This seems to imply that you think the current amount of “social capital” that people are being “awarded” is inaccurate (in the sense of being incommensurate with their achievements, or… something like that?). Is this, indeed, what you meant? And if so, on what do you base this?
I’m not ialdabaoth, but “social capital isn’t awarded commensurately with achievement” seems accurate.
We’re more like a social group than a corporation. Corporations have well-defined goals, metrics, and so on that they can take into account when awarding people, and have incentive to keep morale high. Social groups have none of that, and instead reward people based on how shiny they are. It seems to me that we’re much more willing to reward people for being shiny than for corporation-like achievements.
(Some of this is probably because social groups and corporations have different incentives on tap. You won’t get more friends and become more attractive by building things, and you won’t get a raise for having a shiny Tumblr brand. Then again, you can get praise for both—although it’d be a little incongruous to be praised in a corporation for social-group stuff or vice versa.)
From where I’m standing, the incentives point strongly in the direction of social-group stuff rather than corporation stuff. Being shiny rather than building things. If we want more things to be built, the incentives have to change so more people decide they’re better off building things. But this might be hard to do, at least in the case of building local things, because local things are less legible outside the locality than internet shininess is. (Probably also than IRL shininess—gossip travels faster and draws a bigger audience than status reports.)
(Of course, different people have different levels of building ability and different levels of shininess. Maybe we could follow the meat/brains/class/etc. deal and talk about the RPG stats of “grit”, “tech”, and “shine”. If people are just following social incentives, a marginal change in favor of building will move the line on the grit + tech vs. shine plot, but the people who don’t build will still tend to be shinier than the people who do. Maybe we need an RPG stat of “care” to normalize against here. Whatever.)
It also seems to me that we’re an unusually low-praise group, and that higher-praise subsets tend to be more socially inclined.
You seem to be coming from the premise that there is plenty of praise out there, just not in the right places. But the point of the post is that there just isn’t enough praise out there. Gut-level appreciation, the thing I want people to have for me, isn’t zero sum. They can have it for both building things and shiny blogs.
You also seem to assume that we should be using praise as an incentive. I’m on the fence about that. Maybe praise (or let’s call it respect or personhood or appreciation here) should be the bottom level, and people can actually do things for their own worth.
I, for one, actually want things to be built regardless of social incentives, and I imagine being socially “satiated” will give me a lot more resources to actually allocate on building things (especially things that are hard to signal with).
Reminds me of project Hufflepuff. That’s about getting people to do things that are good but hard to signal with, which is impossible if those people have a status deficit.
I’m not ialdabaoth, but “social capital isn’t awarded commensurately with achievement” seems accurate.
We’re more like a social group than a corporation. Corporations have well-defined goals, metrics, and so on that they can take into account when awarding people, and have incentive to keep morale high. Social groups have none of that, and instead reward people based on how shiny they are. It seems to me that we’re much more willing to reward people for being shiny than for corporation-like achievements.
(Some of this is probably because social groups and corporations have different incentives on tap. You won’t get more friends and become more attractive by building things, and you won’t get a raise for having a shiny Tumblr brand. Then again, you can get praise for both—although it’d be a little incongruous to be praised in a corporation for social-group stuff or vice versa.)
From where I’m standing, the incentives point strongly in the direction of social-group stuff rather than corporation stuff. Being shiny rather than building things. If we want more things to be built, the incentives have to change so more people decide they’re better off building things. But this might be hard to do, at least in the case of building local things, because local things are less legible outside the locality than internet shininess is. (Probably also than IRL shininess—gossip travels faster and draws a bigger audience than status reports.)
(Of course, different people have different levels of building ability and different levels of shininess. Maybe we could follow the meat/brains/class/etc. deal and talk about the RPG stats of “grit”, “tech”, and “shine”. If people are just following social incentives, a marginal change in favor of building will move the line on the grit + tech vs. shine plot, but the people who don’t build will still tend to be shinier than the people who do. Maybe we need an RPG stat of “care” to normalize against here. Whatever.)
It also seems to me that we’re an unusually low-praise group, and that higher-praise subsets tend to be more socially inclined.
You seem to be coming from the premise that there is plenty of praise out there, just not in the right places. But the point of the post is that there just isn’t enough praise out there. Gut-level appreciation, the thing I want people to have for me, isn’t zero sum. They can have it for both building things and shiny blogs.
You also seem to assume that we should be using praise as an incentive. I’m on the fence about that. Maybe praise (or let’s call it respect or personhood or appreciation here) should be the bottom level, and people can actually do things for their own worth.
I, for one, actually want things to be built regardless of social incentives, and I imagine being socially “satiated” will give me a lot more resources to actually allocate on building things (especially things that are hard to signal with).
Reminds me of project Hufflepuff. That’s about getting people to do things that are good but hard to signal with, which is impossible if those people have a status deficit.