Rationality Quotes September 2012

Jayson_Virissimo

Here's the new thread for posting quotes, with the usual rules:

Please post all quotes separately, so that they can be voted up/down separately. (If they are strongly related, reply to your own comments. If strongly ordered, then go ahead and post them together.)
Do not quote yourself
Do not quote comments/posts on LW/OB
No more than 5 quotes per person per monthly thread, please.

Here's the new thread for posting quotes, with the usual rules:

Please post all quotes separately, so that they can be voted up/down separately. (If they are strongly related, reply to your own comments. If strongly ordered, then go ahead and post them together.)
Do not quote yourself
Do not quote comments/posts on LW/OB
No more than 5 quotes per person per monthly thread, please.

People respond to incentives. Especially loss-related incentives. I do not give homeless people nickels even though I can afford to give a nearly arbitrary number of homeless people nickels. The set of people with karma less than five will be outright unable to reply - the set of people with karma greater than five will just be disincentivized, and that's still something.

The prior probability of someone being able to explain negative-value Will_Newsome's comments in a way that provides value for LW readers is already epsilon. Even without the disincentives.

I think that people less responding to intentionally meaningless comments is a good thing. Therefore, trivial disincentives for doing this are a good thing. Therefore, removing them in this specific situation is a bad thing.