roland comments on The Power of Reinforcement - Less Wrong

96 Post author: lukeprog 21 June 2012 01:42PM

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Comment author: roland 22 June 2012 10:58:11PM *  -2 points [-]

Edit: relevant quotes from the post:

When trying to maintain order in a class, ignore unruly behavior and praise good behavior (Madsen et al. 1968; McNamara 1987).

To help someone improve at dance or sport, ignore poor performance but reward good performance immediately, for example by shouting "Good!" (Buzas & Allyon 1981) The reason you should ignore poor performance if you say "No, you're doing it wrong!" you are inadvertently punishing the effort. A better response to a mistake would be to reinforce the effort: "Good effort! You're almost there! Try once more."

Reward opinion-expressing to get people to express their opinions more often

Now that we all know this, shouldn't we abolish downvotes? From my personal experience the emotional impact of a downvote is extremely frustrating and not helpful at all. The message I get from a downvote is "You are wrong!" or "What you said doesn't agree with the group consensus so we will punish you for it!". I don't see this as constructive in any sense.

Comment author: RichardKennaway 23 June 2012 07:48:41AM *  1 point [-]

The message I get from a downvote is "You are wrong!" or "What you said doesn't agree with the group consensus so we will punish you for it!".

The message I get from a downvote is "Someone did not like this." Obviously, that person is wrong. :-)

ETA: -2! Two people did not like this! I die. My brain turns into maggots which burst from my skull and multiply until they devour the world. All die. O the embarrassment.

Comment author: Jonathan_Graehl 22 June 2012 11:17:27PM 0 points [-]

I think downvotes are generally useful to other readers (though it's odd that the parent suggestion has one as I type), but I agree that people should be protected from the discouraging effect of an early, single downvote. So, why not postpone displaying the negative score to the user for long enough for possible upvotes to counter? (I don't volunteer to implement this).

Comment author: TimS 22 June 2012 11:51:46PM 6 points [-]

The fact that reinforcement can be very effective in changing frequency of behavior doesn't say that punishment should never be used to change the frequency of behavior.

Reinforcement is useful for increasing frequency of behavior. When decreased frequency of behavior is desired, punishment is the type of intervention to use. (For applied behavior analysis, those are the definitions of reinforcement and punishment).

Comment author: Jonathan_Graehl 22 June 2012 11:56:21PM 2 points [-]

Sure. Although I wasn't clear about this, I had in mind the common case of a non-punishing downvoter who simply disagrees with the comment (or wants to see less of its ilk) without saying why. In case punishment is the desired effect, you're right - immediate is better.

Comment author: wedrifid 23 June 2012 02:58:38AM *  0 points [-]

When decreased frequency of behavior is desired, punishment is the type of intervention to use.

Either punishment or extinction (no punishment, no reward).

Comment author: TheOtherDave 23 June 2012 01:43:11AM 4 points [-]

Be aware that some people upvote comments "back to zero" that they wouldn't otherwise upvote. (Some other people consider this bad practice.)

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