If you hit me for no reason, “positive punishment” would be hitting you back in hopes that you stop hitting me. I have to actually want you to hurt, and it can easily spiral out of hand if you hit me for hitting you for hitting me.
“Negative punishment” would be just not hanging out with people who hit me, because I don’t like hanging out with people who hit me. I don’t have to want you to hurt at all in order to do this, in the same way that I love my puppy and don’t hold anything against her, but when she’s jumping on me so much that I can’t work I might have to lock her out of my room. Even if you get offended and decide to respond in kind with some negative punishment of your own, that just means you decide to stop hanging out with me too. Which obviously isn’t a problem. And heck, by your (IMO appropriate) definition of “punishment” this isn’t even punishment because it’s not done in order to affect anyone’s behavior. It’s just choosing to abstain from negative value interactions.
We can’t restrict “negative punishment” without restricting freedom of association and freedom of expression, and we also don’t have to because sharing truth and making good choices are good, and there’s no threat of spiraling out of control. It may hurt a lot to be locked out of all the fun spaces, and it may feel like a punishment in the operant conditioning sense, but that doesn’t mean there’s any intent to punish or that it is punishment in the sense that’s relevant for this post.
What we have to be careful about, is when people try to claim to be doing freedom of association/expression (“negative punishment”) while actually intending to do positive punishment. This comes up a lot in the debates between “You’re trying to stifle free speech!” and “Free speech doesn’t mean freedom from consequences!”/”I’m just using my free speech to criticize yours!”. If you’re responding to obnoxious speech with speech like “I’m gonna stone you if you don’t shut up” then you’re obviously trying to conflate threats of violent positive punishment with “merely freedom of expression”, but it gets much more subtle when you say “Ugh, I don’t see how any decent person could listen to that guy”. Because is that an expression of curiosity from someone who would love to fill in their ignorance with empathy and understanding? Someone who harbors no ill will, just doesn’t find that guy interesting? Or is it someone who actively dislikes the person speaking, and would like to see them change their behavior, and even hurt in order to do so?
This attempt to hurt people in order to change their behavior is positive punishment masquerading as negative punishment, and as such has all the same problems with positive punishment. If I try to give you the silent treatment because you didn’t say you liked my new shirt, and you give me the silent treatment back, then it can easily escalate into losing a friendship that if we’re honest we both wanted. Because it was never actually “I don’t find any value here, so I’m pulling back”, it was “I’m gonna pull back anyway, in hopes of hurting him enough to change his behavior”.
People like Bob, Carol, and Dave are indeed at risk of confusing genuinely prosocial freedom of association and expression with positive punishment, because people like Alice are at risk of doing the latter while pleading the former.
However, they’re also likely to recognize it as sincere if Alice looks more like she’s doing the former than the latter. If the don’t find out about what Mallory did until they ask Alice why she doesn’t hang out with Mallory anymore, they’re unlikely to see her answer as punishment, for example. Similarly, if she comes off more like “Careful with the puppy, she’s friendly but sometimes too friendly!”, that’s technically communicating a bad thing, but it comes off very differently than if she were to get visibly upset and say “That dog is not well disciplined, it’s not a good dog and you should know that”.
It’s not always clear whether a person is genuinely “just sharing information” or secretly trying to positively punish, but they are indeed distinct things, and having the distinction clear makes it easier to judge.
The distinction between “positive punishment” and “negative punishment” is useful here, and I think a lot of the confusion around this topic comes from conflating the two—both intentionally and otherwise.
If you hit me for no reason, “positive punishment” would be hitting you back in hopes that you stop hitting me. I have to actually want you to hurt, and it can easily spiral out of hand if you hit me for hitting you for hitting me.
“Negative punishment” would be just not hanging out with people who hit me, because I don’t like hanging out with people who hit me. I don’t have to want you to hurt at all in order to do this, in the same way that I love my puppy and don’t hold anything against her, but when she’s jumping on me so much that I can’t work I might have to lock her out of my room. Even if you get offended and decide to respond in kind with some negative punishment of your own, that just means you decide to stop hanging out with me too. Which obviously isn’t a problem. And heck, by your (IMO appropriate) definition of “punishment” this isn’t even punishment because it’s not done in order to affect anyone’s behavior. It’s just choosing to abstain from negative value interactions.
We can’t restrict “negative punishment” without restricting freedom of association and freedom of expression, and we also don’t have to because sharing truth and making good choices are good, and there’s no threat of spiraling out of control. It may hurt a lot to be locked out of all the fun spaces, and it may feel like a punishment in the operant conditioning sense, but that doesn’t mean there’s any intent to punish or that it is punishment in the sense that’s relevant for this post.
What we have to be careful about, is when people try to claim to be doing freedom of association/expression (“negative punishment”) while actually intending to do positive punishment. This comes up a lot in the debates between “You’re trying to stifle free speech!” and “Free speech doesn’t mean freedom from consequences!”/”I’m just using my free speech to criticize yours!”. If you’re responding to obnoxious speech with speech like “I’m gonna stone you if you don’t shut up” then you’re obviously trying to conflate threats of violent positive punishment with “merely freedom of expression”, but it gets much more subtle when you say “Ugh, I don’t see how any decent person could listen to that guy”. Because is that an expression of curiosity from someone who would love to fill in their ignorance with empathy and understanding? Someone who harbors no ill will, just doesn’t find that guy interesting? Or is it someone who actively dislikes the person speaking, and would like to see them change their behavior, and even hurt in order to do so?
This attempt to hurt people in order to change their behavior is positive punishment masquerading as negative punishment, and as such has all the same problems with positive punishment. If I try to give you the silent treatment because you didn’t say you liked my new shirt, and you give me the silent treatment back, then it can easily escalate into losing a friendship that if we’re honest we both wanted. Because it was never actually “I don’t find any value here, so I’m pulling back”, it was “I’m gonna pull back anyway, in hopes of hurting him enough to change his behavior”.
People like Bob, Carol, and Dave are indeed at risk of confusing genuinely prosocial freedom of association and expression with positive punishment, because people like Alice are at risk of doing the latter while pleading the former.
However, they’re also likely to recognize it as sincere if Alice looks more like she’s doing the former than the latter. If the don’t find out about what Mallory did until they ask Alice why she doesn’t hang out with Mallory anymore, they’re unlikely to see her answer as punishment, for example. Similarly, if she comes off more like “Careful with the puppy, she’s friendly but sometimes too friendly!”, that’s technically communicating a bad thing, but it comes off very differently than if she were to get visibly upset and say “That dog is not well disciplined, it’s not a good dog and you should know that”.
It’s not always clear whether a person is genuinely “just sharing information” or secretly trying to positively punish, but they are indeed distinct things, and having the distinction clear makes it easier to judge.