Chapter 172: Skinner’s Carrot

Chapter 172 -73: Skinner’s Carrot

The four of them fell silent, and a heavy atmosphere settled over the break room.

Once a discussion about the “true nature of the world” had begun, it was like a drop of ink in clear water—impossible to ever wash out completely.

Before they knew it, the sky beyond the floor-to-ceiling windows had shifted from pale gray to a deep, dusky blue-gray, the world slowly being devoured by twilight.

“Um…” Wen Xiao broke the silence.

“Actually, there was something else we needed to discuss this afternoon.”

The other three looked up at her, the daze from their recent discussion still lingering in their eyes.

“I’ve finished writing the smart contract logic for Rabbit Hole’s ‘Point Bidding System.’ In other words, our ‘Carrot Points’ can officially be launched.” Wen Xiao pushed her laptop screen toward the others.

At this news, the heavy atmosphere finally began to shift.

“It’s done? So fast?” Shi Zuozhou shot upright.

“This is the best news I’ve heard all day! Let’s forget all that philosophical nonsense for now and focus on getting what’s in front of us done.”

Looking at the small carrot icon on the screen, Yu Xian felt a little more grounded. He pushed the terrifying thoughts about fate and determinism to the back of his mind for now.

“Let’s launch it as soon as possible, then,” he said, making a snap decision.

“With points, we can better control the traffic flow within Rabbit Hole, suppressing the toxic audio files and boosting the safe ones—information that might even be lifesaving in the future.”

He paused, then continued,

“This isn’t just a nice-to-have anymore. It’s a must-have.”

“A must-have?” Shi Zuozhou asked, confused.

“Don’t we have plenty of nodes right now? The word is spreading, and everyone’s downloading our audio files.”

“That’s a false boom,” Yu Xian said, turning to face them.

“It’s true that we’ve attracted a ton of users in a short time with those audio resources. Everyone’s really enthusiastic about setting up nodes.”

His tone turned serious.

“But that enthusiasm is unsustainable. Most people will probably just close the software, or even uninstall it, after they’ve downloaded the scripts they want. After all, who’s going to keep a useless, battery-draining program running in the background? When that happens, tons of nodes will go offline, our network will fall into a death spiral, and it’ll collapse in an instant.”

“So… can these Carrot Points solve that problem?” Shao Yiyi asked, her voice tinged with the anxiety Yu Xian’s words had caused.

“It can,” Yu Xian said firmly.

“Because we’re going to turn Rabbit Hole into a ‘Skinner box.'”

“A Skinner box?” Shao Yiyi blinked. This was clearly another gap in her knowledge.

“It’s a very famous experimental apparatus in psychology,” Yu Xian explained.

“Skinner was a famous behavioral psychologist. He put a mouse in a box with a lever. If the mouse pressed the lever, food would drop down. The mouse would quickly learn to press the lever.”

Seeing Shao Yiyi’s confused expression, he switched to a simpler explanation.

“The food in this case is called a ‘Level 1 Enhancement Item.’ That refers to things that directly satisfy a physiological need, like food or water. Even the audio files everyone is downloading now fit this description; they all serve to satisfy some kind of desire.”

“Isn’t that a good thing? What’s the problem with that?” Shao Yiyi still didn’t understand.

“The problem with a Level 1 Enhancement Item,” Yu Xian’s tone shifted, “is severely diminishing marginal utility. Once they’ve downloaded the audio files, they’re like a mouse that’s full. It’s not hungry anymore, so it has no reason to seek more food.”

“That’s why you need a ‘Level 2 Enhancement Item,’ like money. You can’t eat or drink money itself. A person will stop eating when they’re full, but they’ll never think they’re earning too much money.”

“I get it!” Shi Zuozhou’s eyes lit up.

“This is just like that RPG I play. Even if I’m max level and have all the best gear, I still log in every day to run dungeons, do my dailies, and save up in-game gold.”

“Why?” Shao Yiyi asked, confused.

“If you have all the gear, what do you need gold for?”

“What if a new expansion comes out? What if there’s a new skin or a limited-edition mount? If I have gold on hand, I can be the first to get it! This ‘hoarding’ playstyle is even more addictive and exciting than getting the gear directly. Old Yu, is that the ‘Level 2 Enhancement Item’ you were talking about?”

“Exactly.” Yu Xian nodded, approving of Shi Zuozhou’s apt analogy.

“Our Carrots work the same way. We need to use this mechanism to instill a common understanding in all users: as long as you keep Rabbit Hole running in the background and contribute your idle bandwidth and storage space, you can continuously ‘mine’ Carrots.”

“I get it!” Shi Zuozhou became Mr. Know-It-All again.

“And we’ll tell all nodes and users that these Carrots, right now, mean higher priority and faster download speeds; and in the future, they might mean you can exchange them for rarer, more advanced resources and features!”

Yu Xian nodded.

“Right. As long as we establish this value system, even if they don’t want to download audio files right now, they’ll keep the software running in the background to ‘earn money,’ to be a ‘hoarder.’ That way, we won’t have to worry about the number of nodes, and the network will be stable.”

“Fighting human laziness with human greed,” Shao Yiyi said, slapping Wen Xiao’s thigh hard.

“Brother Cos! If you hadn’t studied physics and went into pyramid schemes… oh, I mean, business, you’d definitely be a master at it!”

Yu Xian gave a bitter smile and gestured to Wen Xiao that she could release the new version. In this world on the verge of collapse, this was perhaps one of the few things they could still do.