A clarification on celebrating victory

On LessWrong, Katja Grace reflects on celebrating achievements with rewards like treats. She addresses a common objection: if you can buy a treat whenever you want, what's the point? Her answer: the reward isn't really the incentive. It's a way to make an abstract accomplishment concrete and worth glorifying. The real motivation is winning itself — the satisfaction of achieving a goal. The prize commemorates that internal victory. If you've dismissed rewards as too simple to motivate you, Grace suggests reconsidering. The mechanism still works; the real win is internal, and the celebration just makes it real.

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