From 5d6231c31055c07be436383f31af147225605a08 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: "Zack M. Davis" Date: Tue, 16 Sep 2025 17:28:58 -0700 Subject: [PATCH] drafting "The Relationship Between Social Punishment and Shared Maps" --- ...tween_social_punishment_and_shared_maps.md | 27 +++++++++++++++++++ 1 file changed, 27 insertions(+) create mode 100644 the_relationship_between_social_punishment_and_shared_maps.md diff --git a/the_relationship_between_social_punishment_and_shared_maps.md b/the_relationship_between_social_punishment_and_shared_maps.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..1b2d1b0 --- /dev/null +++ b/the_relationship_between_social_punishment_and_shared_maps.md @@ -0,0 +1,27 @@ +# The Relationship Between Social Punishment and Shared Maps + +A _punishment_ is when one agent (the punisher) imposes costs on another (the punished) in order to affect the punished's behavior. In a Society where thieves are predictably imprisoned and lashed, people will predictably steal less than they otherwise would, for fear of being imprisoned and lashed. + +Punishment is often imposed by formal institutions like police and judicial systems, but need not be. A controversial orator who finds a rock thrown through her window can be said to have been punished in the same sense: in a Society where controversial orators predictably get rocks thrown through their windows, people will predictably engage in less controversial speech, for fear of getting rocks thrown through their windows. + +In the most basic forms of punishment, which we might term "physical", the nature of the cost imposed on the punished is straightforward. No one likes being stuck in prison, or being lashed, or having a rock thrown through her window. + +But subtler forms of punishment are possible. Humans are an intensely social species: we depend on friendship and trade with each other in order to survive and thrive. Withholding friendship or trade can be its own form of punishment, no less devastating than a whip or a rock. This is called "social punishment". + +Effective social punishment usually faces more complexities of implementation than physical punishment, because of the greater number of participants needed in order for the punishment to have the desired deterrent effect. Throwing a rock only requires one person to have a rock; effectively depriving a punishment-target of friendship may require many potential friends to withhold their beneficience. + +How is the collective effort of social punishment to be coordinated? If human Societies were hive-minds featuring an Authority that could broadcast commands to be reliably obeyed by the hive's members, then there would be no problem. If the hive-queen wanted to socially punish [Mallory](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alice_and_Bob#Cast_of_characters), she could just issue a command, "We're giving Mallory the silent treatment now" and her majesty's will would be done. + +No such Authority exists. But while human Societies lack a collective will, they often have something much closer to collective beliefs: shared maps that (hopefully) reflect the territory. No one can observe enough or think quickly enough to form our own independent beliefs about everything. Most of what we think we know comes from others, who in turn learned it from others. Furthermore, one of our most decision-relevant classes of belief concern the character and capabilities of other people with whom we might engage in friendship or trade relations. + +As a consequence, social punishment is typically implemented by means of _reputation_: spreading beliefs about the punishment-target that imply that benefits should be withheld from the target, rather than by directly coordinating explicit sanctions. Social punishers don't say, "We're giving Mallory the silent treatment now." (Because, who's _we_?) They simply say that Mallory is stupid, dishonest, cruel, ugly, _&c_. These are beliefs that, if true, imply that people will do worse for themselves by helping Mallory. (If Mallory is stupid, she won't be as capable of repaying favors. If she's dishonest, she might lie _to you_. If she's cruel ... _&c._) Negative-valence beliefs about Mallory double as "social punishments", because if those beliefs appear on shared maps, the predictable consequence will be that Mallory will be deprived of friendship and trade opportunities. + +Thus, we notice a critical difference between social punishments and physical punishments. _Beliefs can be true or false._ A rock or a jail cell is not a belief. You can't say that the rock is false, but you can say it's false that Mallory is stupid. + +The linkage between collective beliefs and social punishment creates distortions that are important to track. People have an incentive to lie to prevent negative-valence beliefs about themselves from appearing on shared maps (even if the beliefs are true). People who have enemies whom they hate have an incentive to lie to insert negative-valence beliefs about their enemies onto the shared map (even if the beliefs are false). The stakes are high: an erroneously thrown rock only affects its target, but an erroneous map affects everyone using that map to make decisions about the world (including decisions about throwing rocks). + +Intimidated by the stakes, some actors in Society who understand the similarity between social and physical punishment, but don't understand the relationship between social punishment and shared maps, might try to take steps to limit social punishment. It would be bad, they reason, if people were trapped in a cycle of mutual recrimination of physical punishments. Nobody wins if I throw a rock through your window to retaliate for you throwing a rock through my window, _&c._. Better to mutually forsee that and just have no one throw any rocks at all. + +They imagine that they can apply the same reasoning to social punishments without paying any costs to the accuracy of shared maps, that we can account for social standing and status in our communication without sacrificing any truth-seeking. + +It is an illusion. -- 2.53.0