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Anti-social Punishment

358 points by type0 8y ago

twoquestions 8y ago
So how would one attempt to do good (start a business/charity/what have you) in such an environment? I can feel my part of the United States inching slowly to this kind of social norm, is there anything regular people can do to counteract this?
- wetpaws 8y ago
  Based on 200 years history of Russia, you don't. You run away to places not yet contaminated.
  - chongli 8y ago
    Exactly. When the cooperators all leave, the free riders suffer the collapse of the system. Only then can a 'reboot' stand a chance of succeeding.
  - paganel 8y ago
    On a more upbeat tone what has usually worked for countries like Russia (and what usually worked and still works for my Eastern-European country, too) was to set up a system of patronage, i.e. a system where you share part of your gains to those immediately bellow you in return for their service/trust, they in turn should share their gains to those bellow them and so on and so forth. The key for this system to work for more than one generation is that all parts involved should keep their end of the bargain, meaning that you should be there for the person depending on you, financially and otherwise, whenever they need you, and in turn they should also keep their loyalty to you, no matter the circumstances. I know that what I basically described is basically just a feudal system, and I can also say that I don't like it in principle, but I'm also well aware that this system has been one of the most resilient social systems over the last two millennia (at least), present in one way or another on all populated continents under all types of governments (democracy, monarchy, tyranny etc), and as such it shouldn't be discredited.
    - fjsolwmv 8y ago
      What's wrong with feudalism as you described it?
      - paganel 8y ago
        Historically it has been seen as contradictory to the main principles of Illuminism.
        fjsolwmv 8y ago
        How so? Illuminism/Enlightenment contradictory to tyrrany, not feudalism. A monarchy can be enlightened, and healthy nations can be ruled by a monarch. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consent_of_the_governed https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consent_of_the_governed
        hannasanarion 8y ago
        Monarchy and feudalism are not equivalent: it's totally possible to have a feudal republic. Enlightenment was a response to feudalism. The fundamental thesis of enlightenment thought is that there are inalienable rights shared by every human being, and that unearned obligations and privileges, like those seen in feudal patronage cultures, are incompatible with just society.
        nercht12 8y ago
        The doesn't really counter feudalism though. Perhaps in mentality/ideology, yes, but in practice, it's possible for people to agree to such a system and be content with it. We do it all the time in a capitalist society, except here it's called a "corporation", and the "barons" are called execs of "subsidiary companies".
        hannasanarion 8y ago
        The corporation is not a person, and executives do not have privileges and rights greater than any other person by birthright. In a feudal system, you owe tribute to your liege by virtue of the fact that they were born of a higher rank than you and you were born within their demesne. If you don't comply, or if you try to find a different lord, you get killed. Feudal is not another word for economic inequality.
  - bitL 8y ago
    ...and then contaminate them with residues of your cultural anti-social meta-algorithms, shifting them towards resembling the environment you escaped, as some things "were just easier".
- mercutio2 8y ago
  The US used to stylize itself a high trust society. I’m not sure how much that was a fantasy dependent on horrific repression’s from slavery to Jim Crow, and how much it actually adhered even amongst groups of people that weren’t based on racial exclusion. Regardless, I worry for US culture. Trust in institutions seems to be at an all time low; institutions take generations to build, we won’t get them back easily or quickly.
  - PKop 8y ago
    It might have been more high trust because it was less culturally diverse. http://archive.boston.com/news/globe/ideas/articles/2007/08/05/the_downside_of_diversity/ http://archive.boston.com/news/globe/ideas/articles/2007/08/...
    - bilbo0s 8y ago
      The US was always diverse though. Just maybe not so much culturally. I mean, sure, everyone that a given person was likely to see spoke english, ate chicken, and went to some form of Christian church on Sunday. BUT, some of the people were white, some were native american, some were black, down in Texas area you even had hispanics. So the US was pretty diverse. Unless we're not counting racial diversity?
      - dx87 8y ago
        Yeah, I don't think racial diversity counts for the trust issue. Obviously there are some people that won't trust someone based on their race, but it seems like most groups are willing to accept anyone as long as they follow cultural norms; skin color just seems to be a quick proxy for "they look different, so they're probably culturally different". Just watch the aftermath of a local football team winning a big game. It doesn't matter if you're rich or poor, black or white, everyone in the city celebrates together.
        pickleman 8y ago
        That's not exactly a time of stress. Prisons aren't divided by favorite football team. There's also the lunchroom test.
- l_t 8y ago
  I see this as a cultural problem, with a cultural solution. If you think about "free riders" versus "cooperators" as a dichotomy, you won't find a solution. Everyone is both a "free rider" and a "cooperator", depending on social context. The issue is that our social fabric itself may be incentivizing people towards long-term destructive patterns. So, how do we fix it? IMO, the best any one person can do is try to create an environment where people feel safe to cooperate. I believe human nature is fundamentally cooperative in large groups, but we are often "forced" into a competitive track by a lack of resources or other external pressures. For example, many US workplaces pit employees against each other. It's perceived that there are too many workers for a limited number of jobs, so workers feel forced to compete for their "slot." If there was less communal anxiety about being fired, more individuals would feel comfortable to cooperate with their coworkers instead of competing. Ofc, this is an insanely complex issue, so that's just a tiny facet, and I'm sure some of the points are debatable. But I honestly believe that "taking care of people" is one of the key ways to achieve more collaboration.
  - taurath 8y ago
    A sad aside is that if you want to force cooperation among a populace, the most effective way is to give them a common enemy to fight against. To effectively do it with taking care of people, you need a social/cultural contract - but if people are unlikely to enter into one, being distrustful in the first place of anyone proposing such a thing, its a very hard problem - you have a prisoners dilemma which pits the zero sum game players against the win-win, and it only takes one zero sum to defeat the win-wins.
jpfed 8y ago
"Why do you have to make us look bad?"
mercutio2 8y ago
The toy games described, the variance in different countries, and especially the explanation of the psychology that might be at play here is startling. I am excited to be able to add this to my toolbox of ways to understand public goods and their interplay with the surrounding culture.
- 52-6F-62 8y ago
  My thoughts exactly. Except I'm excited/not excited. It's bittersweet, if that's appropriate. It was definitely a compelling read, and I'm sure I'll end up thinking about it often.
lordnacho 8y ago
I wonder how much of this result is self-perception. For instance, people in Denmark are constantly told what a trusting society they live in, and that that trust is part of the reason why they are so wealthy. So a researcher comes by with an obviously contrived game, and the Danes play like they are supposed to. For the same reason I wonder about the periodic happiness survey that makes headlines each year.
- pjc50 8y ago
  Self-perception of norms is culture, surely? Society is, after all, socially constructed.
  - lordnacho 8y ago
    But the question is how do people play the game when they're not playing a game? Pretty hard to answer. You'd have to look at some sort of natural experiment and adjust for a bunch of factors.
    - cirgue 8y ago
      Agreed. All ‘commons’-style games are inherently iterative to infinity from the point of view of most actors, and that has game-theoretic implications that aren’t really present in a lab, to say nothing of the fact that communication is a constant backdrop for all of them in the real world.
- emilfihlman 8y ago
  >So a researcher comes by with an obviously contrived game, and the Danes play like they are supposed to. Wtf? How is it a contrived game in any way? It's an extremely nice indicator of how developed the place is. Trusting and equality are hugely important factors so you start with that, as is logical. If someone freerides, you punish them. It's the real world example of tit-for-tat strategy, which is (apparently almost) the optimal one.
  - lordnacho 8y ago
foxhop 8y ago
If you find this surprising you should check out "The Ugly Indian" TED talk. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=tf1VA5jqmRo https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=tf1VA5jqmRo
jstanley 8y ago
I don't think the explanation covers it. Wanting to punish people who cooperate with the state (because the state just takes everything away) doesn't imply wanting to punish people who cooperate in the contrived example game where the game does not take anything away. Unless OP means to imply that people can't mentally separate the machinations of the state from the rules of a game, I don't think the explanation is satisfactory. (Although I don't have a better explanation myself).
- adambard 8y ago
  > Unless OP means to imply that people can't mentally separate the machinations of the state from the rules of a game I think this is pretty much it. Behavior is learned. The participants were playing the game in a way that was irrational when viewed in isolation, but natural in the context of their lives. If the commons takes more than it gives, it becomes irrational to participate. This tendency persists and spreads over time and people and eventually crystallizes into an aspect of morality, where collaborating with the (exploitative or oppressive) commons is viewed with suspicion and distrust (think "Party Officials"). Eventually this habit becomes so ingrained that it emerges even during simple games.
- stickfigure 8y ago
  Unless OP means to imply that people can't mentally separate the machinations of the state from the rules of a game Yes, I think that's exactly it. Lifelong behavior is internalized, subconscious, and incredibly persistent.
  - theptip 8y ago
    Agreed -- humans aren't reassessing the utility of a given pattern of action (e.g. group cooperation vs. selfish behaviour) every time they engage in it, they are building mental heuristics that permit quick decisions without re-evaluating the priors (system 1 vs. system 2 thinking, if you will). Under that model, it's expected that humans would have a similar attitude to group/commons cooperation in a game as they would in their real-world interactions. Taking the next step from this observation -- I wonder how much meta-level discussion would be required to break this tendency? Could we apply such meta-level discussion to the real-world, too, and improve cooperation in the societies where these old strategies perhaps don't apply as much now?
ryandrake 8y ago
Reminds me of the Ultimatum Game experiment[1]. 1: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultimatum_game https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultimatum_game
sometime 8y ago
Could someone summarize this for people with reading difficulties (and for karma)?
- twoquestions 8y ago
  Most Americans want to punish people when they harm the public good, but some cultures (especially former Communist countries) punish people that help the public good for some reason. There's more speculation on why that is in the comments, but as always be careful reading those.
  - Shaddox 8y ago
    I'm eastern european so I hope you don't mind me chipping in my opinion as a reply to you. I just simply don't trust the 'public good', aka the government. When I'm looking at my payslip, 46% goes to the state in the form of taxes. Out of all that's left, no matter if I save or spend, at least 19% of it will go to the government again in the form of VAT. A lot more if I want to become an entrepreneur or buy something big like a house or a car. I pay a lot in taxes. A lot of people pay a lot in taxes, yet things have always been the same. Add in the political scandals that happen pretty much on a weekly basis: money siphoning or laundering, weird law bills, election fraud etc. and it's easy to see why people are distrustful of the government.
- adamch 8y ago
  In game-theory experiments, you can be selfish or altruistic. If being selfish wins, people act selfish. If you add a way to punish players, the altruistic punish the selfish, then people stop playing selfishly. OR SO IT WOULD SEEM. In some cultures, the selfish punish the altruistic! This goes against expectations and is counter-productive. The author then explains, based on their experience in a formerly-communist state, why people punish the altruistic. TLDR because the altruistic government was horrible, and stealing from the commons was the right thing to do by your family.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- 8y ago
Nasrudith 8y ago
I suspect sexual selection is partially to blame for this behavior subliminally. People who are "better" are a threat to finding good mates and a source of envy and thus despised.
gammateam 8y ago
Hm I thought that conclusion was interesting, they should try this in any US ghetto then, instead of just Boston for their check-the-box US representation. I think it would have similar outcomes as the Ostblock countries, and less similarities with "The West and its strong rule of law"
- mfringel 8y ago
  But that's not what happens. I recommend reading "A Framework for Understanding Poverty" by Ruby Payne. It's a really insightful book on the cycle of poverty and the incentives at work... anti-social punishment really isn't part of it.
- bilbo0s 8y ago
  I think it would be even further along the axis of cooperation. I happened to be in Detroit for some work in the late 90's. I took the opportunity to do some volunteering and saw some really weird things. Like farms that were basically squatting in collapsed buildings out in certain areas of the city. Basically, "secret" farms, that were secret to no one in the area, and nearly everyone was using. (Both planting and harvesting.) How anything got coordinated was beyond me? That said, one thing they did have a handle on was who had done what, and people would argue when one of the "freeloaders" for lack of a better term, came along. (I know. They were ALL freeloaders, as it was HIGHLY doubtful in my mind that any of them owned that property. But you know what I mean.) I didn't really know the terms "pro-social" punishment, and "anti-social" punishment. But these guys were FIRMLY in the "pro-social" punishment camp. And I got the very real sense that you just didn't mess with that.
  - somebodythere 8y ago
    Another way to look at it is that none of them were freeloaders, as all (or most) of them were making constructive use of the property.
phkahler 8y ago
While reading I kept thinking that cooperating in the game has a tendency to equalize everyone in terms of savings. If everyone has very little, someone with something may feel he's a bit ahead and cooperation would effectively erode that savings. This is of course just speculation on my part but it's what came to mind. Kind of like how people making a bit above minimum wage (even in the US) resent the idea of raising minimum wage because in some ways it puts them at the bottom.
fjsolwmv 8y ago
It's a good time to remember that the replication crisis in social science still exists even if when a result confirms your preconceived notions, and that the bulk of the article is speculative brainstorming of hypotheses, not research.
Tade0 8y ago
A quote from the comment section: I'm surprised nobody proposed : "This person is promoting a social norm more stringent than my current behavior, I'll whack him.". The part about promoting social norms is accurate. Interestingly enough it translates to other areas of life making people fear things like "the promotion of homosexuality". I guess societies that in the past were forcefully transformed tend to be conservative.
- escherplex 8y ago
  Interesting last point: who where a sizable liberal faction in Roman Empire around the year 300? Answer: early Christians, the same group with fanatical penchants who mercilessly eviscerated the Alexandrian mathematician/philosopher Hypatia. Under Constantine, Christianity became a recognized religion of Rome, with Constantine one of its chief advocates. Curiously, who are the most conservative block today?
  - 394549 8y ago
    > the same group with fanatical penchants who mercilessly eviscerated the Alexandrian mathematician/philosopher Hypatia. IIRC, that's a bit of a myth. According to Wikipedia, she was murdered due to a political power struggle in Alexandria: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypatia#Death https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypatia#Death: > Socrates Scholasticus presents Hypatia's murder as entirely politically motivated[95] and makes no mention of any role that Hypatia's paganism might have played in her death.[95] Instead, he reasons that "she fell a victim to the political jealousy which at that time prevailed. This is also interesting: > ...Hypatia['s] sudden death not only left her legacy unprotected, but also triggered a backlash against her entire ideology.[146] Hypatia, with her tolerance towards Christian students and her willingness to cooperate with Christian leaders, had hoped to establish a precedent that Neoplatonism and Christianity could coexist peacefully and cooperatively.[147] Instead, her death and the subsequent failure by the Christian government to impose justice on her killers destroyed that notion entirely[147] and led future Neoplatonists such as Damascius to consider Christian bishops as "dangerous, jealous figures who were also utterly unphilosophical."[147] Hypatia became seen as a "martyr for philosophy"[147] and her murder led philosophers to adopt attitudes that increasingly emphasized the pagan aspects of their belief systems[148] and helped create a sense of identity for philosophers as pagan traditionalists set apart from the Christian masses.[149] Thus, while Hypatia's death did not bring an end to Neoplatonist philosophy as a whole, Watts argues that it did bring an end to her particular variety of it.[150] > Shortly after Hypatia's murder, a forged anti-Christian letter appeared under her name.[151] Damascius was "anxious to exploit the scandal of Hypatia's death", and attributed responsibility for her murder to Bishop Cyril and his Christian followers.[152][153] A passage from Damascius's Life of Isidore, preserved in the Suda, concludes that Hypatia's murder was due to Cyril's envy over "her wisdom exceeding all bounds and especially in the things concerning astronomy".[98][154] Damascius's account of the Christian murder of Hypatia is the sole historical source attributing direct responsibility to Bishop Cyril.[154] And the ideologically-motivated myths seem build from there.
whack 8y ago
It's a fascinating experiment, but I don't buy the author's explanation for anti-social punishment. He's talking about punishing "rats/narks" (which is also a big social taboo here in USA), whereas all punishment in the experiment is completely anonymous. I think a more plausible explanation is status envy. Someone who is publicly altruistic, is likely to gain compliments and plaudits from others. This would then boost their status, and bring down the relative status of others. This is likely to engender status-envy on the part of others, and they act upon their status-envy by inflicting punishment on the do-gooder. It's worth mentioning that I've personally seen such behavior here in America as well, especially when wealthy individuals or corporations engage in altruistic acts.
- jpfed 8y ago
  >Someone who is publicly altruistic, is likely to gain compliments and plaudits from others. I suspect this is also the basis of the behavior of criticizing "virtue-signaling". In both cases, the punisher wants to be sure that the goodie-two-shoes doesn't get to benefit from others recognizing them.
  - Presquare 8y ago
    I'd say that behavior is often called "virtue signaling" when it's mostly other people who have to pay the cost for someone's "virtuous" behavior. Example: Y Combinator notices how only 15% of their funded founders are women. Their fellow progressives call them out on this, and YC commits to fund more women. They will write posts about how they want more female founders. They will organize women only events. Perhaps, they will even actually favor female founders over more qualified male founders for funding. Very virtuous of them to care about gender equality. The problem is that the society doesn't consist of "men" and "women". It consists of individuals. When a man applies to YC, he isn't "men", he is a unique individual. An individual who has put enormous effort to build a product. An individual who has been long dreaming of founding a company, and finally built enough courage to take the leap. An individual who would be qualified by his merits. But... he gets rejected because YC consists of virtuous people who care about gender equality, and unfortunately they have already funded enough men. Now YC gets to post how they have funded more female founders, and their fellow progressives will praise them for caring about gender equality. And what happened to the aspiring male entrepreneur after that? No one knows. No one cares. ... In this example, it's YC who gets all the virtue points, while it's the aspiring male entrepreneur who has to carry most of the cost for their "virtuous" behavior. This doesn't mean that YC's behavior is wrong, but it does suggest that their behavior isn't as virtuous as it seems. Thus, "virtue signaling".
jokoon 8y ago
Not sure if that game is really measuring a cultural effect in a relevant manner. Is that really cultural after all? On top of this, it is really difficult to see if the politics translate this cultural selfishness or altruism well into policies that are doing what is expected.
zby 8y ago
I have the feeling that it has something to do with the fact that being too cooperative makes live easy for the non cooperators. There must be many equilibria and some cultures stay at some middle level, they don't aim at the most productive ones out of fear not to be pushed into the least productive. Imagine being a cooperator with an evil dictatorship: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/X5RyaEDHNq5qutSHK/anti-social-punishment#TB6L54XEXry3qWCxT https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/X5RyaEDHNq5qutSHK/anti-socia...
TomMckenny 8y ago
You'll notice that many such systems deteriorate into a sub-optimal equilibrium because humans naturally have an "us" vs "them" or "me" vs "everybody-else" world view. You'll note that such experiments require the participants to be strangers. I imagine this has an incredibly strong evolutionary origin, but I think it's interesting to note.
- TeMPOraL 8y ago
  What's also interesting is that if you put a large enough bunch of strangers in a room and get them to play a game (or even do some work), they'll quickly divide into groups and start showing the "us vs them" dynamic.
rwmj 8y ago
Those graphs could be so much clearer without the key, instead just have a straight line linking the data line with the name of the country, ordering the country names appropriately to avoid too many crossing lines.
anon49124 8y ago
From Martin Sustrik a-la ZeroMQ.
Ivoirians 8y ago
Original paper here: http://www.umass.edu/preferen/You%20Must%20Read%20This/herrmann-thoni-gachter.pdf http://www.umass.edu/preferen/You%20Must%20Read%20This/herrm... The explanation in the linked article isn't fully convincing, IMO. The paper speculates about several more explanations at the end, and has some more data to support them, e.g. people seemed to be punishing low-contributors in an effort to make them contribute more. If only the experimenters had conducted some interviews...
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
dcx 8y ago
Just to share anecdata - I grew up in Malaysia but am generally based in Australia, and have noticed a vein of this tendency in the Southeast Asian culture (not covered in the study). It's only a small percentage, but there really is a type for whom public goods are a concept which only have a flimsy existence. Instead they hold the belief that the smartest people are the ones who try to grab the most for themselves, to an insane level. It doesn't really matter how much the damage their lack of cooperation does, and they get a personal satisfaction from "winning" or "being smart". If punished for that behaviour I would expect retaliation - they were just trying to do the smart thing after all! Some extreme examples - I heard about uni students who upon graduation took out credit cards, bought a bunch of nice things, then moved home for good and skipped out on the bill. And they clearly didn't desperately need the money as they were medium rich overseas students. One guy I knew personally (who was eventually kicked out of our student group) would do stuff like grab giant stacks of napkins from restaurants and take home rolls of TP from public restrooms. So gross! The people I met who had this tendency all had a poorer or working class family background, but were all middle class or higher now. My theory is this might be something to do with intergenerational experiences in these poorer countries that (1) the commons will definitely not look after you, and (2) if you didn't have enough you and your family might literally starve to death. And so the right thing to do is look after yourself first at all costs. Looking after the public good might feel like a luxury or foolish behaviour under these circumstances.
- silvestrov 8y ago
  This behaviour is also found in Denmark. It is not constrained to poor countries.
  - dcx 8y ago
    Fair point, I'm sure it exists everywhere. Free riding is never going to completely disappear (psychopathy seems to be evolutionarily stable after all). But when you look at the outcomes of the Public Goods with Punishment game in the link, there's definitely more free riding happening in the poorer countries studied. Maybe weak institutions and proximity to starvation result in a greater percentage of this behaviour in the population? The causality is tricky to figure out though.
hashkb 8y ago
This article made me go back and play with https://ncase.me/trust/ https://ncase.me/trust/ my favorite society simulator.
- froasty 8y ago
  My only complaint about this presentation is the lack of forgetfulness and recovery of old strategies. In a word, it ignores context. A world with only tit-for-tats effectively becomes a world of always-cooperate once the knowledge that defectors are a thing disappears from visceral collective memory. And as an inevitable aftermath of that, the world of always-cooperate invites the return of always-cheat. Which invites the arrival of tit-for-tats. However, the presentation's conclusion remains the same: viable actions in the world we inhabit are largely--but not totally--defined by the contexts that everyone brings to the table. And in most contexts, it pay out more to forgive than to retribute in the long run.
kazzizi 8y ago
I took part in this experiment. It was about 12-15 years ago. The test was administered by the department of Economics of the University. They put flyers around the campus for volunteers, who would then get to keep any money they earned. Such experiments attracted students that wanted to make some money. Most students did not bother to participate . The screenshots in the supporting material match what I saw on the computer screen. We were given the instructions and had some time to digest the rules. I calculated that the best reward would come if all were cooperating and I hoped that everyone else would figure it out. In that way, our group of four anonymous participants would get away with some extra money. I was willing to cooperate, although I come originally from a country that did abysmally bad in this test. During the first two rounds, I would put all funds into the pool. The rest of the group did not pick up the signal, did not put any funds or they put just a little. The game would work if everyone put all they funds in the pool, and in that case we would earn even more from the "bank". On the third round, I did not put any funds in the pool. I noticed though that some of the others players would persist in putting some small funds in the pool, as if they did not figure out what was going on. Before reading this post, I thought that the experiment I took was rigged and you were playing against three computer players who on purpose were not cooperating. During the next set of rounds with punishments, I did not contribute and neither did most of the others. There were some random punishments by the others which did not make sense. Looking back, I can feel the inexperience of an undergraduate who could not understand that there could be a strategy that is beneficial to all. Some comments said that communism can make people less willing to cooperate. I don't think so. The problem is the cultural attitude of the society, which transcends communism.
- nkurz 8y ago
  Just wanted to say thank you for taking the trouble to sign up to offer your first hand experience! It's both beautiful and little sad that your summary of the main finding (antisocial punishment) is "There were some random punishments by the others which did not make sense". Reading the supplemental materials (http://science.sciencemag.org/content/sci/suppl/2008/03/06/319.5868.1362.DC1/Hermann.SOM.pdf http://science.sciencemag.org/content/sci/suppl/2008/03/06/3...) it looks like the difference in "reward" for a cooperative strategy was on the order of $10 USD. Does that seem about right?
michaelkeenan 8y ago
Robin Hanson wrote about similar experiments in 2010: http://www.overcomingbias.com/2010/07/looking-too-good.html http://www.overcomingbias.com/2010/07/looking-too-good.html As others here have suggested (e.g. jpfed, Tade0), it seems that extreme generosity can be regarded as establishing an undesirable behavior standard. The post suggests a workaround, if your productivity/generosity greatly exceeds others: under-report your output and give credit to others.
emmanueloga_ 8y ago
Disclaimer: tangent/speculation ahead :-) "how people from different societies deal with cooperation and punishment" Whenever I read some writing from Sustrik I wonder how related it is to his experiences in the nanomsg/ZeroMQ debacle [1]. Similarly, maybe I'm completely wrong but when I learned about Hitjens' "The Psychopath code" [2], and because of the timing, it was hard not to make a guess whose psychopath Hitjens had in mind :-). I'm kinda curious to know how deep did the grudge between these two Software Engineers / Philosophers go. 1: http://hintjens.com/blog:112 http://hintjens.com/blog:112 2: http://hintjens.com/books http://hintjens.com/books
dwd 8y ago
Was surprised by the Melbourne result given the city is one of the most multicultural places in the world which you would assume give it a median result. Done in 2008 so the current housing price blowout wouldnt explain everyone being totally out for themselves. Maybe tall poppy syndrome or the anti-dole bludger (freeloader) mentality would account for it?
rfugger 8y ago
Voting for Trump might be an anti-social way of punishing those do-gooder liberals.

358 points by type0 8y ago

So how would one attempt to do good (start a business/charity/what have you) in such an environment? I can feel my part of the United States inching slowly to this kind of social norm, is there anything regular people can do to counteract this?

wetpaws 8y ago
Based on 200 years history of Russia, you don't. You run away to places not yet contaminated.
- chongli 8y ago
  Exactly. When the cooperators all leave, the free riders suffer the collapse of the system. Only then can a 'reboot' stand a chance of succeeding.
- paganel 8y ago
  On a more upbeat tone what has usually worked for countries like Russia (and what usually worked and still works for my Eastern-European country, too) was to set up a system of patronage, i.e. a system where you share part of your gains to those immediately bellow you in return for their service/trust, they in turn should share their gains to those bellow them and so on and so forth. The key for this system to work for more than one generation is that all parts involved should keep their end of the bargain, meaning that you should be there for the person depending on you, financially and otherwise, whenever they need you, and in turn they should also keep their loyalty to you, no matter the circumstances. I know that what I basically described is basically just a feudal system, and I can also say that I don't like it in principle, but I'm also well aware that this system has been one of the most resilient social systems over the last two millennia (at least), present in one way or another on all populated continents under all types of governments (democracy, monarchy, tyranny etc), and as such it shouldn't be discredited.
  - fjsolwmv 8y ago
    What's wrong with feudalism as you described it?
    - paganel 8y ago
      Historically it has been seen as contradictory to the main principles of Illuminism.
      - fjsolwmv 8y ago
        How so? Illuminism/Enlightenment contradictory to tyrrany, not feudalism. A monarchy can be enlightened, and healthy nations can be ruled by a monarch. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consent_of_the_governed https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consent_of_the_governed
        hannasanarion 8y ago
        Monarchy and feudalism are not equivalent: it's totally possible to have a feudal republic. Enlightenment was a response to feudalism. The fundamental thesis of enlightenment thought is that there are inalienable rights shared by every human being, and that unearned obligations and privileges, like those seen in feudal patronage cultures, are incompatible with just society.
        nercht12 8y ago
        The doesn't really counter feudalism though. Perhaps in mentality/ideology, yes, but in practice, it's possible for people to agree to such a system and be content with it. We do it all the time in a capitalist society, except here it's called a "corporation", and the "barons" are called execs of "subsidiary companies".
        hannasanarion 8y ago
        The corporation is not a person, and executives do not have privileges and rights greater than any other person by birthright. In a feudal system, you owe tribute to your liege by virtue of the fact that they were born of a higher rank than you and you were born within their demesne. If you don't comply, or if you try to find a different lord, you get killed. Feudal is not another word for economic inequality.
- bitL 8y ago
  ...and then contaminate them with residues of your cultural anti-social meta-algorithms, shifting them towards resembling the environment you escaped, as some things "were just easier".
mercutio2 8y ago
The US used to stylize itself a high trust society. I’m not sure how much that was a fantasy dependent on horrific repression’s from slavery to Jim Crow, and how much it actually adhered even amongst groups of people that weren’t based on racial exclusion. Regardless, I worry for US culture. Trust in institutions seems to be at an all time low; institutions take generations to build, we won’t get them back easily or quickly.
- PKop 8y ago
  It might have been more high trust because it was less culturally diverse. http://archive.boston.com/news/globe/ideas/articles/2007/08/05/the_downside_of_diversity/ http://archive.boston.com/news/globe/ideas/articles/2007/08/...
  - bilbo0s 8y ago
    The US was always diverse though. Just maybe not so much culturally. I mean, sure, everyone that a given person was likely to see spoke english, ate chicken, and went to some form of Christian church on Sunday. BUT, some of the people were white, some were native american, some were black, down in Texas area you even had hispanics. So the US was pretty diverse. Unless we're not counting racial diversity?
    - dx87 8y ago
      Yeah, I don't think racial diversity counts for the trust issue. Obviously there are some people that won't trust someone based on their race, but it seems like most groups are willing to accept anyone as long as they follow cultural norms; skin color just seems to be a quick proxy for "they look different, so they're probably culturally different". Just watch the aftermath of a local football team winning a big game. It doesn't matter if you're rich or poor, black or white, everyone in the city celebrates together.
      - pickleman 8y ago
        That's not exactly a time of stress. Prisons aren't divided by favorite football team. There's also the lunchroom test.
l_t 8y ago
I see this as a cultural problem, with a cultural solution. If you think about "free riders" versus "cooperators" as a dichotomy, you won't find a solution. Everyone is both a "free rider" and a "cooperator", depending on social context. The issue is that our social fabric itself may be incentivizing people towards long-term destructive patterns. So, how do we fix it? IMO, the best any one person can do is try to create an environment where people feel safe to cooperate. I believe human nature is fundamentally cooperative in large groups, but we are often "forced" into a competitive track by a lack of resources or other external pressures. For example, many US workplaces pit employees against each other. It's perceived that there are too many workers for a limited number of jobs, so workers feel forced to compete for their "slot." If there was less communal anxiety about being fired, more individuals would feel comfortable to cooperate with their coworkers instead of competing. Ofc, this is an insanely complex issue, so that's just a tiny facet, and I'm sure some of the points are debatable. But I honestly believe that "taking care of people" is one of the key ways to achieve more collaboration.
- taurath 8y ago
  A sad aside is that if you want to force cooperation among a populace, the most effective way is to give them a common enemy to fight against. To effectively do it with taking care of people, you need a social/cultural contract - but if people are unlikely to enter into one, being distrustful in the first place of anyone proposing such a thing, its a very hard problem - you have a prisoners dilemma which pits the zero sum game players against the win-win, and it only takes one zero sum to defeat the win-wins.

jpfed 8y ago

"Why do you have to make us look bad?"

mercutio2 8y ago

The toy games described, the variance in different countries, and especially the explanation of the psychology that might be at play here is startling. I am excited to be able to add this to my toolbox of ways to understand public goods and their interplay with the surrounding culture.

52-6F-62 8y ago
My thoughts exactly. Except I'm excited/not excited. It's bittersweet, if that's appropriate. It was definitely a compelling read, and I'm sure I'll end up thinking about it often.

lordnacho 8y ago

I wonder how much of this result is self-perception. For instance, people in Denmark are constantly told what a trusting society they live in, and that that trust is part of the reason why they are so wealthy. So a researcher comes by with an obviously contrived game, and the Danes play like they are supposed to. For the same reason I wonder about the periodic happiness survey that makes headlines each year.

pjc50 8y ago
Self-perception of norms is culture, surely? Society is, after all, socially constructed.
- lordnacho 8y ago
  But the question is how do people play the game when they're not playing a game? Pretty hard to answer. You'd have to look at some sort of natural experiment and adjust for a bunch of factors.
  - cirgue 8y ago
    Agreed. All ‘commons’-style games are inherently iterative to infinity from the point of view of most actors, and that has game-theoretic implications that aren’t really present in a lab, to say nothing of the fact that communication is a constant backdrop for all of them in the real world.
emilfihlman 8y ago
>So a researcher comes by with an obviously contrived game, and the Danes play like they are supposed to. Wtf? How is it a contrived game in any way? It's an extremely nice indicator of how developed the place is. Trusting and equality are hugely important factors so you start with that, as is logical. If someone freerides, you punish them. It's the real world example of tit-for-tat strategy, which is (apparently almost) the optimal one.
- lordnacho 8y ago

foxhop 8y ago

If you find this surprising you should check out "The Ugly Indian" TED talk. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=tf1VA5jqmRo https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=tf1VA5jqmRo

jstanley 8y ago

I don't think the explanation covers it. Wanting to punish people who cooperate with the state (because the state just takes everything away) doesn't imply wanting to punish people who cooperate in the contrived example game where the game does not take anything away. Unless OP means to imply that people can't mentally separate the machinations of the state from the rules of a game, I don't think the explanation is satisfactory. (Although I don't have a better explanation myself).

adambard 8y ago
> Unless OP means to imply that people can't mentally separate the machinations of the state from the rules of a game I think this is pretty much it. Behavior is learned. The participants were playing the game in a way that was irrational when viewed in isolation, but natural in the context of their lives. If the commons takes more than it gives, it becomes irrational to participate. This tendency persists and spreads over time and people and eventually crystallizes into an aspect of morality, where collaborating with the (exploitative or oppressive) commons is viewed with suspicion and distrust (think "Party Officials"). Eventually this habit becomes so ingrained that it emerges even during simple games.
stickfigure 8y ago
Unless OP means to imply that people can't mentally separate the machinations of the state from the rules of a game Yes, I think that's exactly it. Lifelong behavior is internalized, subconscious, and incredibly persistent.
- theptip 8y ago
  Agreed -- humans aren't reassessing the utility of a given pattern of action (e.g. group cooperation vs. selfish behaviour) every time they engage in it, they are building mental heuristics that permit quick decisions without re-evaluating the priors (system 1 vs. system 2 thinking, if you will). Under that model, it's expected that humans would have a similar attitude to group/commons cooperation in a game as they would in their real-world interactions. Taking the next step from this observation -- I wonder how much meta-level discussion would be required to break this tendency? Could we apply such meta-level discussion to the real-world, too, and improve cooperation in the societies where these old strategies perhaps don't apply as much now?

ryandrake 8y ago

Reminds me of the Ultimatum Game experiment[1]. 1: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultimatum_game https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultimatum_game

sometime 8y ago

Could someone summarize this for people with reading difficulties (and for karma)?

twoquestions 8y ago
Most Americans want to punish people when they harm the public good, but some cultures (especially former Communist countries) punish people that help the public good for some reason. There's more speculation on why that is in the comments, but as always be careful reading those.
- Shaddox 8y ago
  I'm eastern european so I hope you don't mind me chipping in my opinion as a reply to you. I just simply don't trust the 'public good', aka the government. When I'm looking at my payslip, 46% goes to the state in the form of taxes. Out of all that's left, no matter if I save or spend, at least 19% of it will go to the government again in the form of VAT. A lot more if I want to become an entrepreneur or buy something big like a house or a car. I pay a lot in taxes. A lot of people pay a lot in taxes, yet things have always been the same. Add in the political scandals that happen pretty much on a weekly basis: money siphoning or laundering, weird law bills, election fraud etc. and it's easy to see why people are distrustful of the government.
adamch 8y ago
In game-theory experiments, you can be selfish or altruistic. If being selfish wins, people act selfish. If you add a way to punish players, the altruistic punish the selfish, then people stop playing selfishly. OR SO IT WOULD SEEM. In some cultures, the selfish punish the altruistic! This goes against expectations and is counter-productive. The author then explains, based on their experience in a formerly-communist state, why people punish the altruistic. TLDR because the altruistic government was horrible, and stealing from the commons was the right thing to do by your family.
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Nasrudith 8y ago

I suspect sexual selection is partially to blame for this behavior subliminally. People who are "better" are a threat to finding good mates and a source of envy and thus despised.

gammateam 8y ago

Hm I thought that conclusion was interesting, they should try this in any US ghetto then, instead of just Boston for their check-the-box US representation. I think it would have similar outcomes as the Ostblock countries, and less similarities with "The West and its strong rule of law"

mfringel 8y ago
But that's not what happens. I recommend reading "A Framework for Understanding Poverty" by Ruby Payne. It's a really insightful book on the cycle of poverty and the incentives at work... anti-social punishment really isn't part of it.
bilbo0s 8y ago
I think it would be even further along the axis of cooperation. I happened to be in Detroit for some work in the late 90's. I took the opportunity to do some volunteering and saw some really weird things. Like farms that were basically squatting in collapsed buildings out in certain areas of the city. Basically, "secret" farms, that were secret to no one in the area, and nearly everyone was using. (Both planting and harvesting.) How anything got coordinated was beyond me? That said, one thing they did have a handle on was who had done what, and people would argue when one of the "freeloaders" for lack of a better term, came along. (I know. They were ALL freeloaders, as it was HIGHLY doubtful in my mind that any of them owned that property. But you know what I mean.) I didn't really know the terms "pro-social" punishment, and "anti-social" punishment. But these guys were FIRMLY in the "pro-social" punishment camp. And I got the very real sense that you just didn't mess with that.
- somebodythere 8y ago
  Another way to look at it is that none of them were freeloaders, as all (or most) of them were making constructive use of the property.

phkahler 8y ago

While reading I kept thinking that cooperating in the game has a tendency to equalize everyone in terms of savings. If everyone has very little, someone with something may feel he's a bit ahead and cooperation would effectively erode that savings. This is of course just speculation on my part but it's what came to mind. Kind of like how people making a bit above minimum wage (even in the US) resent the idea of raising minimum wage because in some ways it puts them at the bottom.

fjsolwmv 8y ago

It's a good time to remember that the replication crisis in social science still exists even if when a result confirms your preconceived notions, and that the bulk of the article is speculative brainstorming of hypotheses, not research.

Tade0 8y ago

A quote from the comment section: I'm surprised nobody proposed : "This person is promoting a social norm more stringent than my current behavior, I'll whack him.". The part about promoting social norms is accurate. Interestingly enough it translates to other areas of life making people fear things like "the promotion of homosexuality". I guess societies that in the past were forcefully transformed tend to be conservative.

escherplex 8y ago
Interesting last point: who where a sizable liberal faction in Roman Empire around the year 300? Answer: early Christians, the same group with fanatical penchants who mercilessly eviscerated the Alexandrian mathematician/philosopher Hypatia. Under Constantine, Christianity became a recognized religion of Rome, with Constantine one of its chief advocates. Curiously, who are the most conservative block today?
- 394549 8y ago
  > the same group with fanatical penchants who mercilessly eviscerated the Alexandrian mathematician/philosopher Hypatia. IIRC, that's a bit of a myth. According to Wikipedia, she was murdered due to a political power struggle in Alexandria: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypatia#Death https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypatia#Death: > Socrates Scholasticus presents Hypatia's murder as entirely politically motivated[95] and makes no mention of any role that Hypatia's paganism might have played in her death.[95] Instead, he reasons that "she fell a victim to the political jealousy which at that time prevailed. This is also interesting: > ...Hypatia['s] sudden death not only left her legacy unprotected, but also triggered a backlash against her entire ideology.[146] Hypatia, with her tolerance towards Christian students and her willingness to cooperate with Christian leaders, had hoped to establish a precedent that Neoplatonism and Christianity could coexist peacefully and cooperatively.[147] Instead, her death and the subsequent failure by the Christian government to impose justice on her killers destroyed that notion entirely[147] and led future Neoplatonists such as Damascius to consider Christian bishops as "dangerous, jealous figures who were also utterly unphilosophical."[147] Hypatia became seen as a "martyr for philosophy"[147] and her murder led philosophers to adopt attitudes that increasingly emphasized the pagan aspects of their belief systems[148] and helped create a sense of identity for philosophers as pagan traditionalists set apart from the Christian masses.[149] Thus, while Hypatia's death did not bring an end to Neoplatonist philosophy as a whole, Watts argues that it did bring an end to her particular variety of it.[150] > Shortly after Hypatia's murder, a forged anti-Christian letter appeared under her name.[151] Damascius was "anxious to exploit the scandal of Hypatia's death", and attributed responsibility for her murder to Bishop Cyril and his Christian followers.[152][153] A passage from Damascius's Life of Isidore, preserved in the Suda, concludes that Hypatia's murder was due to Cyril's envy over "her wisdom exceeding all bounds and especially in the things concerning astronomy".[98][154] Damascius's account of the Christian murder of Hypatia is the sole historical source attributing direct responsibility to Bishop Cyril.[154] And the ideologically-motivated myths seem build from there.

whack 8y ago

It's a fascinating experiment, but I don't buy the author's explanation for anti-social punishment. He's talking about punishing "rats/narks" (which is also a big social taboo here in USA), whereas all punishment in the experiment is completely anonymous. I think a more plausible explanation is status envy. Someone who is publicly altruistic, is likely to gain compliments and plaudits from others. This would then boost their status, and bring down the relative status of others. This is likely to engender status-envy on the part of others, and they act upon their status-envy by inflicting punishment on the do-gooder. It's worth mentioning that I've personally seen such behavior here in America as well, especially when wealthy individuals or corporations engage in altruistic acts.

jpfed 8y ago
>Someone who is publicly altruistic, is likely to gain compliments and plaudits from others. I suspect this is also the basis of the behavior of criticizing "virtue-signaling". In both cases, the punisher wants to be sure that the goodie-two-shoes doesn't get to benefit from others recognizing them.
- Presquare 8y ago
  I'd say that behavior is often called "virtue signaling" when it's mostly other people who have to pay the cost for someone's "virtuous" behavior. Example: Y Combinator notices how only 15% of their funded founders are women. Their fellow progressives call them out on this, and YC commits to fund more women. They will write posts about how they want more female founders. They will organize women only events. Perhaps, they will even actually favor female founders over more qualified male founders for funding. Very virtuous of them to care about gender equality. The problem is that the society doesn't consist of "men" and "women". It consists of individuals. When a man applies to YC, he isn't "men", he is a unique individual. An individual who has put enormous effort to build a product. An individual who has been long dreaming of founding a company, and finally built enough courage to take the leap. An individual who would be qualified by his merits. But... he gets rejected because YC consists of virtuous people who care about gender equality, and unfortunately they have already funded enough men. Now YC gets to post how they have funded more female founders, and their fellow progressives will praise them for caring about gender equality. And what happened to the aspiring male entrepreneur after that? No one knows. No one cares. ... In this example, it's YC who gets all the virtue points, while it's the aspiring male entrepreneur who has to carry most of the cost for their "virtuous" behavior. This doesn't mean that YC's behavior is wrong, but it does suggest that their behavior isn't as virtuous as it seems. Thus, "virtue signaling".

jokoon 8y ago

Not sure if that game is really measuring a cultural effect in a relevant manner. Is that really cultural after all? On top of this, it is really difficult to see if the politics translate this cultural selfishness or altruism well into policies that are doing what is expected.

zby 8y ago

I have the feeling that it has something to do with the fact that being too cooperative makes live easy for the non cooperators. There must be many equilibria and some cultures stay at some middle level, they don't aim at the most productive ones out of fear not to be pushed into the least productive. Imagine being a cooperator with an evil dictatorship: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/X5RyaEDHNq5qutSHK/anti-social-punishment#TB6L54XEXry3qWCxT https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/X5RyaEDHNq5qutSHK/anti-socia...

TomMckenny 8y ago

You'll notice that many such systems deteriorate into a sub-optimal equilibrium because humans naturally have an "us" vs "them" or "me" vs "everybody-else" world view. You'll note that such experiments require the participants to be strangers. I imagine this has an incredibly strong evolutionary origin, but I think it's interesting to note.

TeMPOraL 8y ago
What's also interesting is that if you put a large enough bunch of strangers in a room and get them to play a game (or even do some work), they'll quickly divide into groups and start showing the "us vs them" dynamic.

rwmj 8y ago

Those graphs could be so much clearer without the key, instead just have a straight line linking the data line with the name of the country, ordering the country names appropriately to avoid too many crossing lines.

anon49124 8y ago

From Martin Sustrik a-la ZeroMQ.

Ivoirians 8y ago

Original paper here: http://www.umass.edu/preferen/You%20Must%20Read%20This/herrmann-thoni-gachter.pdf http://www.umass.edu/preferen/You%20Must%20Read%20This/herrm... The explanation in the linked article isn't fully convincing, IMO. The paper speculates about several more explanations at the end, and has some more data to support them, e.g. people seemed to be punishing low-contributors in an effort to make them contribute more. If only the experimenters had conducted some interviews...

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dcx 8y ago

Just to share anecdata - I grew up in Malaysia but am generally based in Australia, and have noticed a vein of this tendency in the Southeast Asian culture (not covered in the study). It's only a small percentage, but there really is a type for whom public goods are a concept which only have a flimsy existence. Instead they hold the belief that the smartest people are the ones who try to grab the most for themselves, to an insane level. It doesn't really matter how much the damage their lack of cooperation does, and they get a personal satisfaction from "winning" or "being smart". If punished for that behaviour I would expect retaliation - they were just trying to do the smart thing after all! Some extreme examples - I heard about uni students who upon graduation took out credit cards, bought a bunch of nice things, then moved home for good and skipped out on the bill. And they clearly didn't desperately need the money as they were medium rich overseas students. One guy I knew personally (who was eventually kicked out of our student group) would do stuff like grab giant stacks of napkins from restaurants and take home rolls of TP from public restrooms. So gross! The people I met who had this tendency all had a poorer or working class family background, but were all middle class or higher now. My theory is this might be something to do with intergenerational experiences in these poorer countries that (1) the commons will definitely not look after you, and (2) if you didn't have enough you and your family might literally starve to death. And so the right thing to do is look after yourself first at all costs. Looking after the public good might feel like a luxury or foolish behaviour under these circumstances.

silvestrov 8y ago
This behaviour is also found in Denmark. It is not constrained to poor countries.
- dcx 8y ago
  Fair point, I'm sure it exists everywhere. Free riding is never going to completely disappear (psychopathy seems to be evolutionarily stable after all). But when you look at the outcomes of the Public Goods with Punishment game in the link, there's definitely more free riding happening in the poorer countries studied. Maybe weak institutions and proximity to starvation result in a greater percentage of this behaviour in the population? The causality is tricky to figure out though.

hashkb 8y ago

This article made me go back and play with https://ncase.me/trust/ https://ncase.me/trust/ my favorite society simulator.

froasty 8y ago
My only complaint about this presentation is the lack of forgetfulness and recovery of old strategies. In a word, it ignores context. A world with only tit-for-tats effectively becomes a world of always-cooperate once the knowledge that defectors are a thing disappears from visceral collective memory. And as an inevitable aftermath of that, the world of always-cooperate invites the return of always-cheat. Which invites the arrival of tit-for-tats. However, the presentation's conclusion remains the same: viable actions in the world we inhabit are largely--but not totally--defined by the contexts that everyone brings to the table. And in most contexts, it pay out more to forgive than to retribute in the long run.

kazzizi 8y ago

I took part in this experiment. It was about 12-15 years ago. The test was administered by the department of Economics of the University. They put flyers around the campus for volunteers, who would then get to keep any money they earned. Such experiments attracted students that wanted to make some money. Most students did not bother to participate . The screenshots in the supporting material match what I saw on the computer screen. We were given the instructions and had some time to digest the rules. I calculated that the best reward would come if all were cooperating and I hoped that everyone else would figure it out. In that way, our group of four anonymous participants would get away with some extra money. I was willing to cooperate, although I come originally from a country that did abysmally bad in this test. During the first two rounds, I would put all funds into the pool. The rest of the group did not pick up the signal, did not put any funds or they put just a little. The game would work if everyone put all they funds in the pool, and in that case we would earn even more from the "bank". On the third round, I did not put any funds in the pool. I noticed though that some of the others players would persist in putting some small funds in the pool, as if they did not figure out what was going on. Before reading this post, I thought that the experiment I took was rigged and you were playing against three computer players who on purpose were not cooperating. During the next set of rounds with punishments, I did not contribute and neither did most of the others. There were some random punishments by the others which did not make sense. Looking back, I can feel the inexperience of an undergraduate who could not understand that there could be a strategy that is beneficial to all. Some comments said that communism can make people less willing to cooperate. I don't think so. The problem is the cultural attitude of the society, which transcends communism.

nkurz 8y ago
Just wanted to say thank you for taking the trouble to sign up to offer your first hand experience! It's both beautiful and little sad that your summary of the main finding (antisocial punishment) is "There were some random punishments by the others which did not make sense". Reading the supplemental materials (http://science.sciencemag.org/content/sci/suppl/2008/03/06/319.5868.1362.DC1/Hermann.SOM.pdf http://science.sciencemag.org/content/sci/suppl/2008/03/06/3...) it looks like the difference in "reward" for a cooperative strategy was on the order of $10 USD. Does that seem about right?

michaelkeenan 8y ago

Robin Hanson wrote about similar experiments in 2010: http://www.overcomingbias.com/2010/07/looking-too-good.html http://www.overcomingbias.com/2010/07/looking-too-good.html As others here have suggested (e.g. jpfed, Tade0), it seems that extreme generosity can be regarded as establishing an undesirable behavior standard. The post suggests a workaround, if your productivity/generosity greatly exceeds others: under-report your output and give credit to others.

emmanueloga_ 8y ago

Disclaimer: tangent/speculation ahead :-) "how people from different societies deal with cooperation and punishment" Whenever I read some writing from Sustrik I wonder how related it is to his experiences in the nanomsg/ZeroMQ debacle [1]. Similarly, maybe I'm completely wrong but when I learned about Hitjens' "The Psychopath code" [2], and because of the timing, it was hard not to make a guess whose psychopath Hitjens had in mind :-). I'm kinda curious to know how deep did the grudge between these two Software Engineers / Philosophers go. 1: http://hintjens.com/blog:112 http://hintjens.com/blog:112 2: http://hintjens.com/books http://hintjens.com/books

dwd 8y ago

Was surprised by the Melbourne result given the city is one of the most multicultural places in the world which you would assume give it a median result. Done in 2008 so the current housing price blowout wouldnt explain everyone being totally out for themselves. Maybe tall poppy syndrome or the anti-dole bludger (freeloader) mentality would account for it?

rfugger 8y ago

Voting for Trump might be an anti-social way of punishing those do-gooder liberals.