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They're getting less uneconomic as the stakes increase though. We refer to that as "saliency" in experimental economics. Oftentimes experiments fail to find results because the design didn't create a big enough payoff spread between the different actions.
If I could earn another kilosat by zapping better, I'm more inclined to make the effort to do so when that kilosat is worth more.
Ah -- that seems plausible. I might incorporate that into something like:
  1. the psych factors of all the exuberant feels lead to people zapping more
  2. this gives them the chance to observe economic payoff matrices
  3. increased value makes those payoffs salient enough to care about
If that's the generative model, it's not obvious how to realistically pry apart #1 from #2 and #3. You could run an experiment but it would be unnatural-seeming.
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Numbers 2 and 3 lead researchers to identify this problem. A bunch of experiments were putting people in unusual situation that nonetheless had very distinct theoretical predictions. However, due to funding constraints, the payoff differences were only like a nickel.
The participants quite rationally didn't find it worth their time to think through what was going on nor did they notice a material difference in the payouts they were getting so they couldn't learn anything anyway.
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