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polymathwannabe comments on LINK: In favor of niceness, community, and civilisation - Less Wrong Discussion

26 Post author: Solvent 24 February 2014 04:13AM

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Comment author: Protagoras 24 February 2014 09:07:23PM 5 points [-]

People seem to overestimate the effectiveness of playing dirty, though. Perhaps willingness to play dirty signals commitment, and I expect some of the time people are more interested in showing off their commitment than actually making progress toward the putative goal. But in any event, playing dirty has all sorts of costs (some discussed in this thread) which people seem to ignore or underestimate, and my only point is that it's a strategy to be employed only when it still seems like the best option even after all the costs and risks have been considered.

Comment author: polymathwannabe 24 February 2014 09:17:40PM 1 point [-]

I've been considering to precommit to this: if someone in a group I'm a part of plays dirty or uses blackmail, I'll delete all of his/her reputation points in my head, and impose a moratorium on when he/she can start earning reputation points with me again. I would do this regardless of the success of what he/she did to the group.

Is this wise?

Comment author: Coscott 25 February 2014 04:17:18AM 2 points [-]

It is perhaps not wise to have such an all or nothing reaction to something that is as hard to define as "plays dirty" or "uses blackmail."