two themes i see in your examples that i don’t think was prevalent in the OP is challenge and effort, especially in 1, 2 and 3. but 3 and 5 are also about overcoming a challenge, in one it’s the challenge of giving up chocolate, and in the other it’s standing up to people.
in almost none of these does “the protagonist chooses the worse action because it is worse”. sleeping in a more risky part of the forest isn’t strictly worse, there are benefits to it. spending time finding a rare flower isn’t worse than using a common flower since a rare flower is likely to have more value.
The example that seems closest is the 5th, though as i understand it he tries prove something more to himself than to anybody else.
Yoav, I think there might be a difference like the one you’re gesturing at, but if so, I don’t think Zvi’s formalism quite captures it. If someone can find a formalism that does capture it, I’m interested. (Making that need for a fuller formalism explicit, is sort of what I’m hoping for with the examples.)
For example, I disagree, if I reason formally/rigidly, with “in almost none of these does “the protagonist chooses the worse action because it is worse”. sleeping in a more risky part of the forest isn’t strictly worse, there are benefits to it. spending time finding a rare flower isn’t worse than using a common flower since a rare flower is likely to have more value.”
Re: the flowers, I can well imagine a situation where the boy chooses the [takes more work and has more opportunity cost to gather (“rarer”)] flower because it [visibly takes more cost to gather it], and “because it has more costs” is IMO pretty clearly an example of “because it is worse” in the sense in the OP (similar to: “because it costs more rubles to buy this scarf-that-is-not-better”). To make a pure example: It’s true the flower’s that rarity itself makes it more valuable to look at (since folks have seen it less) — but we can imagine a case where it is slightly uglier and slightly less pretty-smelling, to at least mostly offset this, so that a naive observer from a different region who did not know what was rare/common would generally prefer the other. Anyhow, in that scenario it still seems pretty plausible that the boy’s romantic gesture would work better with the rarer flower, as the girl says to her gossipy girlfriends “He somehow brought me 50 [rareflowers]!” And they’re like “What? Where did he possibly get those from?” And she’s like “Yeah. I don’t even like [rareflowertype] all that much, but still, gathering those! I guess he must really like me!” (I.e., in this scenario, the boy having spent hours of his time roving around seeking flowers, which seems naively/formally like a cost, is itself a thing that the girl is appreciating.)
Similarly, “riskier part of the forest” means “part of the forest with less safety” — and while, yes, the forest-part surely has other positive features, I can well imagine a context where the “has less safety” is itself the main attraction to the kids (so they can demonstrate their daring). (And “has less safety / has greater risk of injury” seems formally like an example of “worse”. If it isn’t, I need better models of what “worse” means here.)
If these are actually disanalogous, maybe you could spell out the disanalogy more? I realize I didn’t engage here with your point about “challenge” and “effort” (which seem like costs on some reckoning, but costs that we sometimes give a positive-affect term to, and for reason)
You could apply some positive spin to Zvi’s examples, too. For example, how difficult it is to establish trust and cooperation between people, and how necessary it is for a survival of civilization, and therefore a manager who sacrifices something valuable in order to signal loyalty is actually the good guy.
two themes i see in your examples that i don’t think was prevalent in the OP is challenge and effort, especially in 1, 2 and 3. but 3 and 5 are also about overcoming a challenge, in one it’s the challenge of giving up chocolate, and in the other it’s standing up to people.
in almost none of these does “the protagonist chooses the worse action because it is worse”. sleeping in a more risky part of the forest isn’t strictly worse, there are benefits to it. spending time finding a rare flower isn’t worse than using a common flower since a rare flower is likely to have more value.
The example that seems closest is the 5th, though as i understand it he tries prove something more to himself than to anybody else.
Yoav, I think there might be a difference like the one you’re gesturing at, but if so, I don’t think Zvi’s formalism quite captures it. If someone can find a formalism that does capture it, I’m interested. (Making that need for a fuller formalism explicit, is sort of what I’m hoping for with the examples.)
For example, I disagree, if I reason formally/rigidly, with “in almost none of these does “the protagonist chooses the worse action because it is worse”. sleeping in a more risky part of the forest isn’t strictly worse, there are benefits to it. spending time finding a rare flower isn’t worse than using a common flower since a rare flower is likely to have more value.”
Re: the flowers, I can well imagine a situation where the boy chooses the [takes more work and has more opportunity cost to gather (“rarer”)] flower because it [visibly takes more cost to gather it], and “because it has more costs” is IMO pretty clearly an example of “because it is worse” in the sense in the OP (similar to: “because it costs more rubles to buy this scarf-that-is-not-better”). To make a pure example: It’s true the flower’s that rarity itself makes it more valuable to look at (since folks have seen it less) — but we can imagine a case where it is slightly uglier and slightly less pretty-smelling, to at least mostly offset this, so that a naive observer from a different region who did not know what was rare/common would generally prefer the other. Anyhow, in that scenario it still seems pretty plausible that the boy’s romantic gesture would work better with the rarer flower, as the girl says to her gossipy girlfriends “He somehow brought me 50 [rareflowers]!” And they’re like “What? Where did he possibly get those from?” And she’s like “Yeah. I don’t even like [rareflowertype] all that much, but still, gathering those! I guess he must really like me!” (I.e., in this scenario, the boy having spent hours of his time roving around seeking flowers, which seems naively/formally like a cost, is itself a thing that the girl is appreciating.)
Similarly, “riskier part of the forest” means “part of the forest with less safety” — and while, yes, the forest-part surely has other positive features, I can well imagine a context where the “has less safety” is itself the main attraction to the kids (so they can demonstrate their daring). (And “has less safety / has greater risk of injury” seems formally like an example of “worse”. If it isn’t, I need better models of what “worse” means here.)
If these are actually disanalogous, maybe you could spell out the disanalogy more? I realize I didn’t engage here with your point about “challenge” and “effort” (which seem like costs on some reckoning, but costs that we sometimes give a positive-affect term to, and for reason)
You could apply some positive spin to Zvi’s examples, too. For example, how difficult it is to establish trust and cooperation between people, and how necessary it is for a survival of civilization, and therefore a manager who sacrifices something valuable in order to signal loyalty is actually the good guy.