Rational Ritual

What Hacker News says

1. lukiferDec 2023
   Shares at least some overlap with a "ritual of common knowledge": https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1116212.Rational_Ritual
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2. salmonellaeaterJul 2017
   Assuming McClure follows through by 1) refraining from harassing any more people and 2) making things right with the particular people he hurt, it doesn't matter whether he is sincere or not. How would you even tell what's in his mind? What matters is that he has changed the common knowledge of what behavior he publicly endorses (or in this case, condemns) [1]. His apology is proof of sorts that he will follow a better standard of behavior, because now he stands to be treated as a liar and hypocrite on top of the normal punishment if he backslides.

   From our side, if we as a community continue to denigrate him even after he has done the most he possibly could to change the moral consensus on this topic for the better, we're going to discourage others from apologizing and drive them to deny. Why bear the cost of admitting you're wrong if there's no benefit?

   [1] I highly recommend Rational Ritual: Culture, Coordination, and Common Knowledge by Michael Suk-Young Chwe for a game-theoretic exploration of topics like this. http://press.princeton.edu/titles/9998.html

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3. salmonellaeaterSep 2014
   There's an excellent book called Rational Ritual[1][2][3] which develops this idea much more fully. The thesis is that common knowledge (I know something, and I know everyone else knows it too) is very powerful and rationally drives people's behavior.

   One of the arguments in the book revolves around the absurd pricing of advertising during big public events like the Super Bowl. If advertisers weren't concerned about the common knowledge aspect of their messages, they would air their ads when the cost per viewer is lowest. And you do see this with non-social goods, which tend to be advertised during off hours. But companies producing social goods like beer pay much more per viewer for prime-time and Super Bowl slots in order to get their product into the cultural zeitgeist. If you see something in a Super Bowl ad, you know most other people have seen it too.

   [1] http://press.princeton.edu/titles/9998.html

   [2] PDF of the original 2001 manuscript: http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/polisci/cpworkshop/papers/Chwe1.p...

   [3] http://www.amazon.com/Rational-Ritual-Culture-Coordination-K...

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