There’s a possibility for corruption here, as I briefly mentioned, if people get so deprived that they will sacrifice their other needs or values for the sake of status alone.
I considered that to be obvious in writing this. I’m not necessarily talking about the problem of getting status regardless of everything else. I’m also not talking about how to get status as an individual. I’m rather talking about getting the whole community a sense of status while keeping our other values intact.
“Focus on creating value” might be a great individual solution if you’re talented enough. People recognize you’re not goodharting as much and they’re promoting you accordingly. But it doesn’t help everyone. It doesn’t scale. If it works for you that just means you’ve been able to win these competitions so far. Good for you.
As for the collective version: judging from the fact that we’ve taken some meaningful progress with this at LW Netherlands, there’s clearly more traction to be made.
There’s a possibility for corruption here, as I briefly mentioned, if people get so deprived that they will sacrifice their other needs or values for the sake of status alone.
I considered that to be obvious in writing this. I’m not necessarily talking about the problem of getting status regardless of everything else. I’m also not talking about how to get status as an individual. I’m rather talking about getting the whole community a sense of status while keeping our other values intact.
Yes, I think giving the community a “sense of status” has substantial risks of exacerbating the corruption that I mentioned earlier. In other words, I think recognizing achievements is nice, but making that recognition too systematic leads to significantly increased gaming of that system, Goodharting, etc.
“Focus on creating value” might be a great individual solution if you’re talented enough. People recognize you’re not goodharting as much and they’re promoting you accordingly. But it doesn’t help everyone. It doesn’t scale. If it works for you that just means you’ve been able to win these competitions so far. Good for you.
This...seem like a very zero-sum perspective on value creation? Like, you’re tracking the zero-sum social credit assigned through recognition of the value creation but not the value creation itself.
Here’s a non-zero-sum perspective. People have intrinsic wants/needs, which are partially instinctive. Creating value consists of creating and distributing things that meet these wants/needs (material goods, information, communication protocols, environments, interactions, etc), and in reducing barriers to needs-satisfaction such as coercion. By this definition value creation is inherently scalable (the more of it happens, the more needs are met), and non-zero-sum. Status isn’t an intrinsic need, it’s a zero-sum social frame that acts as a Schelling point governing distribution of valuable things and coercion, and it confuses people into thinking that they intrinsically want it when they actually want some of those valuable things that it governs and also to be coerced less.
There’s a possibility for corruption here, as I briefly mentioned, if people get so deprived that they will sacrifice their other needs or values for the sake of status alone.
I considered that to be obvious in writing this. I’m not necessarily talking about the problem of getting status regardless of everything else. I’m also not talking about how to get status as an individual. I’m rather talking about getting the whole community a sense of status while keeping our other values intact.
“Focus on creating value” might be a great individual solution if you’re talented enough. People recognize you’re not goodharting as much and they’re promoting you accordingly. But it doesn’t help everyone. It doesn’t scale. If it works for you that just means you’ve been able to win these competitions so far. Good for you.
As for the collective version: judging from the fact that we’ve taken some meaningful progress with this at LW Netherlands, there’s clearly more traction to be made.
Yes, I think giving the community a “sense of status” has substantial risks of exacerbating the corruption that I mentioned earlier. In other words, I think recognizing achievements is nice, but making that recognition too systematic leads to significantly increased gaming of that system, Goodharting, etc.
This...seem like a very zero-sum perspective on value creation? Like, you’re tracking the zero-sum social credit assigned through recognition of the value creation but not the value creation itself.
Here’s a non-zero-sum perspective. People have intrinsic wants/needs, which are partially instinctive. Creating value consists of creating and distributing things that meet these wants/needs (material goods, information, communication protocols, environments, interactions, etc), and in reducing barriers to needs-satisfaction such as coercion. By this definition value creation is inherently scalable (the more of it happens, the more needs are met), and non-zero-sum. Status isn’t an intrinsic need, it’s a zero-sum social frame that acts as a Schelling point governing distribution of valuable things and coercion, and it confuses people into thinking that they intrinsically want it when they actually want some of those valuable things that it governs and also to be coerced less.