4 ms·

But that's the thing -- reputations (and tangentially, gossip) are great ways to warn you away from potential conflicts you might encounter. If you're scared to

But that's the thing -- reputations (and tangentially, gossip) are great ways to warn you away from potential conflicts you might encounter. If you're scared to date so and so because you know someone else who dated so and so and so and so was mean/abusive, well, you know better. If you're thinking of hiring someone, but they've rage-quit every previous employer they've worked for, then perhaps you know better than to take on that risk. There is no logical reason for doing this with celebrities who are not in our lives, perhaps other than to maintain the habit of gossip? If I were going to work for a Musk-owned company, perhaps I'd think better of it knowing what I do, but if he wakes up tomorrow and gives ten million dollars to a charity I support, I will support that action, without having to adopt anything more than that action in my praise. And for what it's worth, I wasn't complaining about human nature in the previous post, just pointing out that I don't understand it.

Eisenstein 4y ago
> There is no logical reason for doing this with celebrities who are not in our lives I don't think we have figured out how to segregate these because psychology is what it is and technology brings people into our lives as if we know them even when we don't. There was never a way to hear about every thought someone had or what they said or did when you didn't know them until the advent of at least the printing press. Our feeble minds, which arguably don't even make most decisions consciously, haven't caught up yet.
- bmelton 4y ago
  Perfectly sussed. Hard enough to fathom completely accurate information from items and people we have close access to, much less everyone and every thing.
themacguffinman 4y ago
Reputations aren't just signals of who to avoid, they're also signals of who to punish. Using game theory terminology: in a society of cooperators, defectors must be punished, otherwise other cooperators see defectors get away with bad behavior and think it's okay to defect as well. In this case, Elon is a "defector" who mistreats others and constantly lies.

Eisenstein 4y ago

> There is no logical reason for doing this with celebrities who are not in our lives I don't think we have figured out how to segregate these because psychology is what it is and technology brings people into our lives as if we know them even when we don't. There was never a way to hear about every thought someone had or what they said or did when you didn't know them until the advent of at least the printing press. Our feeble minds, which arguably don't even make most decisions consciously, haven't caught up yet.

bmelton 4y ago
Perfectly sussed. Hard enough to fathom completely accurate information from items and people we have close access to, much less everyone and every thing.

themacguffinman 4y ago

Reputations aren't just signals of who to avoid, they're also signals of who to punish. Using game theory terminology: in a society of cooperators, defectors must be punished, otherwise other cooperators see defectors get away with bad behavior and think it's okay to defect as well. In this case, Elon is a "defector" who mistreats others and constantly lies.