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Incentives are for losers

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Re: Incentives are for losers

#111

Post by ElProlactin »

flaburgan wrote: post #51
ElProlactin wrote: post #18

> A critical part of human development—in fact, the most human part of human development—is to acquire a purpose. This is actually a fairly recent concept. For a long time, humans across the globe have believed that life had a purpose, but until the 18th and 19th centuries, the belief was more or less that the purpose was dictated by God, the universe, etc. That there was a purpose that applied to everyone, not that…

I think the point is, society is trying to maximize wealth instead of maximizing happiness and fulfilment. We are being told that to be successful is to be rich, while we should be told that to be successful is to be happy. And the reason is that you don't need much to be happy. So the day we say this to the citizens, the day we all realize buying things is useless, the whole economic system collapses, and no one wan…

That's not the post that the author made.

Re: Incentives are for losers

#112

Post by ImTotallyVegan »

This might be decent advise on an individual level, but "just be virtuous" is no basis for government or company policy (which is what discussions about incentives usually revolve around, I've never seen "I was just following the incentives" used as an excuse for anything).

Re: Incentives are for losers

#113

Post by jerf »

'“People do bad things because they are encouraged and rewarded for doing bad things.” Well, why else would you do them?'

Since the author seems genuinely baffled, the answer is "because they are just bad people". They're bad people, nothing we can do will fix that they are bad people, it's so their fault, so there's no need to consider incentive structures or anything like that. They're just going to have to be better people and the things providing bad incentives have no fault or responsibility for the bad behavior and/or bad outcomes.

The sad and ugly truth is that there's is a certain amount of that in play in the real world. However if I could only pick one of the two extremes, "it's all incentives" works be the more productive one. It's not the whole truth but I do think it is substantially closer than the other extreme.

Re: Incentives are for losers

#114

Post by augment_me »

rozumem wrote: post #110
augment_me wrote: post #19

I really like the article but I feel like ignoring incentives always costs something. Only people who can afford the cost get to look principled, which turns having money into looking like having character. Everyone he praises in the article has/had a safety net: Sumner was a Harvard-educated senator with inherited standing, the writer himself still had a career after dropping his uni title. The fish metaphor has the…

> the acting part requires you to have capital/social safety net Not really. If you go back in history, many figures did not have the capital / social safety net to follow their principles. Diogenes comes to mind. Buddha shunned his princely life. Epicurus. The OP did not say it would be easy.

Buddha was as you say a prince, renouncing wealth is a move only available to someone who has wealth, and he could have gone back.

Epicurus owned a garden and the leisure to sit in it.

Diogenes I can kind of buy about but he still lived off a slave-owning city that had surplus to spare.

Also none of them had kids or other dependents to take care of.

Re: Incentives are for losers

#115

Post by augment_me »

seles wrote: post #109
augment_me wrote: post #19

I really like the article but I feel like ignoring incentives always costs something. Only people who can afford the cost get to look principled, which turns having money into looking like having character. Everyone he praises in the article has/had a safety net: Sumner was a Harvard-educated senator with inherited standing, the writer himself still had a career after dropping his uni title. The fish metaphor has the…

It is true that privileged people can sacrifice more to do the right thing simply because they have much more than they need to survive. But most people of all levels of privilege can do better, and it's not a competition where you are only a success if you do the most good. Good is good even in small quantities regardless of if you ever have a statue made after you.

If the article writer had this perspective it would perhaps be more rounded and grounded instead of calling people who follow the incentives losers, dummys and schmucks.

Re: Incentives are for losers

#116

Post by dTal »

Animats wrote: post #99

On the moral front, see The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion" by Jonathan Haidt (2013). This has a nice analysis of why different people think about ethics quite differently. Haidt looks at axes of morality - Harm, Tradition, Obedience to Authority, and two others. He points out that how people weight those axes differs widely. People in developed countries with some education tend…

That makes perfect sense - the less you are able to assess "harm" for yourself (because you are not educated or worldly) the more you should rely on external cultural consensus.

Re: Incentives are for losers

#117

Post by rozumem »

augment_me wrote: post #114
rozumem wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the acting part requires you to have capital/social safety net Not really. If you go back in history, many figures did not have the capital / social safety net to follow their principles. Diogenes comes to mind. Buddha shunned his princely life. Epicurus. The OP did not say it would be easy.

Buddha was as you say a prince, renouncing wealth is a move only available to someone who has wealth, and he could have gone back. Epicurus owned a garden and the leisure to sit in it. Diogenes I can kind of buy about but he still lived off a slave-owning city that had surplus to spare. Also none of them had kids or other dependents to take care of.

We have more food surplus now than ever before. But we also have more distractions than ever before.

Buddha: he survived without a safety net, that's my point.

Having kids and dependents makes it harder, but not impossible. You may have to leave them. Again, OP never said it would be easy.

Re: Incentives are for losers

#118

Post by seles »

augment_me wrote: post #115
seles wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is true that privileged people can sacrifice more to do the right thing simply because they have much more than they need to survive. But most people of all levels of privilege can do better, and it's not a competition where you are only a success if you do the most good. Good is good even in small quantities regardless of if you ever have a statue made after you.

If the article writer had this perspective it would perhaps be more rounded and grounded instead of calling people who follow the incentives losers, dummys and schmucks.

Agreed, it is a flaw of the article, but I think their point is still correct (that we should all stand for something beyond what is easiest for us and not use incentives as a free pass for everything).

Re: Incentives are for losers

#119

Post by paulryanrogers »

OroPla wrote: post #71
rf15 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks to something (possibly the ruinous adhd medication regime I went through for my entire childhood) I don't really get any motivation from promises of carrots, only the sticks I try to avoid. Works great though, not unhappy, because doing good work still intrinsically satisfies me. I just really don't care about pleasing people (and yet I often do)

I never was medicated for anything, yet I still couldn't ever bring myself to care for "rewards". But then the "rewards" in childhood were kinda pointless. Like a good grade. Can't buy anything with a good grade, so what does it matter? I've found myself caring more for video game worlds, since there's a sense of progress coupled with useful rewards in the context of what you are doing. There never was a reward in sc…

Videogames--and later making / changing them--was my jam growing up. Unlike people who may emotionally hurt you (or you them), games and machines are controllable and predictable. Even multi-player gaming had more feeling of control than messy reality.

School by comparison was usually heavily regimented and too abstract for me. Thankfully higher grades in my district granted more and more choices and autonomy.

Re: Incentives are for losers

#120

Post by fittingopposite »

samirillian wrote: post #105

I agree, I also think it’s more like delayed gratification. Good incentives are for good people bad incentives are for fools. The further you can push back short-term incentives in favor of long-term, the better your life will be. Like we all “know” that love is better than coffee but in the morning many of us would/do choose coffee. Food, drugs, porn all short-term pleasures are “less good” than prosperity, but we o…

Curious, what do you mean with prosperity in this context?
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