4 ms·

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]
froasty 8y ago
Let's say you're running a board game night each week over the summer in ten different cities and it's a standing rule that the group buys pizza. If everyone has to anonymously chip in to pay for pizza, everyone will eventually chip in less--"Someone is going to pay for the pizza, but I shouldn't have to pay for more than my fair share! I already paid for a night's pizza this summer!" This is true for all board game nights in all cities. HOWEVER, if you pay attention to who chips in for pizza and allow people to anonymously steal from attendees to board game night, regardless of whether they were a freeloader, that uniformity between board game nights stops. In some cities, after several weeks everyone starts pitching in money for pizza. Why? Because the freeloaders want pizza, but don't want to have more money stolen from them than the cost of pizza that they ate. Pitching in removes people's justification for stealing from them and they still get pizza. In other cities, counter-intuitively to certain demographics, when people can see who's paying for pizza and anonymously steal from attendees, certain people start stealing from the person who's habitually putting in more than their fair share. This cancels out the gain from people stealing from the freeloaders. To account for the latter cities, the study authors posit that it's because the freeloaders are punishing the people that bought the pizza because they're the people most likely to have stolen back the cost of the pizza eaten. The author of this article posits a different reason: in certain cities, they used to have a collection for pizza at board game night, but the delivery was slow and the good pizza rarely showed up before the night was over. And the host got to keep the leftovers. And board game night was always at Keynes's house, conveniently. So in these cities, people still remember Keynes and punish anyone trying to restart Keynes's bullshit way of getting free pizza from them. Everyone who attended Keynes's board game night in the past feels it's better to just eat leftovers when they get home than to pay New Keynes to get pizza 10% of the time. And, coincidentally, if there's ever another board game night at Keynes's, you eat everything you can get from him, because he's an asshole that buys Little Caesar's Hot-n-Ready's when he's paying alone, but guilts everyone else to pay-up next week when he orders a giant fuckin' pizza from the stoner hole in the wall that he gets to eat by himself because he won't stop whining about "B-B-but I bought the pizza last week!"

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]

froasty 8y ago

Let's say you're running a board game night each week over the summer in ten different cities and it's a standing rule that the group buys pizza. If everyone has to anonymously chip in to pay for pizza, everyone will eventually chip in less--"Someone is going to pay for the pizza, but I shouldn't have to pay for more than my fair share! I already paid for a night's pizza this summer!" This is true for all board game nights in all cities. HOWEVER, if you pay attention to who chips in for pizza and allow people to anonymously steal from attendees to board game night, regardless of whether they were a freeloader, that uniformity between board game nights stops. In some cities, after several weeks everyone starts pitching in money for pizza. Why? Because the freeloaders want pizza, but don't want to have more money stolen from them than the cost of pizza that they ate. Pitching in removes people's justification for stealing from them and they still get pizza. In other cities, counter-intuitively to certain demographics, when people can see who's paying for pizza and anonymously steal from attendees, certain people start stealing from the person who's habitually putting in more than their fair share. This cancels out the gain from people stealing from the freeloaders. To account for the latter cities, the study authors posit that it's because the freeloaders are punishing the people that bought the pizza because they're the people most likely to have stolen back the cost of the pizza eaten. The author of this article posits a different reason: in certain cities, they used to have a collection for pizza at board game night, but the delivery was slow and the good pizza rarely showed up before the night was over. And the host got to keep the leftovers. And board game night was always at Keynes's house, conveniently. So in these cities, people still remember Keynes and punish anyone trying to restart Keynes's bullshit way of getting free pizza from them. Everyone who attended Keynes's board game night in the past feels it's better to just eat leftovers when they get home than to pay New Keynes to get pizza 10% of the time. And, coincidentally, if there's ever another board game night at Keynes's, you eat everything you can get from him, because he's an asshole that buys Little Caesar's Hot-n-Ready's when he's paying alone, but guilts everyone else to pay-up next week when he orders a giant fuckin' pizza from the stoner hole in the wall that he gets to eat by himself because he won't stop whining about "B-B-but I bought the pizza last week!"