are pretty subjective and fuzzy and others could disagree.
To clarify, what sort of skewed incentives do you have in mind, or incentives for what? Like spending too much time writing more posts? Or like shifting your beliefs and arguments in worse ways to match the incentives on the Forum?
FWIW, I currently see the former as a bigger deal than the latter, though still not a huge deal. I mentioned it in this comment.
Also, I think there’s a third way that this drawback might not apply: The incentives associated with posting on the Forum could simply be better aligned with the good than the incentives that the person would be influenced by otherwise, even if not especially closely aligned with that in an absolute sense. We’re already influenced by some incentives.
Yeah, I thought about that and meant it to be included (somewhat sloppily) in the “closely aligned” proviso.
Or shifting your attention.
I think things like upvotes and comments here provide multiple incentive gradients which seem possibly harmful. For example, I think based on a vague gestalt impression that the Forum tends to:
Encourage confidence and simplicity over nuance at some margin less than the IMO optimal
Disproportionately reward critiques and “drama” of a certain sort
Discourage highly technical content
Encourage familiar content and content areas
Many of these claimed problems are very understandable and seem hard to avoid in this kind of setting. People like things they’re familiar with (looseley: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mere-exposure_effect); understanding and evaluating highly technical content either demands more time from readers or outright limits the audience size; if you don’t have the expertise to evaluate and contextualize claims, confident claims seems more informative than cautious ones; etc.
Obviously, my claims here are pretty subjective and fuzzy and others could disagree.