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shminux comments on How habits work and how you may control them - Less Wrong
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Comments (76)
Drucker/Peters/Leboeuf:
The system should be aligned so that maximizing for what is visible maximizes for what is desirable. This is in large part because optimization systems which target what is visible are much more reliable than optimization systems which target what is invisible. (How would Kaj have noticed that a surprisingly low number of people were reading the post, except by that it had a surprisingly low karma?)
Personally, my goal is much more in the "maximize karma" camp than the "maximize readership" camp. The main reason for that besides the increased visibility of karma (both to myself and others) is that karma has sign.
I understand the vilibility->optimization effect and I, too, feel the pull. However, I often make commenting or posting decisions which I expect to be karma-suboptimal, and so do many others here. Or at least that's what I think I do. Much more often now than when I first started participating here. I assume that Kaj, with over 30k karma, would care even less about maximizing karma.
I certainly can't speak for Kaj, but I'd hesitate to assume that people with a lot of karma care less about getting more of it. After all, caring a lot about karma is likely to increase someone's chances of getting a lot of karma in the first place.
As do I- I try to keep my upvote percentage on recent comments high, and so sometimes will avoid controversial subjects (unless it's one of the controversial subjects that I have decided to always discuss, in which case I still try to comport myself in a way that minimizes downvotes), even though a +3-2 comment would result in an additional point of total karma.
But the primary impact karma-maximization has on me is it urgifies generating valuable content for LessWrong. I finished my Decision Analysis sequence as quickly as I did because doing so put me at the top of the Top Contributors, 30 Days list (which was only 5 people back in 2011), and if I had delayed the first post would have slipped to more than 30 days ago, and I wouldn't have had enough to leap over lukeprog. I kept notes and wrote book reviews when before I would have just read books. And so on.
Huh, I guess some of us are rather more competitive than others... I treat the 30-day karma list about the same way I treat the points earned by my favorite sports team: something to enjoy when it's up, but not something to base my decisions on.
I tend to only use competitiveness as an instrumental goal, and so it only shows up sometimes.
I think this should change when you are on your favorite sports team, or you're not playing sports correctly :P
That's my point, I am not playing for the team Karma, though I am a fan.