but the actual intuition in most people's heads is just to assign utility to the suffering of "bad people" in some proportion with how bad whatever they've done is.
Of course, for the incentives to work you need a precommitment to punish, but once the person has defected, that's done and punishing him no longer benefits you. Hence the requirement to assign utility to the suffering of bad people.
Oh, yeah, I see why, tbh I thought /u/DeVliegendeHollander was being weird in not seeing things that way, but I didn't want to typical-mind.
This thread is for asking any questions that might seem obvious, tangential, silly or what-have-you. Don't be shy, everyone has holes in their knowledge, though the fewer and the smaller we can make them, the better.
Please be respectful of other people's admitting ignorance and don't mock them for it, as they're doing a noble thing.
To any future monthly posters of SQ threads, please remember to add the "stupid_questions" tag.