I think this post raises important points and handles them reasonably well. I am of course celebrating that fact mostly by pointing out disagreements with it.
I wish Alice drew a sharper distinction between Bob being honest about his beliefs, Bob bringing his actions in line with his stated beliefs, and Bob doing what Alice wants. I think pushing people to be honest is prosocial by default (within limits). Pushing people to do what you want is antisocial by default, with occasional exceptions.
And Alice’s methods can be bad, even if the goal is good. If I could push a button and have a community only of people on a long term growth trajectory, I would. But policing this does more harm than good, because it’s hard for the police to monitor. Growth doesn’t always look like what other people expect, and people need breaks. Demandng everyone present legible growth on a predictable cycle impedes growth (and pushes people to be dishonest).
My personal take here is that you should be ready to work unsustainably and miserably when the circumstances call for it, but the circumstances very rarely call for it, and those circumstances always include being very time-limited. “I’ll just take the misery” is a plan with an inherent shelf life. But the capacity to tank the misery when you need to, or to do more work with less misery, is a moral virtue and should be recognized as such. I imagine some of Alice’s frustration is that she feels like even if Bob gets less social credit than her, the gap should be bigger to reflect her larger contribution, and people use personal capacity as a reason to shrink the gap. And I think that’s a valid complaint, especially if Alice worked to create that sustainable capacity in herself where it didn’t exist before.
I think this post raises important points and handles them reasonably well. I am of course celebrating that fact mostly by pointing out disagreements with it.
I wish Alice drew a sharper distinction between Bob being honest about his beliefs, Bob bringing his actions in line with his stated beliefs, and Bob doing what Alice wants. I think pushing people to be honest is prosocial by default (within limits). Pushing people to do what you want is antisocial by default, with occasional exceptions.
And Alice’s methods can be bad, even if the goal is good. If I could push a button and have a community only of people on a long term growth trajectory, I would. But policing this does more harm than good, because it’s hard for the police to monitor. Growth doesn’t always look like what other people expect, and people need breaks. Demandng everyone present legible growth on a predictable cycle impedes growth (and pushes people to be dishonest).
My personal take here is that you should be ready to work unsustainably and miserably when the circumstances call for it, but the circumstances very rarely call for it, and those circumstances always include being very time-limited. “I’ll just take the misery” is a plan with an inherent shelf life. But the capacity to tank the misery when you need to, or to do more work with less misery, is a moral virtue and should be recognized as such. I imagine some of Alice’s frustration is that she feels like even if Bob gets less social credit than her, the gap should be bigger to reflect her larger contribution, and people use personal capacity as a reason to shrink the gap. And I think that’s a valid complaint, especially if Alice worked to create that sustainable capacity in herself where it didn’t exist before.