# Repairing the Effort Asymmetry

Sometimes, you will say a thing!

You: "Proposition A."

A seems to you to be obviously true. It accords with your experience, doesn't violate any of the rules and laws of reality, makes sense with the rest of your model of the world. You'd like to move on *from* A to the actual more interesting conversation you want to have; A is just some necessary groundwork.

Sometimes, someone else will be DEEPLY SKEPTICAL of A. After all, different people have [very different experiences of the world](https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/10/02/different-worlds/)! Bubbles exist, and cultures are not universal.

Or perhaps it's not that they're deeply skeptical of A so much as that their brain reflexively transformed A into a *B* of which they are deeply skeptical (and they don't even notice that their B is not the same as your A).

Them: "What? How do you know that's true? Can you cite several specific examples? The best example *I* could come up with was \[X\], and since \[X\] is clearly ridiculous, your point is invalid!"

And sometimes, you sit there, **absolutely confident** that you could, in fact, spend 20 hours and 10,000 words to clear up all of the misunderstandings, and lay out all of the arguments in painstaking slow detail.

But you don't *want* to do that! You weren't *trying* to convince Every Rando of the truth of A, and you don't much care if This Rando doesn't get it, or runs off into the woods with their strawman.

But unfortunately, their misinterpretations can anchor others and skew the conversation, and a dangling unanswered "Cite specific examples?" comment accrues upvotes pretty quickly, and generates oft-undeserved skepticism through sheer representativeness. Surely if you *had* specific examples, you'd give them! Since you didn't give them, you must not have them!

(This, of course, ignores the fact that engagement is costly and effortful. Laying out thoughts takes time. Painstakingly correcting subtle misunderstandings is the work of hours or days or even weeks, involving a lot of getting into the weeds.)

And you didn't *want* to get into the weeds. You just wanted to make A explicit, so you could move on to the actually interesting conversation that takes place one level higher. You can see the ways that they subtly went wrong, and could, if you wanted, gently deconfuse them, one thought at a time, but you don't want to *have* to do that, as a prerequisite for having any interesting conversations at all.

It's one thing if you're feeling generous, and charitable, and are willing to donate your time and effort to laboriously untangle someone else's thoughts; it's another thing entirely if you *must* satisfy every sealion, out of your own spoon supply.

Questions and strawmen are cheap!

Introducing: **Pay Me To Make You Less Wrong.**

Users signed up for PMTMYLW have a toggle in their replies; switching that toggle to the "on" position adds the following automatic message to any comment subthread:

> This user is now responding to you at a rate of $0.20\*K/word, where K is the value of their strong upvote. If you do not consent to pay $0.20\*K/word, you may instead retract the comment you have socially coerced them to reply to.

Essentially, PMTMYLW repairs the effort asymmetry, in which it is much easier to flood the airwaves with asymmetric demands for rigor, or misleading strawmen, than it is to *meet* those demands or *refute* those strawmen. It makes it *no longer costless* for a given user to bog the conversation down, and rewards those who unbog it.

Now, users who take the time to effortfully deconfuse those around them will be financially compensated for their contributions, at market-rate-times-their-karma-as-a-LW-user, and the costs of soul-sucking, motivation-draining nitpickery will be shifted back onto the shoulders of those who created them.

Happy April Fool's Day!