Btw, I think maybe I should have said explicitly: by "a cost" I mean like "a deadweight loss of life experience", not that people should literally pay in sats to block, or be fined if they're blocked by others.

A danger to talk about "costs" on a site that's experimenting with economics and incentives ;)

Yup. If I block you, esp with the algorithm I described, you suffer because you get less distribution for your thoughts (I don't see them and won't interact with them) and I suffer bc I don't see your stuff or the interactions that result from them.

If you are literally worthless and produce nothing but noise (which is true of one of the people I have in mind), then my "suffering" is nearly at zero for blocking you -- the only loss to me is that some non-worthless person might reply to you, and I'd lose out on that, which would be unfortunate, but maybe a price worth paying.