Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Incentives are for losers

experimental-history.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 129 posts

Re: Incentives are for losers

#71

Post by OroPla »

rf15 wrote: post #40
thelastgallon wrote: post #32

I remember this book: Punished by Rewards, Alfie Kohn "The basic strategy we use for raising children, teaching students, and managing workers can be summarized in six words: do this and you'll get that. We dangle goodies (from candy bars to sales commissions) in front of people in much the same way that we train a family pet. The quick fix of rewards may seem to be effective, but manipulating people with external in…

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 school that made school work easier.

Re: Incentives are for losers

#72

Post by grebc »

ludicrousdispla wrote: post #61
discarded1023 wrote: post #30

The game theorists/economists have studied this stuff in depth under the rubric of "mechanism design" or "market design". The relevant concept is "incentive compatibility" where the agents in the system do the right thing (whatever that was intended to be/designed for) because any deviation from that costs them more than playing nice. The Wikipedia article [0] is not yet great but does give the two classic examples o…

My experience tring to map game theory to people's choices in the workplace is that the action taken is typically opposite of the predicted, or optimal, 'game theoretic' action, and often with enormous benefit to that individual.

Reality never fails to amuse, especially when it’s peoples pet ideas.

Re: Incentives are for losers

#73

Post by shuwix »

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…

I think author jumps from high horse of only fortunate should survive to high horse of saving 8 billion people with magic wand.

You can't save the heroin addict with incentives. You can't feed & cure all people in Africa with incentives because then in 20 years, the problem will tripple in dimensions.

Incentives in people which enables those people to "repay the debt" to create wealth for incentives to other people works.

Incentives for handicapped enables them to live better life, and decrase burden on their relatives (which enables them to create more).

Incentives in science sectors which don't have immediate "business vector" works.

Incentives are good, if they are supplemental in degree that's necessary ... and addressed precisely. Otherwise they are waste of resources created through higher taxes (penalty for everyone).

Re: Incentives are for losers

#74

Post by ball_of_lint »

Jobs are the simplest and most striking example of incentives. "Do this and you will get money, which you can spend on food and shelter".

Where a person living in abundance can choose to ignore monetary incentives, most people cannot. If you want to make behavior X be what a broad selection of people do, the only available way today is incentives. And a lot of problems we face today are exactly this sort of collective action problem - recycle, vote for good leaders, don't shit in the well.

Yes, it would be better that we lived in a world where most people were not "losers" (I.E. needs to work for money), but we're certainly not there yet.

Re: Incentives are for losers

#75

Post by socalgal2 »

Similar to the post, I find the discussion of incentives quite often ridiculous, as if no one ever does something because they want to do something nice. As Adam Smith said, "Man naturally desires, not only to be loved, but to be lovely". They don't just follow the incentives.

Re: Incentives are for losers

#76

Post by nicbou »

Experimental History is one of those few blogs that are a guaranteed read for me. I'll make time in the morning to read whatever he publishes. Thank you for sharing!

Re: Incentives are for losers

#77

Post by ball_of_lint »

zdc1 wrote: post #6

Completely agree. Incentives are for the statistical masses. As thinking individuals we can and should use our awareness and courage to make biggest "good" choices we can bear to. We can't all be zero-waste vegan community organisers lobbying for renewables and free education/healthcare, but I doubt living life with the blinders on leads any kind of moral or spiritual growth or fulfilment either.

I'm proud to say that I am person number 1089456347 who is not part of the statistical masses.

Re: Incentives are for losers

#78

Post by OrderlyTiamat »

I'm surprised no one has mentioned the obvious parallels to Nietzsche's idea of the "superman", a person who will not bow to incentives but make their own value structure.

To me the analogy of the monstrous fish is also very reminiscent of Nietzsche's story in "the gay science" of the madman exclaiming in horror at the public square:

> "God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives: who will wipe this blood off us?"

Realising this horrid truth opens an opportunity to defy the structure of society and follow one's own convictions.

But as augment_me says above, not everyone can bear the cost of ignoring incentives. I think all of us have stories where we had a good conception of what the right thing was, and wanted to do the right thing, but money trouble or job security meant we had to follow bad incentives- I certainly do.

Re: Incentives are for losers

#79

Post by yieldcrv »

flaburgan wrote: post #50
yieldcrv wrote: post #13

Disagree Very few people are self starters, I’ve become fixated on increasing the productivity of the population. Anyone excluded or encumbered has things to address why that is, and then add them to the productivity machine. At one point women weren’t included, other marginalized people are excluded, some populations have a tendency to suicide unless we affirm their feelings and then they are productive. All of that…

But productive to build what? Is productivity what makes people happy and fulfilled?

the economy, its a resource allocation system, the most efficient one concocted so far

people have to find their own purpose, partially enabled with the proceeds of their productivity, otherwise that’s not a problem being solved for

Re: Incentives are for losers

#80

Post by cl3misch »

> Up close, when you can see what they are, it becomes clear that only a few of these ladder-toppers are indeed wise and cool. More often, they’re sniveling little twerps. They’re spiritually chinless. They have no convictions, no passions, no purpose other than ladder-climbing.

I like the article overall but this part seems overly uncharitable. I think the next step of your development would be to have your own incentives without looking down on other's who you think lack their own. You should be able to know who you are without shitting on others.

Post reply on HN