Eugine_Nier comments on [Link] Low-Hanging Poop - Less Wrong

36 Post author: GLaDOS 16 October 2013 08:51PM

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Comment author: Eugine_Nier 20 October 2013 05:29:25AM 1 point [-]

but rewarding is clearly better, of course.

What do you mean by this? Rewarding everyone who fails to exhibit bad behavior? This has two problems:

1) Since most people behave well most of the time, this gets expensive quickly.

2) Human psychology is such that if there is a regularly given reward, people will simply readjust their baseline and thus will perceive being deprived of it as a punishment anyway.

Comment author: hyporational 20 October 2013 09:02:55AM 1 point [-]

I think you could have done the steelmanning yourself, but here you go:

1) Rewards can be social, in other words virtually free. You don't have to reward all good behaviour, in fact that probably makes it less effective. (like you already said yourself?)

2) Here's how I would do it: Always reward exceptionally good behaviour, sparingly reward ordinarily good behaviour.

This doesn't mean punishment should be never used, but it's difficult to build a positive relationship with someone you're punishing constantly.

Comment author: Eugine_Nier 21 October 2013 12:36:06AM *  -1 points [-]

sparingly reward ordinarily good behaviour.

Of course, that means that unless you also punish bad behavior, it won't stand out from the ordinary good behavior.

but it's difficult to build a positive relationship with someone you're punishing constantly.

It's also difficult to build a positive relationship with someone who is constantly engaging in bad behavior.

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