JoshuaZ comments on Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 3 - Less Wrong

5 Post author: Unnamed 30 August 2010 05:37AM

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Comment author: JoshuaZ 30 August 2010 08:37:20PM 8 points [-]

The house point system might not be completely bad. It might encourage competitively minded people to work more if they might be lazy otherwise. Empirically in the real world this sometimes works. For a few years (not sure if still active), Yale and Harvard students had competitions about which could reduce energy per a capita more. When I went to highschool there was a fundraiser for raising money for foodbanks and each class competed to see which could raise more. There was also a "neutral box" for people who wanted to give but didn't compete. By the end of the fundraiser the neutral box would generally have about an order of magnitude less money in it than the the grade box with the lowest amount.