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So what you're saying is ...? :) I have often wondered if we can turn gamification on its head, so we can optimize for engaging discussion instead of outrage?

So what you're saying is ...? :) I have often wondered if we can turn gamification on its head, so we can optimize for engaging discussion instead of outrage? There's a lot less money in that, so it'll get way less attention, but I wonder if it's doable? Of course you're still playing in a game theoretic landscape, so it'll be taken advantage of for sure, but it might still be better than this local minima we're in. Something as simple as a like button leads to this cascade of odd behaviour. HN seems to do ok with its voting scheme. I'd love to see some folks dive deep in this area.

csours 4y ago
I think authentic and engaging discussion requires a small audience. I'm reminded of an essay "Do things that don't scale"
- Minor49er 4y ago
  Why is a small audience a requirement?
  - csours 4y ago
    People interpret nuance differently. As the audience size increases, contention about nuance interpretation increases to the point where that overwhelms the original conversation.
    - Minor49er 4y ago
      Couldn't the conversation simply be between two people?
      - csours 4y ago
        One person is a small audience. In other words, yes. The original post was about social media. You can chat on social media platforms, but that's not what most people think of.
bckr 4y ago
> so we can optimize for engaging discussion instead of outrage The way to do this might be to engage people, who are so interested, in email threads. But that doesn't drive dopamine cycles in the same way.