This post has continued to be an important part of Ray’s sense of How To Be a Good Citizen, and was one of the posts feeding into the Coordination Frontier sequence.
As an experiment, I’m going to start by listing the things that stuck with me, without rereading the post, and then note down things that seem important upon actual re-reading:
Things that stuck with me
If you’re going to break an agreement, let people know as early as possible.
Try to take on as much of the cost of the renege-ing as you can.
Insofar as you can’t take on the costs of renege-ing in a way that leaves the aggrieved party no worse off, “put that on your tab”, and fully own it. (This got me thinking in more general terms about what it means to have/spend social-credit, or reputation)
Things I notice as important, upon rereading
I don’t know how often these will be decision-relevant, but I found it useful to boot these points explicitly into my model again:
The framework of “Invested Value” vs “Expected Value”.
The three distinct resources of:
You (the reneged party)’s willingness to make agreements, in general. (i.e. expectation that agreements will have positive payoff often enough to be worth it)
Your sense of whether I (the reneger) in particular is worth making agreements with.
The willingness of other people in our social vicinity to make agreements at all.
I like the “Inverting the Prescription” ending.
Things that haven’t felt that important to me
I think the things under “postpone the renege” haven’t felt like they came up. I have a sense that they were something disproportionately important to Duncan. I think the post also sort of underestimates costs that comes from trying to “taper things off.”
(I have some sense that this post is kinda a vagueblog about something, and my historical reaction to knowing about what Duncan’s motivating examples were was often “I agree with the top-level point but think the relationship with the motivating example is sort of mis-framed”. This isn’t that important for most people reading the post but, idk, seemed worth noting)
...
I feel like the post could overall be shorter. I think even the first time I read it, I mostly felt “okay, yeah this concept makes sense and crystallizes something I should pay attention to”, and I didn’t need quite as much detail as it goes into. But maybe others got value from all the handholds/hooks into a broader coordination-culture.
This post has continued to be an important part of Ray’s sense of How To Be a Good Citizen, and was one of the posts feeding into the Coordination Frontier sequence.
As an experiment, I’m going to start by listing the things that stuck with me, without rereading the post, and then note down things that seem important upon actual re-reading:
Things that stuck with me
If you’re going to break an agreement, let people know as early as possible.
Try to take on as much of the cost of the renege-ing as you can.
Insofar as you can’t take on the costs of renege-ing in a way that leaves the aggrieved party no worse off, “put that on your tab”, and fully own it. (This got me thinking in more general terms about what it means to have/spend social-credit, or reputation)
Things I notice as important, upon rereading
I don’t know how often these will be decision-relevant, but I found it useful to boot these points explicitly into my model again:
The framework of “Invested Value” vs “Expected Value”.
The three distinct resources of:
You (the reneged party)’s willingness to make agreements, in general. (i.e. expectation that agreements will have positive payoff often enough to be worth it)
Your sense of whether I (the reneger) in particular is worth making agreements with.
The willingness of other people in our social vicinity to make agreements at all.
I like the “Inverting the Prescription” ending.
Things that haven’t felt that important to me
I think the things under “postpone the renege” haven’t felt like they came up. I have a sense that they were something disproportionately important to Duncan. I think the post also sort of underestimates costs that comes from trying to “taper things off.”
(I have some sense that this post is kinda a vagueblog about something, and my historical reaction to knowing about what Duncan’s motivating examples were was often “I agree with the top-level point but think the relationship with the motivating example is sort of mis-framed”. This isn’t that important for most people reading the post but, idk, seemed worth noting)
...
I feel like the post could overall be shorter. I think even the first time I read it, I mostly felt “okay, yeah this concept makes sense and crystallizes something I should pay attention to”, and I didn’t need quite as much detail as it goes into. But maybe others got value from all the handholds/hooks into a broader coordination-culture.