• Septimaeus@infosec.pub
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    3 hours ago

    This is the way. If classical conditioning reliably alters human behavior, we know negative conditioning against the 0.1% will indeed work, but never as well as positive reinforcement. It’s only for lack of opportunity to reward the good that we resort to punishing the bad, so when opportunities to use positive reinforcement present themselves, jump on them!

    Concretely, if tomorrow the wealthiest of the world became avid philanthropists like Gates and divested as much as he has, the impact would be singular. It would feel like the first daybreak in human history. We’d still need to fix the systems that gave us monsters, but the friction preventing necessary reform would vanish. Encouraging this behavior is absolutely correct. Disregarding this behavior in order to exact personal vengeance makes it ever more unlikely to occur.

    Thank you for your forward-thinking, non-reactionary contribution.

    Edit: moved postscript