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This is a good point. I hadn't considered it from that angle, and I hadn't understood the significance of the "tragedy of the commons" remark. In my original a

This is a good point. I hadn't considered it from that angle, and I hadn't understood the significance of the "tragedy of the commons" remark. In my original answer, I had talked about how choosing not to give money to charity is a valid choice. It seems to me this is similar to choosing not to cooperate when money is a resource constraint, and my conclusion there was that defection is perfectly alright. However, your argument would mean that defection wouldn't be the valid choice in this case, so I'm interested in understanding this discrepancy/my error. Under what circumstances would you say is defection valid?

TeMPOraL 7y ago
I'd say: only when the goal people are trying to coordinate around is something you consider invalid or wrong, so you want to shut it all down. I think the difference between the microkitchen case and charity case is that in the former, you're using a scarce shared resource, whereas in the latter, you own the resources and choose what to use them for. It's a social norm that when shared resources are scarce, everyone gets to take a fair share of them[0], and if you try to take more than it's fair, you're defecting and considered a bad actor (a "freeloader"). It's also a social norm that the wealth you own is for you to spend as you wish. Charities are considered optional spending, which is why no one can demand or should try to shame you into donating. Contrast that with taxes, which are non-optional. Not donating to charity isn't defecting, because there's no cooperative situation happening. Not paying taxes would be defecting, because there's a social (and legal) expectation that everyone should contribute to the shared pool of money that buys public services. -- [0] - For some definition of "fair". The Schelling point, when there's nothing suggesting a fairer split, is that "everyone gets the same amount". Unequal splits can happen too, if that ends up benefiting everyone more.
- jevgeni 7y ago
  These are very good points. The beverages in the microkitchen are a public good not your own property. Hence it’s not the same as “not donating to charity” as you’ve so well described. I’d also add (leaving any empathy questions aside), that behaving in a solely egoistic, yet “lawful” way is still a bad strategy in mid- to long-term. Even if its utility in the short term seems great. The problem here is that you would be playing a zero-sum game, when everyone else is playing a positive-sum game. Meaning you would be constantly choosing a suboptimal strategy making the most optimal choice for other players to cooperate against you until you are out of the game.
- AkshatM 7y ago
  Thanks for the response. This helped tremendously. I've been fairly engrossed recently in readings on moral relativism, in an attempt to understand what ethical behaviour might look like without the influence of social norms. Your response made me realize I've been forgetting to take off my academic hat - I should be evaluating this from the perspective of the society I'm currently in right now. Thanks for the reminder to go speak to actual humans again :)
  - TeMPOraL 7y ago
    In terms of moral behavior without influence of social norms, it's also worth investigating morality as a dynamic system - if you'd erase all existing social norms from memory and gather a group of people, what norms would evolve over time?
    - AkshatM 7y ago
      This is one of those questions which I actually think requires empirical investigation. Fortunately, Jonathan Haidt has excellent papers on the historical formation of moral systems in culture collision events, and the argument he has is that there are six different types of dichotomies moral taxonomies in societies exhibit, each driven by various kinds of evolutionary challenges individual societies faced. (https://poseidon01.ssrn.com/delivery.php?ID=368001093110092112015018017070013085042059070013063074028008087113119010123125106005124031048107005109046067027010066099112117062013094005002085110004064091001094079061073003012083096102102081086117075065020098124095097031120104090031118070079097078087&EXT=pdf https://poseidon01.ssrn.com/delivery.php?ID=3680010931100921...) I think the conclusion that societies are built primarily on cooperative rather than antisocial behaviour is a picture based mostly in game theoretic analyses (per that wonderful webpage, The Evolution of Trust) - but empirically societies do really vary in how harshly they punish or value non-cooperative behaviour, which I don't think game theory is sufficient to explain. Some societies hold that maximising personal utility over group utility is a social norm, though usually personal doesn't mean individual but individual and smaller subgroup (such as family), so they're not likely to view non-cooperative behaviour as problematic - these societies tend to be not influenced as much by the fairness/cheating dichotomy but are high on the care/neglect and loyalty/betrayal dichotomy.

TeMPOraL 7y ago

I'd say: only when the goal people are trying to coordinate around is something you consider invalid or wrong, so you want to shut it all down. I think the difference between the microkitchen case and charity case is that in the former, you're using a scarce shared resource, whereas in the latter, you own the resources and choose what to use them for. It's a social norm that when shared resources are scarce, everyone gets to take a fair share of them[0], and if you try to take more than it's fair, you're defecting and considered a bad actor (a "freeloader"). It's also a social norm that the wealth you own is for you to spend as you wish. Charities are considered optional spending, which is why no one can demand or should try to shame you into donating. Contrast that with taxes, which are non-optional. Not donating to charity isn't defecting, because there's no cooperative situation happening. Not paying taxes would be defecting, because there's a social (and legal) expectation that everyone should contribute to the shared pool of money that buys public services. -- [0] - For some definition of "fair". The Schelling point, when there's nothing suggesting a fairer split, is that "everyone gets the same amount". Unequal splits can happen too, if that ends up benefiting everyone more.

jevgeni 7y ago
These are very good points. The beverages in the microkitchen are a public good not your own property. Hence it’s not the same as “not donating to charity” as you’ve so well described. I’d also add (leaving any empathy questions aside), that behaving in a solely egoistic, yet “lawful” way is still a bad strategy in mid- to long-term. Even if its utility in the short term seems great. The problem here is that you would be playing a zero-sum game, when everyone else is playing a positive-sum game. Meaning you would be constantly choosing a suboptimal strategy making the most optimal choice for other players to cooperate against you until you are out of the game.
AkshatM 7y ago
Thanks for the response. This helped tremendously. I've been fairly engrossed recently in readings on moral relativism, in an attempt to understand what ethical behaviour might look like without the influence of social norms. Your response made me realize I've been forgetting to take off my academic hat - I should be evaluating this from the perspective of the society I'm currently in right now. Thanks for the reminder to go speak to actual humans again :)
- TeMPOraL 7y ago
  In terms of moral behavior without influence of social norms, it's also worth investigating morality as a dynamic system - if you'd erase all existing social norms from memory and gather a group of people, what norms would evolve over time?
  - AkshatM 7y ago
    This is one of those questions which I actually think requires empirical investigation. Fortunately, Jonathan Haidt has excellent papers on the historical formation of moral systems in culture collision events, and the argument he has is that there are six different types of dichotomies moral taxonomies in societies exhibit, each driven by various kinds of evolutionary challenges individual societies faced. (https://poseidon01.ssrn.com/delivery.php?ID=368001093110092112015018017070013085042059070013063074028008087113119010123125106005124031048107005109046067027010066099112117062013094005002085110004064091001094079061073003012083096102102081086117075065020098124095097031120104090031118070079097078087&EXT=pdf https://poseidon01.ssrn.com/delivery.php?ID=3680010931100921...) I think the conclusion that societies are built primarily on cooperative rather than antisocial behaviour is a picture based mostly in game theoretic analyses (per that wonderful webpage, The Evolution of Trust) - but empirically societies do really vary in how harshly they punish or value non-cooperative behaviour, which I don't think game theory is sufficient to explain. Some societies hold that maximising personal utility over group utility is a social norm, though usually personal doesn't mean individual but individual and smaller subgroup (such as family), so they're not likely to view non-cooperative behaviour as problematic - these societies tend to be not influenced as much by the fairness/cheating dichotomy but are high on the care/neglect and loyalty/betrayal dichotomy.