This is a special post for quick takes by Linda Linsefors. Only they can create top-level comments. Comments here also appear on the Quick Takes page and All Posts page.
1)
“someone complimented me out of the blue, and it was a really good compliment, and it was terrible, because maybe I secretly fished for it in some way I can’t entirely figure out, and also now I feel like I owe them one, and I never asked for this, and I’m so angry!”
From Book Review: Sadly, Porn - by Scott Alexander (astralcodexten.com)
2)
A blogpost I remember but can't find. The author talks about the benefits of favour economy. E.g. his friend could help him move at much lower total cost, than the market price for moving. This is because the market has much higher transaction cots than favours among friends. The blogpost also talks about how you only get to participate in the favour economy (and get it's benefits) if you understand that you're expected to return the favours, i.e. keep track of the social ledger, and make sure to pay your depts. Actually you should be overpaying when returning a favour, and now they owe you, and then they over pay you back, resulting in a virtual cycle of helping each other out. The author mentions being in a mutually beneficial "who can do the biggest favour" competition with his neighbour.
3)
And EA friend who told me that they experienced over and over in the EA community that they helped people (e.g. letting them stay at their house for free) but where denied similar help in return.
4)
A youtuber (who where discussing this topic) mentioned their grand mother who always gives everyone in the family lots of food to take home, and said that she would probably be offended if offered something in return for this help.
I think there are pros and cons that comes with internally tracking a social ledger for favours. I also think there are things that makes this practice better or worse.
On receiving compliments
In the past, when ever I got a compliment, I felt obligated to give one back, so instead of taking it in, I started thinking as fast I as could what I could compliment back. At some point (not sure when) I decided this was dumb. Now if I get a compliment I instead take a moment to take it in, and thank the other person. I wish others would do this more. If I give someone a compliment, I don't want them to feel obligated to complement me back.
On paying forward instead of paying back
Some people experience the EA community as being super generous when it comes to helping each other out. But other have the opposite experience (see point 3 above). I've personally experienced both. Partly this is because EA is large and diverse, but partly I think it comes from thronging out the social ledger. I think the typical EA attitude is that you're not expected to pay back favours, you're expected to pay it forward, into what ever cause area you're working on. People are not even attempting to balancing the ledger of inter-personal favours, and therefore there will be imbalance, some people receiving more and some giving more.
I think there are lots of other pay-it-forward communities. For example any system where the older "generation" is helping the younger "generation". This can be parents raising their kids, or a marshal arts club where the more experienced are helping train the less experienced, etc.
I think a many of these are pretty good at paying the favour givers in status points. In comparison I expect EA to not be very good at giving status for helping out others in the community, because EA has lots of other things to allocate status points to too.
How to relate to the ledger
I think the social ledger defiantly have it's use, even among EA types. You need friends you can turn to for favours, which is only possible in the long term if you also return the favours, or you'll end up draining your friends.
In theory we could have grant supported community builders act as support for everyone else, with no need to pay it back. But I rather not. I do not want to trust the stability of my social network to the whims of the EA funding system.
To have a healthy positive relation with the social ledger,
There are also obviously situations where keeping track of some leger don't make sense, and you should not do it, e.g. one-off encounters. And sometimes paying forward instead of paying back is the correct social norm.
Give your favours freely when it's cheap for you to do so, and when you don't mind if the favour is not paid back. Sometimes someone will return the favour.
The pre installed brain soft where
This probably varies a lot from person to person, and as all the mental traits it will be due to some mix of genetics and culture, and random other stuff.
For me, I'm not choosing whether to keep a social ledger or not, my brain just does that. I'm choosing how to interact with it and tweak it's function, by choosing what to pay attention to.
The way I experience this is that I feel gratitude when I'm in debt, and resentment when someone else have too much unacknowledged debt to me.
...thanks for reading my ramblings. I'll end here, since I'm out of time, and I think I've hit diminishing return on thinking about this...
Instead of tracking who is in debt to who, I think you should just track the extent to which you’re in a favouring-exchanging relationship with a given person. Less to remember and runs natively on your brain.