So, if I understand you, if you utter a 'threat' (scare quotes) to conditionally punish, but you would have conditionally punished even if you had not uttered, then it isn't really a threat, it is simply a 'warning'. Is that what you meant?
Or, that it is the kind of threat that someone could give to me and call 'pointing out consequences' without me holding them in contempt as well as antipathy as a result.
I don't think I agree with that characterization of the threat/warning distinction. Many people would not punish if they had not given 'fair warning'. But by your definition, such 'fair warning' is actually a threat.
I wouldn't use that definition and especially wouldn't use that distinction both ways. ie. I wouldn't actively assert that 'threaten' and 'inform of consequences' are mutually exclusive. I speak primarily of what would make talk of 'inform of consequences' appear an obnoxious attempt at condescension.
I'm not sure what you meant by 'status', 'institution', and 'sincerity', so they may constitute a piece of the puzzle. My own intuition is that part of the distinction lies in whether the prospective punisher has the 'right' to punish.
Yes, I mean approximately the same thing but with slightly more reduction.
But I don't have a good handle on whether the prospective punishee needs to deny the punisher's right to make it a threat, or he also has to deny the sincerity of the punisher's claim to the right.
I suppose it has to be the mind of the threatener that matters. I've had people threaten me with things that I actually consider desirable. (Failure of other anti-optimization?) It would feel disingenuous of me to declare that what they are not doing is not threatening. Of course if I could make the disingenuousity witty I would take pleasure in uttering it - people who threaten me don't have ethical rights to things like courtesy as far as I'm concerned!
After having it recommended to me for the fifth time, I finally read through Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality. It didn't seem like it'd be interesting to me, but I was really mistaken. It's fantastic.
One thing I noticed is that Harry threatens people a lot. My initial reaction was, "Nahh, that wouldn't work."
It wasn't to scrutinize my own experience. It wasn't to do a google search if there's literature available. It wasn't to ask a few friends what their experiences were like and compare them.
After further thought, I came to realization - almost every time I've threatened someone (which is rarely), it's worked. Now, I'm kind of tempted to write that off as "well, I had the moral high ground in each of those cases" - but:
1. Harry usually or always has the moral high ground when he threatens people in MOR.
2. I don't have any personal anecdotes or data about threatening people from a non-moral high ground, but history provides a number of examples, and the threats often work.
This gets me to thinking - "Huh, why did I write that off so fast as not accurate?" And I think the answer is because I don't want the world to work like that. I don't want threatening people to be an effective way of communicating.
It's just... not a nice idea.
And then I stop, and think. The world is as it is, not as I think it ought to be.
And going further, this makes me consider all the times I've tried to explain something I understood to someone, but where they didn't like the answer. Saying things like, "People don't care about your product features, they care about what benefit they'll derive in their own life... your engineering here is impressive, but 99% of people don't care that you just did an amazing engineering feat for the first time in history if you can't explain the benefit to them."
Of course, highly technical people hate that, and tend not to adjust.
Or explaining to someone how clothing is a tool that changes people's perceptions of you, and by studying the basics of fashion and aesthetics, you can achieve more of your aims in life. Yes, it shouldn't be like that in an ideal world. But we're not in that ideal world - fashion and aesthetics matter and people react to it.
I used to rebel against that until I wizened up, studied a little fashion and aesthetics, and started dressing to produce outcomes. So I ask, what's my goal here? Okay, what kind of first impression furthers that goal? Okay, what kind of clothing helps make that first impression?
Then I wear that clothing.
And yet, when confronted with something I don't like - I dismiss it out of hand, without even considering my own past experiences. I think this is incredibly common. "Nahh, that wouldn't work" - because the person doesn't want to live in a world where it would work.