Nice little article introducing neuro-economics [Archive]

Phil153

10-25-2006, 02:59 PM

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Pure nonsense masquerading as science. They take very broad results and making ridiculously specific claims which are not supported by the evidence. This is very common in psychology and neurology.

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You got all that from the article in the newspaper?
Do you ever look more in depth before you say things like this? (based on our earlier debates on race and IQ, I'd say no)

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You know, you've been little but a troll in those discussions. Go and reread them. Your contribution was repeated assertions with vague references to decade old debates, you rarely discussed specifics or tackled any of the points I made. You're the perfect example of someone in an intellectual ivory tower. I know, based on our earlier debates, that you won't understand a word of that.

Back on topic...what exactly have researchers found that's news? I haven't read the original research, and frankly I don't care to. The lack of meat in the article says it all. This is my summary of the research findings:

- When the researchers change the functioning of a part of a person's brain that may be involved in decision making, they made a decision that coincided more strongly with their rational self interest (according to the researcher's definition of rational self interest). That's the only data point I can see here. What a truly shocking discovery. They then go on to speculate wildly about all manner of things, based on this single data point.

From what I can see, the only reasonable statements that can be made from this "discovery" are:

1. There are parts of the brain involved in decision making
2. People can make more or less emotionally based decisions when these parts are subject to stress.

Everything else is non evidence based speculation on things that have been known for decades. If I've left anything out, please state exactly what else you think this discovery proves or indicates.

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As for people rejecting free money, it has more to do with avoiding the emotional and social obligations it imposes than brain wiring for game theory.

"And you're sure of this because..."

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Just an observation. There is more to self interest than just economic self interest, a fact which they downplay early on but give a nod to later in the article (completely undermining the false dichotomy they'd set up in the first place in order to frame the useless research).

Below is an example of the crap that fills areas such as neuro economics. This is not science, nor does it offer any insight. It's nothing more than highly unsophisticated speculation, and it should be discouraged instead of celebrated.

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Why might the brain want to overrule self-interest in the first place? Colin Camerer, Professor of Business Economics at the California Institute of Technology, says that it probably evolved that way.

If we always accepted low offers for the sake of tiny gains, we would rapidly get a reputation as a soft touch. Everybody else would try to bilk us at every turn. By acting apparently against our interests, we do better in the long run.

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Thanks for the insight, professor, but a 5 year old can tell you this.

So I ask again: In plain English, what actual real world insight does this give us into the human mind, or behavior, that we didn't have already.

Darryl_P

10-25-2006, 03:11 PM

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It's a one-time situation with a stranger, declining any offer is a loss with no downstream benefits.
If this was a situation in our social group (and extended) where it would influence later actions and treatment then declining has implied gains.
Declining in this case has our mind confusing the actual situation with our normal situation and is irrational. ??

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I'm not sure it matters if it's iterated or not. I have two choices as to how $10 should be split between three parties:

1. myself
2. my opponent in the game, and
3. the person offering up the $10

One of my choices is (0,0,10). The other is (x, 10-x, 0), where x is the amount offered up by my opponent.

What is so irrational about looking beyond my own immediate interests and considering what I believe to be just and fair for all parties involved?

All I'm assuming is that the other parties are human beings on planet Earth with life expectancies of a similar order of magnitude to mine. Are these unreasonable assumptions?

Propertarian

10-25-2006, 03:31 PM

It's so good to see that economists are finally starting to step away from the preposterous theory of human nature used by neoclassical economics.

hmkpoker

10-25-2006, 03:44 PM

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It's a one-time situation with a stranger, declining any offer is a loss with no downstream benefits.
If this was a situation in our social group (and extended) where it would influence later actions and treatment then declining has implied gains.
Declining in this case has our mind confusing the actual situation with our normal situation and is irrational. ??

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I'm not sure it matters if it's iterated or not. I have two choices as to how $10 should be split between three parties:

1. myself
2. my opponent in the game, and
3. the person offering up the $10

One of my choices is (0,0,10). The other is (x, 10-x, 0), where x is the amount offered up by my opponent.

What is so irrational about looking beyond my own immediate interests and considering what I believe to be just and fair for all parties involved?

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That's kind of a deviation from what's being discussed. By "irrational," we're talking about the human tendency to minimize personal gain solely for the utility of destroying the utility for someone else. (Declining an offer of $2 that gives someone else $8.) If human beings are incentivized to destroy the utility of another, the problems posed to the economy are obvious: useful resources that provide sustinence, security and comfort are destroyed. Civilization can only come about if we are trying to icrease utility/resources; not destroy them.

Not to drag AC into this, but I think it's logical to believe that the utility in supporting redistribution is not just about benevolently aiding the poor, but also about maliciously harming the wealthy.

However, it's indisputable that some people are more affected by emotion than others. The professional poker players here have managed to override a lot of the emotional drives that are rationally unprofitable simply through an understanding of game theory and math; in so doing, they create for themselves new rewards and punishments that are more rational in nature, by conquering results-oriented thinking. (For example, I believe a pro poker player is more likely to feel guilty about making a bad call and sucking out than a fish, and more likely to feel proud about making a disciplined fold when he doesn't get the odds, and then see the miracle card come in)

I also have a feeling that the understanding of our naturally bad judgement mechanisms influences us in a direction of greater rationality.

hmkpoker

10-25-2006, 03:49 PM

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It's so good to see that economists are finally starting to step away from the preposterous theory of human nature used by neoclassical economics.

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It would be equally preposterous to think that any such nature is static.

acidca

10-25-2006, 04:04 PM

What about the natural tendency to want to do things that are beneficial for the group? By declining the unfair proposal, you are creating a motive for mutually beneficial behavior, right? We're benevolently selfish!

Darryl_P

10-25-2006, 04:14 PM

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By "irrational," we're talking about the human tendency to minimize personal gain solely for the utility of destroying the utility for someone else.

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It's not a frivolous destruction of utility, though. By making an offer which I deem unfair, he has transgressed upon me. It's not a violation of property rights according to AC theory of course since he didn't harm me physically, coerce me, or take any physical posession of mine, but guess what? My defintion of a transgression is different from that of an ACer. I have a particular value system which forms the set of axioms that I use as the basis for all my reasoning. From there, applying cold hard logic to the situation leads to declining smaller offers.

Just because my axioms are different from yours or those of ACers doesn't mean I'm irrational. Irrationality occurs when I deviate from my own values because of emotion. That might happen in an argument with my wife, for example, or some other stressful situation when my reasoning abilites are impaired.

What seems irrational to me, though, is to assume human nature is (or should be) a certain way despite strong evidence to the contrary and assume anyone who has other values is irrational.

Rduke55

10-25-2006, 04:22 PM

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You know, you've been little but a troll in those discussions. Go and reread them. Your contribution was repeated assertions with vague references to decade old debates, you rarely discussed specifics or tackled any of the points I made. You're the perfect example of someone in an intellectual ivory tower. I know, based on our earlier debates, that you won't understand a word of that.

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Wow, I'm stunned that you just called me a troll. You're the one rehashing the same ignorant points over and over again.
I made statements that I backed up with citations, not assertations. While some were a decade or more old (from when this debate had a couple respectable scientists still on your side of it) many of those citations were from the past few years.

Do you know what I do for a living? I'm a neuroscientist. My doctorate was on brain evolution. I then did a fellowship on brain evolution. I feel pretty comfortable saying I've read more about this subject, thought more about this subject, and discussed this subject with experts in the field more than anyone else on this forum. The funny thing is, when I started in the neurosciences I had the same point of view as you. What I learned changed it.

And you dismiss that all with a wave of your folk wisdom-filled hand. What do you mean by intellectual ivory tower? That someone is actually educated in a subject?

You're basically saying "Scientists are not the most qualified people to do science."

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Back on topic...what exactly have researchers found that's news? I haven't read the original research, and frankly I don't care to. The lack of meat in the article says it all.

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Lack of meat? LOL. This explains a lot. It's not a scientific article - it's a newspaper article ABOUT a scientific article. A lot of things just became clearer for me.

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This is my summary of the research findings:

- When the researchers change the functioning of a part of a person's brain that may be involved in decision making, they made a decision that coincided more strongly with their rational self interest (according to the researcher's definition of rational self interest). That's the only data point I can see here. What a truly shocking discovery. They then go on to speculate wildly about all manner of things, based on this single data point.

From what I can see, the only reasonable statements that can be made from this "discovery" are:

1. There are parts of the brain involved in decision making
2. People can make more or less emotionally based decisions when these parts are subject to stress.

Everything else is non evidence based speculation on things that have been known for decades. If I've left anything out, please state exactly what else you think this discovery proves or indicates.

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Holy crap. You don't think investigating the neural substrate of, and evolutionary reasons for, decision making in humans has merit?

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Just an observation. There is more to self interest than just economic self interest, a fact which they downplay early on but give a nod to later in the article (completely undermining the false dichotomy they'd set up in the first place in order to frame the useless research).

Below is an example of the crap that fills areas such as neuro economics. This is not science, nor does it offer any insight. It's nothing more than highly unsophisticated speculation, and it should be discouraged instead of celebrated.

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Can you explain to us what science is then according to you?

hmkpoker

10-25-2006, 05:03 PM

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It's not a frivolous destruction of utility, though. By making an offer which I deem unfair, he has transgressed upon me. It's not a violation of property rights according to AC theory of course since he didn't harm me physically, coerce me, or take any physical posession of mine, but guess what? My defintion of a transgression is different from that of an ACer. I have a particular value system which forms the set of axioms that I use as the basis for all my reasoning. From there, applying cold hard logic to the situation leads to declining smaller offers.

Just because my axioms are different from yours or those of ACers doesn't mean I'm irrational. Irrationality occurs when I deviate from my own values because of emotion. That might happen in an argument with my wife, for example, or some other stressful situation when my reasoning abilites are impaired.

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Can those core values ever be irrationally constructed?

One of the best examples I can think of is a no-talent adolescent with dreams of hitting it big in the music industry and becoming a rock star. It's not that uncommon of a scenario, but the fulfillment of those wishes is EXTREMELY uncommon. Most adolescents don't realize (or defiantly ignore) just how difficult and unlikely such a result is, and almost all eventually become disappointed. Some become slacking adults with similarly juvenile aspirations that are impossible.

I consider rational paradigms to be those that are conducive to actions that are most likely to result in happiness (the definition of which is unfortunatel complicated), while factoring in the dimension of time (an action that yields immediate happiness at the expense of future happiness, like shooting heroin, is not always rational). What do you think?

Borodog

10-25-2006, 06:22 PM

I will go back to reading the article, to see if there is some worthwhile insight, but I have temporailly stopped after reading this:

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IMAGINE that you are sitting next to a complete stranger who has been given £10 to share between the two of you. He must choose how much to keep for himself and how much to give to you.

He can be as selfish or as generous as he likes, with one proviso: if you refuse his offer, neither of you gets any money at all. What would it take for you to turn him down?

This is the scenario known to economists as the ultimatum game. Now the way we play it is generating remarkable insights into how the human brain drives financial decisionmaking, social interactions and even the supremely irrational behaviour of suicide bombers and gangland killers.

According to standard economic theory, you should cheerfully accept anything you are given. People are assumed to be motivated chiefly by rational self-interest, and refusing any offer, however low, is tantamount to cutting off your nose to spite your face.

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This is just stupid. This ridiculous result does not in any way depend on "standard economic theory", it depends on suckers.

This scenario becomes precisely clear when we realize that it is exactly symmertic, i.e. it does not matter which person is "given" the $10 initially; both players must agree on the split for either to be paid. The only possible rational solution is to offer and accept only $5.

Any player who accepts less than $5 has not thought about the game thoroughly (and hence is not "perfectly rational", in the game theoretic sense).

A player who accepts $0 rather than agreeing to $4 has made precisely no worse of a mistake than the player ending up with $0 after holding out for $6.

There is nothing at all in this game that confounds "standard economic theory."

This article better pick up fast.

hmkpoker

10-25-2006, 06:43 PM

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I will go back to reading the article, to see if there is some worthwhile insight, but I have temporailly stopped after reading this:

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IMAGINE that you are sitting next to a complete stranger who has been given £10 to share between the two of you. He must choose how much to keep for himself and how much to give to you.

He can be as selfish or as generous as he likes, with one proviso: if you refuse his offer, neither of you gets any money at all. What would it take for you to turn him down?

This is the scenario known to economists as the ultimatum game. Now the way we play it is generating remarkable insights into how the human brain drives financial decisionmaking, social interactions and even the supremely irrational behaviour of suicide bombers and gangland killers.

According to standard economic theory, you should cheerfully accept anything you are given. People are assumed to be motivated chiefly by rational self-interest, and refusing any offer, however low, is tantamount to cutting off your nose to spite your face.

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This is just stupid. This ridiculous result does not in any way depend on "standard economic theory", it depends on suckers.

This scenario becomes precisely clear when we realize that it is exactly symmertic, i.e. it does not matter which person is "given" the $10 initially; both players must agree on the split for either to be paid. The only possible rational solution is to offer and accept only $5.

Any player who accepts less than $5 has not thought about the game thoroughly (and hence is not "perfectly rational", in the game theoretic sense).

A player who accepts $0 rather than agreeing to $4 has made precisely no worse of a mistake than the player ending up with $0 after holding out for $6.

There is nothing at all in this game that confounds "standard economic theory."

This article better pick up fast.

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Calm down.

The proposed situation in the article is SINGULAR. Non-iterated. The tendency for people to turn down any quantity, assuming that this action will have no impact on the future, is irrational.

However, I agree that it's a poor analog of economics.

Borodog

10-25-2006, 07:04 PM

The human reaction, though, is exactly what we expect, because there is a selective advantage to fairness, because in the real world (the economic world) these "games" are almost never single. Almost all economic interactions are "iterated"; hence there is a selective advantage to holding out for "fairness", even if the individual doesn't consciously realize it. This is NOT in conflict with any economic analysis. Essentially, what I'm saying is that the "sense of righteous indignation at unfairness" acts to lower the individual's time preference.

This: "Our ancestors were better at surviving if they were bloody-minded." is particularly stupid. The article is making the point that it is precisely the fair, and those that hold out for fairness that are better at surviving, not the "bloody-minded."

This is right in line with the post I've been thinking about making that makes the points that human beings are "domesticated", i.e. we've been inadvertantly bred to get along with other humans in groups just the way we inadvertently bred wolves into dogs and wild grains into wheat and corn. We're domesticated, bred to cooperate. But because of the massive advantages of specialization and the division of labor, we've also been bred to "truck and barter", in the words of Adam Smith, as well as to bargain and haggle hard.

Darryl_P

10-25-2006, 07:29 PM

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Can those core values ever be irrationally constructed?

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I don't think so. Rationality can only start from a set of givens. It cannot start from a vacuum. The givens, by definition, must come from a source outside of rationality and are therefore neither rational nor irrational.

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[One of the best examples I can think of is a no-talent adolescent with dreams of hitting it big in the music industry and becoming a rock star. It's not that uncommon of a scenario, but the fulfillment of those wishes is EXTREMELY uncommon. Most adolescents don't realize (or defiantly ignore) just how difficult and unlikely such a result is, and almost all eventually become disappointed. Some become slacking adults with similarly juvenile aspirations that are impossible.

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True, and I would argue that neither their actions per se nor the values behind them are irrational. They may say a lot of irrational things when discussing their actions, though, indicating they have not fully come to terms with their own state of being. In fact, I'd say that happens in over 99% of the cases.

One possible rational explanation for their actions is that they want to test themselves to see how far they can go. They can maximize their chances relative to their own abilities if they truly believe they can reach the top. Tricking themselves to overvalue their chances is one of their internal techniques to maximize their expected utility. I'm not saying this is necessarily how it is for everyone, just one possibility to show there exist scenarios in which behaving that way may not be irrational.

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I consider rational paradigms to be those that are conducive to actions that are most likely to result in happiness (the definition of which is unfortunatel complicated), while factoring in the dimension of time (an action that yields immediate happiness at the expense of future happiness, like shooting heroin, is not always rational). What do you think?

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I agree with what constitutes a rational paradigm and also with the extreme difficulty in defining happiness (for ourselves, leave alone for others), especially over long periods of time. And I would even argue that the heroin shooter might actually be maximizing his own long-term happiness by shooting heroin (!), assuming he knew enough about the effects of the drug before getting into it. For whatever reason, testing the limits might be of extremely high value to him. Only he can know that. If it's of high enough value, then taking huge risks would be the rational course of action for him. As an outside observer, I would sooner assume there is something about his underlying values that makes his actions rational than assume that he's not acting in accordance with his own underlying values. The reason is simply based on the statistics of prior observations that I have made in situations when I've been able to get a lot of information and analyse things deeply.

hmkpoker

10-25-2006, 09:44 PM

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The human reaction, though, is exactly what we expect, because there is a selective advantage to fairness, because in the real world (the economic world)these "games" are almost never single. Almost all economic interactions are "iterated"; hence there is a selective advantage to holding out for "fairness", even if the individual doesn't consciously realize it. This is NOT in conflict with any economic analysis. Essentially, what I'm saying is that the "sense of righteous indignation at unfairness" acts to lower the individual's time preference.

This: "Our ancestors were better at surviving if they were bloody-minded." is particularly stupid. The article is making the point that it is precisely the fair, and those that hold out for fairness that are better at surviving, not the "bloody-minded."

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This is true, but note that fairness is not useful in the modern (capitalist) world. Evolution took us through eons of savage hobbesian anarchy, and took the priviledged few species to anarcho-socialism, where animals usually had enough resources to fit immediate needs, and were better off with the "I'll scratch your back if you scratch mine" mentality. For small tribes, this is excellent.

However, when we took the great leap forward, we established a system that is very counter-intuitive. The concept of private property is unappealing when you are starving and someone else has a bounty of food; while it seems unfair, it is the threat of punishment that prevents the starving man from stealing. While private property rights coupled with the threat of punishment for aggressors was the best productivity incentivizer ever, we're still left with evolutionary baggage that makes it seem exploitative and wrong.

This isn't the only case where evolution screws us. When the well-being of an animal is threatened (often by the presence of a predator), it will biologically trigger an autonomic response: heart and lungs will accelerate, muscular nutrients are secreted, digestion is inhibited, spatial awareness is increased, and prefrontal activity is inhibited. The reason is that it is advantageous for the animal to be prepared for a situation where he is going to either kill something or run like hell. That's very important in the animal world, but in the modern world it can be a liability. A dangerous operation will naturally have the same effect on a doctor, however, being primed to run or kill with a scalpel in his hand is very disadvantageous. Human beings who are less affected by the autonomous nervous system are much more ideal for high-stress white-collar positions, as they are able to be logical or diplomatic under pressure. (Hence, why personality is so important for many employers; risk-taking preference is much more demonstrable in personality than in IQ tests)

So with all this evolutionary baggage, human beings are left intuitively judging fairness to be right, even in large economic systems where it is simply not practical. That's why people are so naturally inclined toward socialism and hating the rich.

Borodog

10-25-2006, 10:27 PM

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The human reaction, though, is exactly what we expect, because there is a selective advantage to fairness, because in the real world (the economic world)these "games" are almost never single. Almost all economic interactions are "iterated"; hence there is a selective advantage to holding out for "fairness", even if the individual doesn't consciously realize it. This is NOT in conflict with any economic analysis. Essentially, what I'm saying is that the "sense of righteous indignation at unfairness" acts to lower the individual's time preference.

This: "Our ancestors were better at surviving if they were bloody-minded." is particularly stupid. The article is making the point that it is precisely the fair, and those that hold out for fairness that are better at surviving, not the "bloody-minded."

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This is true, but note that fairness is not useful in the modern (capitalist) world.

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What color is the sky in Crazy World?

What happens to economic exchangers who habitually do not act fairly to the other party to the exchange?

FortunaMaximus

10-25-2006, 10:32 PM

Vanilla.

They topple over in the end if they're noticed taking edges for too long. There's a causative effect there too that isn't mentioned. Cold dishes are generally the sweetest of all.

Propertarian

10-25-2006, 10:52 PM

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This is just stupid. This ridiculous result does not in any way depend on "standard economic theory", it depends on suckers.

[/ QUOTE ] Standard economic theory = neoclassical economics, not Austrian Economics. This paragraph goes against what is predicted in this situation by neoclassical economics; namely,

Person Y gets the money and must split with X. Y will pick 1 cent (or whatever the minimu is), knowing that X is a hom-o economicus who will always take something over nothing. X will accept the offer, because he prefers the outcome of one penny to zero cents (which would be his outcome if he rejected the offer).

Propertarian

10-25-2006, 10:57 PM

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It would be equally preposterous to think that any such nature is static.

[/ QUOTE ] Correct; mutation and natural selection are the only constants in human nature i.e. a very slow process of change is the only constant.

Rduke55

10-25-2006, 11:03 PM

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This scenario becomes precisely clear when we realize that it is exactly symmertic, i.e. it does not matter which person is "given" the $10 initially; both players must agree on the split for either to be paid. The only possible rational solution is to offer and accept only $5.

Any player who accepts less than $5 has not thought about the game thoroughly (and hence is not "perfectly rational", in the game theoretic sense).

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I'm confused as to why you're so fired up about this.

hmkpoker

10-25-2006, 11:12 PM

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The human reaction, though, is exactly what we expect, because there is a selective advantage to fairness, because in the real world (the economic world)these "games" are almost never single. Almost all economic interactions are "iterated"; hence there is a selective advantage to holding out for "fairness", even if the individual doesn't consciously realize it. This is NOT in conflict with any economic analysis. Essentially, what I'm saying is that the "sense of righteous indignation at unfairness" acts to lower the individual's time preference.

This: "Our ancestors were better at surviving if they were bloody-minded." is particularly stupid. The article is making the point that it is precisely the fair, and those that hold out for fairness that are better at surviving, not the "bloody-minded."

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This is true, but note that fairness is not useful in the modern (capitalist) world.

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What color is the sky in Crazy World?

What happens to economic exchangers who habitually do not act fairly to the other party to the exchange?

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I'm referring to fairness of result, not fairness of opportunity. In tribal anarchy, one who produces a lot has his resources consumed by the tribe...of course, this isn't a problem with small populations, since your tribe members are your closest friends and family.

Rduke55

10-25-2006, 11:36 PM

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Hijack time.

Rduke:

How, in your opinion, should this discovery be applied? /images/graemlins/smile.gif

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That's a good question and I'm not sure.

Of course I'd imagine it's useful for insight into some mental disorders.
Outside of that, the talks I went to was put on by our law school so I'd guess that they think there may be applications there.

Propertarian

10-25-2006, 11:39 PM

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The proposed situation in the article is SINGULAR. Non-iterated. The tendency for people to turn down any quantity, assuming that this action will have no impact on the future, is irrational.

However, I agree that it's a poor analog of economics.

[/ QUOTE ] We agree-surprise, surprise.

Neoclassical economics doesn't take ideas of fairness and reciprocity and their effects on iterated transactions into place.

hmkpoker

10-25-2006, 11:43 PM

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It would be equally preposterous to think that any such nature is static.

[/ QUOTE ] Correct; mutation and natural selection are the only constants in human nature i.e. a very slow process of change is the only constant.

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I disagree.

Human beings are capable of rational logic, and frequently do not exercise it because it is overrun by emotional mechanisms that evolved for survival in a primitive world, as OP demonstrates.

However, the awareness of these mechanisms gives one the ability to change them. It is instinctive for an individual to feel inferior in the face of another's success, and accordingly act competitively, enmiring oneself in work, debt and misery. However, the awareness that this isn't really going to get you anywhere and that happiness is much, much easier to secure through other methods (having like-minded friends, lowering material expectations, doing things you like, not giving a [censored] about what other people think) gives anyone the power to override the animal instinct.

The beauty of psychology is that it gives the seeing eye the ability to see itself.

Propertarian

10-25-2006, 11:44 PM

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Outside of that, the talks I went to was put on by our law school so I'd guess that they think there may be applications there.

[/ QUOTE ] I'm sure their is an application, and the prevailing economic theory is of course influential on public policy but I imagnine this talk was put on in the law school because of a legal theory called " Law and Economics (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_and_economics)", which uses the neoclassical models being falsified by neuro-economics.

Propertarian

10-25-2006, 11:48 PM

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I disagree.

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Not exactly; mutation and natural selection also gave us rational logic, of course. And shapes whether we will use it or not, how it works, and who will use it.

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However, the awareness that this isn't really going to get you anywhere and that happiness is much, much easier to secure through other methods (having like-minded friends, lowering material expectations, doing things you like, not giving a [censored] about what other people think) gives anyone the power to override the animal instinct.

[/ QUOTE ] I strongly disagree with this; I can think of many examples of people who were aware of the orgin of urges (e.g. people well versed in evolutionary theory who are overweight because of overeating or pursuing relative status or at least distraught about not doing so) who can't seem to stop performing the action.

Furthermore, the emotional traits you talk about often bring people disutility if they don't perform the action traditionally used to satiate the passion. They might not perform the action that the emotion urges them to perform, but the emotion is still their, nagging away at their concious and subconcious.

hmkpoker

10-26-2006, 12:10 AM

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Not exactly; mutation and natural selection also gave us rational logic, of course. And shapes whether we will use it or not, how it works, and who will use it.

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True, but my point was that the results of evolution are now more useful to survival than evolution itself. Consider civilization; the welfare of humankind is influenced far more greatly by the social norms we implement rather than the results of natural selection.

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I strongly disagree with this; I can think of many examples of people who were aware of the orgin of urges (e.g. people well versed in evolutionary theory who are overweight because of overeating or pursuing relative status or at least distraught about not doing so).

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Your position is that the knowledge of a pertinent biological mechanism does not affect someone's behavior? /images/graemlins/confused.gif

So, the knowledge of long-term damage by cigarrette smoking does not create a disincentive to smoke cigarettes? The knowledge that excessive cocaine use leads to overdose doesn't create a disincentive to slow down? The knowledge that alcohol-related dehydration leads to hangover does not create an incentive to drink lots of water after a party?

[ QUOTE ]

Furthermore, the emotional traits you talk about often bring people disutility if they don't perform the action traditionally used to satiate the passion. They might not perform the action that the emotion urges them to perform, but the emotion is still their, nagging away at their concious and subconcious.

[/ QUOTE ]

My brother stopped his pack-a-day habit a year ago. He said it really sucked, but he knew it was something he had to do. Contrast this with a rab rat who, given the ability to administer nicotine, cocaine or morphine injections, will keep administering until it OD's. Care to explain?

Propertarian

10-26-2006, 12:45 AM

[ QUOTE ]
Your position is that the knowledge of a pertinent biological mechanism does not affect someone's behavior?

[/ QUOTE ] No, it does effect that person's behavior. This situation extremely complex; way more complex than you are portraying it.

[ QUOTE ]
Consider civilization; the welfare of humankind is influenced far more greatly by the social norms we implement rather than the results of natural selection.

[/ QUOTE ] This of course presupposes that the norms we implement are not also largely a product of natural selection.

Also, many social norms (e.g. norms against adultery or premartial sex in the past in our society) have been imperfectly followed-to say the least-because those norms are contrary to the impulses and behaviors that natural selection have given us. Just because a social norm exists does not mean it will be followed.
[ QUOTE ]
My brother stopped his pack-a-day habit a year ago. He said it really sucked, but he knew it was something he had to do. Contrast this with a rab rat who, given the ability to administer nicotine, cocaine or morphine injections, will keep administering until it OD's. Care to explain?

[/ QUOTE ] Obviously this occurs. In the paragraph you quoted I admitted, more or less, that some people some of the time will not perform behaviors that emotions that have been selected by evolution "intend" for them to perform. Once again, it is simply the case that I don't think the subject we are discussing is as simple as "we understand psychology and evolution so can conquer it in a mind over matter scenario".

hmkpoker

10-26-2006, 01:13 AM

[ QUOTE ]
This of course presupposes that the norms we implement are not also largely a product of natural selection.

[/ QUOTE ]

I'm tempted to argue that laws change a little too quickly to be naturally selected, although, perhaps natural selection of social norms does occur, just in a different way (since it isn't biological data that's being replicated.) This is an interesting idea, I'll have to think about it some other time.

[ QUOTE ]
Obviously this occurs. In the paragraph you quoted I admitted, more or less, that some people some of the time will not perform behaviors that emotions that have been selected by evolution "intend" for them to perform. Once again, it is simply the case that I don't think the subject we are discussing is as simple as "we understand psychology and evolution so can conquer it in a mind over matter scenario".

[/ QUOTE ]

The actual processes are difficult to impossible to measure, but I think the principle of increased availability of information leading to better choices is pretty sound.

Borodog

10-26-2006, 10:46 AM

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
This scenario becomes precisely clear when we realize that it is exactly symmertic, i.e. it does not matter which person is "given" the $10 initially; both players must agree on the split for either to be paid. The only possible rational solution is to offer and accept only $5.

Any player who accepts less than $5 has not thought about the game thoroughly (and hence is not "perfectly rational", in the game theoretic sense).

[/ QUOTE ]

I'm confused as to why you're so fired up about this.

[/ QUOTE ]

I'm not really "fired up", per se. I'm just not sure what the big deal is. Austrians like Mises, Rothbard, and Hoppe and Hoppe in particular have been saying things like this for decades, although without the (I think incredibly useful and enlightening) evolutionary angle.

Borodog

10-26-2006, 11:09 AM

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
The human reaction, though, is exactly what we expect, because there is a selective advantage to fairness, because in the real world (the economic world)these "games" are almost never single. Almost all economic interactions are "iterated"; hence there is a selective advantage to holding out for "fairness", even if the individual doesn't consciously realize it. This is NOT in conflict with any economic analysis. Essentially, what I'm saying is that the "sense of righteous indignation at unfairness" acts to lower the individual's time preference.

This: "Our ancestors were better at surviving if they were bloody-minded." is particularly stupid. The article is making the point that it is precisely the fair, and those that hold out for fairness that are better at surviving, not the "bloody-minded."

[/ QUOTE ]

This is true, but note that fairness is not useful in the modern (capitalist) world.

[/ QUOTE ]

What color is the sky in Crazy World?

What happens to economic exchangers who habitually do not act fairly to the other party to the exchange?

[/ QUOTE ]

I'm referring to fairness of result, not fairness of opportunity. In tribal anarchy, one who produces a lot has his resources consumed by the tribe...of course, this isn't a problem with small populations, since your tribe members are your closest friends and family.

[/ QUOTE ]

"Fairness of results", I suspect, is a rather different matter entirely. As you yourself have pointed out, we have to be indoctrinated with years of school to believe that what matters is relative wealth, "fairness of results."

The sense of "righteous indignation at being treated unfairly" is an extremely useful thing in society. It fosters cooperation, specialization, and the division of labor.

I don't think people naturally believe that it is "unfair" that others who have more material wealth than them (although there are of course pathological cases); that's a cultural thing; people have to be taught it. Which is exactly what happened in places like Haiti.

However, that doesn't mean that people (usually states) don't take advantage of the sense of "righteous indignation at being treated unfairly". I bolded "treated" because I think it's the crucial word. Middle Eastern government rile up hatred against the United States by telling them not that the Americans are free (cause you know, they all hate freedom over there), but that America does not treat fairly with Moslem nations. In fact most of the rest of the world does the same thing. It doesn't help matters, f course, that very often the US government doesn't treat fairly.

The fact that America is materially wealthy is only used as a signal to show that she must have gotten that way by "exploiting" the rest of the world, i.e. treating unfairly. Nobody gets upset at the obvious idea of "if you produce more, you have more." Except of course pathological cases like Propertarian.

chezlaw

10-26-2006, 11:31 AM

That economists could be suprised by this isn't suprising. its the same mistake that DS encourages in his morality questions.

I would turn down a derisory offer. It maximises my satisfaction. I also wouldn't make a derisory offer for the same reason.

The interesting bit (that support property rights and ethics converging) is how different the answer would be if the participants believed the money was rightfully theirs.

chez

hmkpoker

10-26-2006, 11:43 AM

[ QUOTE ]

"Fairness of results", I suspect, is a rather different matter entirely. As you yourself have pointed out, we have to be indoctrinated with years of school to believe that what matters is relative wealth, "fairness of results."

[/ QUOTE ]

School exacerbates the problem, but I don't think it's the primary cause. The human mind is very good at rationalizing things to make someone feel better about himself. "Oh, well I could have done better if it weren't for that damn dentist's appointment," "Bill Gates is only rich because he was in the right place at the right time" etc. All this rationalization process is is a method of retroactively discribing the opportunties as unfair...which is easy, because given the natural diversity and inequality of everyone's situations, they are unfair.

If it were the case that people didn't feel that unfairness occurred when someone produced more and got more, there would be no jealousy or rationalizing when they're confronted with it. But that's not the case.

[ QUOTE ]
Nobody gets upset at the obvious idea of "if you produce more, you have more." Except of course pathological cases like Propertarian.

[/ QUOTE ]

It's not that uncommon. Look at Europe.

Borodog

10-26-2006, 12:47 PM

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]

"Fairness of results", I suspect, is a rather different matter entirely. As you yourself have pointed out, we have to be indoctrinated with years of school to believe that what matters is relative wealth, "fairness of results."

[/ QUOTE ]

School exacerbates the problem, but I don't think it's the primary cause. The human mind is very good at rationalizing things to make someone feel better about himself. "Oh, well I could have done better if it weren't for that damn dentist's appointment," "Bill Gates is only rich because he was in the right place at the right time" etc. All this rationalization process is is a method of retroactively discribing the opportunties as unfair...which is easy, because given the natural diversity and inequality of everyone's situations, they are unfair.

If it were the case that people didn't feel that unfairness occurred when someone produced more and got more, there would be no jealousy or rationalizing when they're confronted with it. But that's not the case.

[ QUOTE ]
Nobody gets upset at the obvious idea of "if you produce more, you have more." Except of course pathological cases like Propertarian.

[/ QUOTE ]

It's not that uncommon. Look at Europe.

[/ QUOTE ]

Your argument simply makes no sense from an evolutionary perspective. There is no selective advantage in rationalizing why you failed to maximize your opportunities, nor in lamenting the lack of them. There is a powerful selective advantage in actually maximizing opportunities and actively creating them.

hmkpoker

10-26-2006, 01:10 PM

[ QUOTE ]
There is no selective advantage in rationalizing why you failed to maximize your opportunities, nor in lamenting the lack of them.

[/ QUOTE ]

Ego protection.

Human beings have a drive to feel good about themselves. Originally this had to be secured by the securing of more goods to provide satiety and security, but once those are met, we still have the drive and seek to secure it in other bizarre ways based on relative heuristics.

Evolution only prepared us for tribal anarchy. It did not prepare us for civilization, which conquered scarcity so much that reproduction, the primary focus of our biological motivations, is now often a liability.

I shouldn't have to point out that evolution can accidentally create a survival mechanism that accidentally counter-acts another survival mechanism. For example, the sex drive is strong, and is designed to get us to reproduce. Opposable thumbs make grasping and manipulating things very easy...yet they also enable us to fulfill the sex drive in a manner that definately doesn't result in reproduction.

Borodog

10-26-2006, 01:44 PM

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
There is no selective advantage in rationalizing why you failed to maximize your opportunities, nor in lamenting the lack of them.

[/ QUOTE ]

Ego protection.

Human beings have a drive to feel good about themselves. Originally this had to be secured by the securing of more goods to provide satiety and security, but once those are met,

[/ QUOTE ]

They are never met.

[ QUOTE ]
we still have the drive and seek to secure it in other bizarre ways based on relative heuristics.

[/ QUOTE ]

I don't want to get into a big argument about it, but this is simply not true. It's entirely culturally dependent. Lots of societies have caste systems, and the lower castes find attempts to jump caste boundaries just as abhorent as the higher castes do, entirely because of cultural norms.

[ QUOTE ]
Evolution only prepared us for tribal anarchy. It did not prepare us for civilization,

[/ QUOTE ]

This is silly. We've been bred to civilization for the last 40,000 years, and especially intensively for the last 11,000. While that might not seem like much in terms of human evolution, it actually is quite a lot given the strength of the selection pressure to be civilized in densely packed society. It's about 2000 generations, and 500+ generations of intensive civilized breeding; that's more than enough time to domesticate us to civil society. The point of my Great Leap Forward thread was that some development, probably the Theory of Mind that Rduke55 brought up, paved the way for civilization. In short, we're built for civilization, or else we wouldn't have it.

[ QUOTE ]
which conquered scarcity so much that reproduction, the primary focus of our biological motivations, is now often a liability.

[/ QUOTE ]

No, it isn't. Don't tell me you're buying into that Mathusian crap, are you?

[ QUOTE ]

I shouldn't have to point out that evolution can accidentally create a survival mechanism that accidentally counter-acts another survival mechanism. For example, the sex drive is strong, and is designed to get us to reproduce. Opposable thumbs make grasping and manipulating things very easy...yet they also enable us to fulfill the sex drive in a manner that definately doesn't result in reproduction.

[/ QUOTE ]

Are you seriously making an argument that masturbation makes a species less reproductively fit? If it did, it would be selected against and it wouldn't heppen.

But I think that your idea does have some application. The more likely it is that any interaction really will be a single interaction, the less useful it is to be civilized, nice, fair, well behaved, etc. I think this nicely explains the culture of large cities like New York, where people have small interactions hundreds or thousands of times a day with people they know they will never, ever see again. Niceness and civility go out the window, and rudeness rules the day.

I just take umbrage to your claim that it's somehow capitalism that makes fairness somehow obsolete. That's silly. Capitalists (at least smart ones) will always favor repeat business. They must maintain good relationships not only with their customers (who can go somewhere else), but their employees (who can always go find another job), their suppliers and distributors (whom their business depends on), not to mention the opinion of the community (since this is the customer pool from which their market share, as weel as their employees are drawn from).

Rduke55

10-26-2006, 02:07 PM

[ QUOTE ]
Evolution only prepared us for tribal anarchy. It did not prepare us for civilization, which conquered scarcity so much that reproduction, the primary focus of our biological motivations, is now often a liability.

[/ QUOTE ]

I think this is the point Boro is disagreeing with. I think this is an excellent point and I agree with you.

While things like the ToM were precursors and neccessary for the rise of civilization there's still a lot of other stuff in the ol' noodle that causes problems here.

[ QUOTE ]
I shouldn't have to point out that evolution can accidentally create a survival mechanism that accidentally counter-acts another survival mechanism. For example, the sex drive is strong, and is designed to get us to reproduce. Opposable thumbs make grasping and manipulating things very easy...yet they also enable us to fulfill the sex drive in a manner that definately doesn't result in reproduction.

[/ QUOTE ]

I think another example along these lines would be drug abuse.

Rduke55

10-26-2006, 02:10 PM

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
There is no selective advantage in rationalizing why you failed to maximize your opportunities, nor in lamenting the lack of them.

[/ QUOTE ]

Ego protection.

Human beings have a drive to feel good about themselves. Originally this had to be secured by the securing of more goods to provide satiety and security, but once those are met,

[/ QUOTE ]

They are never met.

[ QUOTE ]
we still have the drive and seek to secure it in other bizarre ways based on relative heuristics.

[/ QUOTE ]

I don't want to get into a big argument about it, but this is simply not true. It's entirely culturally dependent. Lots of societies have caste systems, and the lower castes find attempts to jump caste boundaries just as abhorent as the higher castes do, entirely because of cultural norms.

[ QUOTE ]
Evolution only prepared us for tribal anarchy. It did not prepare us for civilization,

[/ QUOTE ]

This is silly. We've been bred to civilization for the last 40,000 years, and especially intensively for the last 11,000. While that might not seem like much in terms of human evolution, it actually is quite a lot given the strength of the selection pressure to be civilized in densely packed society. It's about 2000 generations, and 500+ generations of intensive civilized breeding; that's more than enough time to domesticate us to civil society. The point of my Great Leap Forward thread was that some development, probably the Theory of Mind that Rduke55 brought up, paved the way for civilization. In short, we're built for civilization, or else we wouldn't have it.

[ QUOTE ]
which conquered scarcity so much that reproduction, the primary focus of our biological motivations, is now often a liability.

[/ QUOTE ]

No, it isn't. Don't tell me you're buying into that Mathusian crap, are you?

[ QUOTE ]

I shouldn't have to point out that evolution can accidentally create a survival mechanism that accidentally counter-acts another survival mechanism. For example, the sex drive is strong, and is designed to get us to reproduce. Opposable thumbs make grasping and manipulating things very easy...yet they also enable us to fulfill the sex drive in a manner that definately doesn't result in reproduction.

[/ QUOTE ]

Are you seriously making an argument that masturbation makes a species less reproductively fit? If it did, it would be selected against and it wouldn't heppen.

I

[/ QUOTE ]

You are using only part of evolutionary theory. I think you are ignoring evolutionary constraints (the realpolitik of evolution) again, for one. There are lots of behaviors, etc. that aren't optimal.

Reread HMK's recent posts here.

(also, I haven't forgotten about your ToM citations, I have to dig them out at home and I've been too swamped with the new baby to get to them - I'll see if I can scare up some non-optimal behavior stuff as well)

FortunaMaximus

10-26-2006, 02:13 PM

Interject:

[ QUOTE ]
No, it isn't. Don't tell me you're buying into that Mathusian crap, are you?

[/ QUOTE ]

Not as an end point, but as a trigger point for a paradigm shift. I'm sure it's followed by a recursive explosion. There's room enough and time enough.

hmkpoker

10-26-2006, 02:33 PM

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Ego protection.

Human beings have a drive to feel good about themselves. Originally this had to be secured by the securing of more goods to provide satiety and security, but once those are met,

[/ QUOTE ]

They are never met.

[/ QUOTE ]

I was referring to specific needs. Needs tend to form a hierarchy based on survival. Food (one of the most basic needs) is met and met frequently. Ever eaten a lot and felt full? At that point, food probably stopped being a priority. Next on the agenda is material security, managing an extensive supply of food. Anyone with a good, steady job and savings has fulfilled this. The human sex drive is also around this priority, but anyone with a healthy marriage or a bunch of [copulation]-buddies has this fulfilled. The drives that occur after that are drives that few species have the luxury of experiencing.

[ QUOTE ]

I don't want to get into a big argument about it, but this is simply not true. It's entirely culturally dependent. Lots of societies have caste systems, and the lower castes find attempts to jump caste boundaries just as abhorent as the higher castes do, entirely because of cultural norms.

[/ QUOTE ]

This may very well be true. I'm not sure if it's entirely culturally dependant, but I have no idea just how much a role culture plays vs. biology (I assume it's huge, though). You're probably right. More argument to end Big Education /images/graemlins/smile.gif

[ QUOTE ]
This is silly. We've been bred to civilization for the last 40,000 years, and especially intensively for the last 11,000. While that might not seem like much in terms of human evolution, it actually is quite a lot given the strength of the selection pressure to be civilized in densely packed society. It's about 2000 generations, and 500+ generations of intensive civilized breeding; that's more than enough time to domesticate us to civil society. The point of my Great Leap Forward thread was that some development, probably the Theory of Mind that Rduke55 brought up, paved the way for civilization. In short, we're built for civilization, or else we wouldn't have it.

[/ QUOTE ]

Good point.

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]

which conquered scarcity so much that reproduction, the primary focus of our biological motivations, is now often a liability.

[/ QUOTE ]
No, it isn't. Don't tell me you're buying into that Mathusian crap, are you?

[/ QUOTE ]

I have no idea who that is. However, I'm willing to concede that I made an error in thinking that the rate of reproduction is the only pertinent factor in evolution; while the uncivilized world undoubtedly reproduces more rapidly than the civilized world, (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Birth_rate_figures_for_countries.PNG), they are also less selective. Hell, we're at the point now where people can select genes for their child somewhat independently of their partner's genetics.

[ QUOTE ]
Are you seriously making an argument that masturbation makes a species less reproductively fit? If it did, it would be selected against and it wouldn't heppen.

[/ QUOTE ]

Obviously not. If opposable thumbs created a greater liability than benefit, they wouldn't have happened.

[ QUOTE ]

But I think that your idea does have some application. The more likely it is that any interaction really will be a single interaction, the less useful it is to be civilized, nice, fair, well behaved, etc. I think this nicely explains the culture of large cities like New York, where people have small interactions hundreds or thousands of times a day with people they know they will never, ever see again. Niceness and civility go out the window, and rudeness rules the day.

[/ QUOTE ]

Also, consider a worker who is going to leave his job in a few weeks. As he nears the date of completion, he going to become progressively less productive; high time preference behavior (laziness) simply becomes more useful, because there is no reason for him to be competitive. (Businesses can counter this behavior to some degree, though, by providing bonuses upon completion of his term. He might also need a reference and want to go out on good terms. But he's still going to tend toward laziness, not greater productivity)

[ QUOTE ]
I just take umbrage to your claim that it's somehow capitalism that makes fairness somehow obsolete.

[/ QUOTE ]

I was strictly talking about fairness of result. If it is genuinely the case that our fairness drive is directed toward results primarily because of socialization, I concede.

Borodog

10-26-2006, 02:35 PM

[ QUOTE ]
You are using only part of evolutionary theory. I think you are ignoring evolutionary constraints (the realpolitik of evolution) again, for one. There are lots of behaviors, etc. that aren't optimal.

[/ QUOTE ]

I know there are lots of behaviors that aren't optimal. I also know that there are evolutionary constraints, e.g. you cannot evolve faster than the requisite variability can arise. But neither of those things supports hmk's assertions that people naturally see relative disparities of material wealth as inherently "unfair" thus setting the table for socialism. There is plenty of historical evidence to the contrary. The mere fact that a tiny ruling class could live in unbelievable splendor at the expense of entire populations living in abject poverty, as has occured again and again throughout history, belies this theory. It's entirely culturally dependent.

Besides, there is selection pressure against this. If you become righteously indignant because someone else has more than you, this would act as an incentive to enter into conflict with people who have more resources at their disposal. That's a recipe for removing your genes from the population. It's like saying the zeta wolf, indignant that the alpha wolf gets the most meat, tries to steal meat from the alpha wolf. It's not going to turn out well. There is a positive incentive to avoid such conflicts. There is a selection pressure to respect the property rights of those with more than you, and to admire and emulate them, and as always to trade with them, so that you can improve your own position without resorting to conflict with someone who has far more resources than you.

You'll have to come up with far better arguments to make me believe otherwise. It just doesn't make a lick of sense.

[ QUOTE ]

Reread HMK's recent posts here.

(also, I haven't forgotten about your ToM citations, I have to dig them out at home and I've been too swamped with the new baby to get to them - I'll see if I can scare up some non-optimal behavior stuff as well)

[/ QUOTE ]

Thanks. I appreciate it.

hmkpoker

10-26-2006, 02:47 PM

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Evolution only prepared us for tribal anarchy. It did not prepare us for civilization, which conquered scarcity so much that reproduction, the primary focus of our biological motivations, is now often a liability.

[/ QUOTE ]

I think this is the point Boro is disagreeing with. I think this is an excellent point and I agree with you.

[/ QUOTE ]

Well that makes one of us /images/graemlins/tongue.gif See my response to boro.

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
I shouldn't have to point out that evolution can accidentally create a survival mechanism that accidentally counter-acts another survival mechanism. For example, the sex drive is strong, and is designed to get us to reproduce. Opposable thumbs make grasping and manipulating things very easy...yet they also enable us to fulfill the sex drive in a manner that definately doesn't result in reproduction.

[/ QUOTE ]

I think another example along these lines would be drug abuse.

[/ QUOTE ]

As pointed out in boro's post, behavior that is more threatening to survival gets destroyed while behavior that is conducive to survival (or well-being, in the civilized world) expands. Human beings are much better suited for addictive drugs than animals are, which is why opiates haven't rendered us extinct; we are capable of realizing that certain substances can have highly unfavorable effects through prolonged usage, and can apply that information usefully. This is why the industrial revolution was able to coincide with the first heroin outbreak and result in more technology, wealth and a greater population, whereas a lab mouse with the ability to administer heroin to itself will inject until it dies. Heroin never could have been proliferated by mice, because they would have all died out.

hmkpoker

10-26-2006, 02:52 PM

[ QUOTE ]
But neither of those things supports hmk's assertions that people naturally see relative disparities of material wealth as inherently "unfair" thus setting the table for socialism. There is plenty of historical evidence to the contrary. The mere fact that a tiny ruling class could live in unbelievable splendor at the expense of entire populations living in abject poverty, as has occured again and again throughout history, belies this theory.

[/ QUOTE ]

Note that there are also many instances of Bolshevism. (Communist overthrow, Frensh Revolution, labor unions, slave revolts, etc)

Rduke55

10-26-2006, 02:54 PM

[ QUOTE ]
It's like saying the zeta wolf, indignant that the alpha wolf gets the most meat, tries to steal meat from the alpha wolf. It's not going to turn out well. There is a positive incentive to avoid such conflicts. There is a selection pressure to respect the property rights of those with more than you, and to admire and emulate them, and as always to trade with them, so that you can improve your own position without resorting to conflict with someone who has far more resources than you.

[/ QUOTE ]

How much do you know about wolves? The omega (not zeta) wolf lives on the fringes of the pack. It's usually somewhere on it's way out and is abused constantly. Other subordinate wolves are constantly trying to take over the top spot. Life at the top is hard and you have to defend it constantly.
Same goes for other hierarchical carnivores and primates.
There's absolutely no respect for property rights or whatever you want to call it here.

FortunaMaximus

10-26-2006, 03:01 PM

See, here's the thing, a trickier beta-omega-zeta in the order is quite happy with what he's got sometimes.

See the lion-hyena illusion where the savannah is concerned.

hmkpoker

10-26-2006, 03:04 PM

[ QUOTE ]

See the lion-hyena illusion where the savannah is concerned.

[/ QUOTE ]

Link or source?

Rduke55

10-26-2006, 03:07 PM

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Evolution only prepared us for tribal anarchy. It did not prepare us for civilization, which conquered scarcity so much that reproduction, the primary focus of our biological motivations, is now often a liability.

[/ QUOTE ]

I think this is the point Boro is disagreeing with. I think this is an excellent point and I agree with you.

[/ QUOTE ]

Well that makes one of us /images/graemlins/tongue.gif See my response to boro.

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
I shouldn't have to point out that evolution can accidentally create a survival mechanism that accidentally counter-acts another survival mechanism. For example, the sex drive is strong, and is designed to get us to reproduce. Opposable thumbs make grasping and manipulating things very easy...yet they also enable us to fulfill the sex drive in a manner that definately doesn't result in reproduction.

[/ QUOTE ]

I think another example along these lines would be drug abuse.

[/ QUOTE ]

As pointed out in boro's post, behavior that is more threatening to survival gets destroyed while behavior that is conducive to survival (or well-being, in the civilized world) expands. Human beings are much better suited for addictive drugs than animals are, which is why opiates haven't rendered us extinct; we are capable of realizing that certain substances can have highly unfavorable effects through prolonged usage, and can apply that information usefully. This is why the industrial revolution was able to coincide with the first heroin outbreak and result in more technology, wealth and a greater population, whereas a lab mouse with the ability to administer heroin to itself will inject until it dies. Heroin never could have been proliferated by mice, because they would have all died out.

[/ QUOTE ]

I think your point is still valid. Don't give up so easily /images/graemlins/smile.gif
We are talking both about evolutionary constraints and optimality.
A big point people seem to be missing is that many of the suboptimal behaviors we are talking about are difficult to modify - for good reasons. Let's take the drug abuse thing as an example since it's the simplest. On a superficial level, you would imagine that it would be selected out. But once you realize what the circuitry involved is and why it's there and made up like it is then you see that changes in that circuit would have profound effects on several other essential behaviors (such as eating, sex, etc.) so there are severe constraints against changing this.
This kind of thinking is relevant to many of the nonoptimal behaviors you alluded to. You cannot just say "Oh, this behavior is detrimental so it's selected against." "This behavior is fitness-promoting so it's selected for." There's a really complex relationship here because behaviors do not have dedicated and separate circuits for them. It's not just whether or not a behavior is threatening in itself. No behavior is an island. Changing the circuitry responsible for a "threatening" behavior could have wide-ranging and more damaging effects than the behavior had in itself.
Constraints people.

Rduke55

10-26-2006, 03:11 PM

[ QUOTE ]

See, here's the thing, a trickier beta-omega-zeta in the order is quite happy with what he's got sometimes.

See the lion-hyena illusion where the savannah is concerned.

[/ QUOTE ]

Explain please.

luckyme

10-26-2006, 03:20 PM

[ QUOTE ]
There's a really complex relationship here because behaviors do not have dedicated and separate circuits for them. It's not just whether or not a behavior is threatening in itself. No behavior is an island. Changing the circuitry responsible for a "threatening" behavior could have wide-ranging and more damaging effects than the behavior had in itself.
Constraints people.

[/ QUOTE ]

to bring neuroscience to street level - when people say, "hortense would be such a nice guy if he just did( didn't) X", my comment is usually, "hortense is a complex bundle and the same trait that you're referring to is a big factor in his Y or Z actions that you like (dislike) so much." we are modular on many levels but not anywhere near as compartmentalized as that seems to imply.

luckyme

Borodog

10-26-2006, 03:24 PM

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Ego protection.

Human beings have a drive to feel good about themselves. Originally this had to be secured by the securing of more goods to provide satiety and security, but once those are met,

[/ QUOTE ]

They are never met.

[/ QUOTE ]

I was referring to specific needs. Needs tend to form a hierarchy based on survival. Food (one of the most basic needs) is met and met frequently. Ever eaten a lot and felt full? At that point, food probably stopped being a priority. Next on the agenda is material security, managing an extensive supply of food. Anyone with a good, steady job and savings has fulfilled this. The human sex drive is also around this priority, but anyone with a healthy marriage or a bunch of [copulation]-buddies has this fulfilled. The drives that occur after that are drives that few species have the luxury of experiencing.

[/ QUOTE ]

Even the need for food is never met completely. It can be met temporarily. But in just a few hours, you must eat again, and the longer you delay that satisfaction, the more freaking important it becomes. Only a tiny fraction of people ever accumulate enough capital to completely withdraw from production for the rest of their lives. The vast majority of people simply must continue to produce in order to continue to consume.

And even those that could withdraw from production and entirely and live off of capital consumption for the rest of their lives have an evolutionary incentive to keep producing, at ever higher rates, and continue to accumulate capital far in excess of their capability to ever consume what they have produced: They aren't providing for themselves, they are providing for their genes. Those who accumulate capital and leave it to their children are benefiting their genes, and hence their is a selective advantage to do so. The fact that people are quantitatively more consumptive as they become wealthier is simply reflective of the fact that they have more resources; the best saver-accumulators consume an ever smaller fraction of their productive capacity as they become wealthy, even if the absolute amount they consume goes up (although this may not even happen).

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I don't want to get into a big argument about it, but this is simply not true. It's entirely culturally dependent. Lots of societies have caste systems, and the lower castes find attempts to jump caste boundaries just as abhorent as the higher castes do, entirely because of cultural norms.

[/ QUOTE ]

This may very well be true. I'm not sure if it's entirely culturally dependant, but I have no idea just how much a role culture plays vs. biology (I assume it's huge, though). You're probably right. More argument to end Big Education /images/graemlins/smile.gif

[ QUOTE ]
This is silly. We've been bred to civilization for the last 40,000 years, and especially intensively for the last 11,000. While that might not seem like much in terms of human evolution, it actually is quite a lot given the strength of the selection pressure to be civilized in densely packed society. It's about 2000 generations, and 500+ generations of intensive civilized breeding; that's more than enough time to domesticate us to civil society. The point of my Great Leap Forward thread was that some development, probably the Theory of Mind that Rduke55 brought up, paved the way for civilization. In short, we're built for civilization, or else we wouldn't have it.

[/ QUOTE ]

Good point.

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which conquered scarcity so much that reproduction, the primary focus of our biological motivations, is now often a liability.

[/ QUOTE ]
No, it isn't. Don't tell me you're buying into that Mathusian crap, are you?

[/ QUOTE ]

I have no idea who that is. However, I'm willing to concede that I made an error in thinking that the rate of reproduction is the only pertinent factor in evolution; while the uncivilized world undoubtedly reproduces more rapidly than the civilized world, (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Birth_rate_figures_for_countries.PNG), they are also less selective. Hell, we're at the point now where people can select genes for their child somewhat independently of their partner's genetics.

[/ QUOTE ]

Malthus was the guy that said the world would end in a calamity of poverty, disease, war and starvation as we outsripped the Earth's carrying capacity. The refutation of this is twofold:

1) Capital accumulation and technological innovation allows us to increase the carrying capacity of the Earth (and it's environs) vastly beyond its current capacity. And I do mean vastly. I'm not sure how to even go about calculating how much vaster, but consider the fact that a single nickel-iron asteroid contains more refined metals than have ever been mined in the history of the world, and there are billions of such rocks in the solar system. A single icey moon of an outer planet, not too mention the atmospheres of these planets themselves, contain more hydrocarbon compounds and volatiles than have ever been produced by mankind, and there are trillians of such icey chunks in the Oort cloud and Kuiper Belt. The sun pours out a staggering 400 thousand billion billion kilowatts of power, continuously. My guess is that the carryin capacity of the solar system is easily in the trillions, and that's only if we stay biologically human (it is not immediately obvious to me that we will).

2) People are not bacteria. The fact that large parts of Europe are already at ZPG (if not actually undergoing population decline) shows that people rationally choose not to have children, because they value their standard of living without another child more greatly than the lower standard of living the child means + the child. The reason that third world populations are exploding is that their time preference is very high, combined with Western agricultural technological innovation, which has just exploded the Earth's carrying capacity in the past 3 centuries, i.e. since the advent of modern capitalism.

[ QUOTE ]

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Are you seriously making an argument that masturbation makes a species less reproductively fit? If it did, it would be selected against and it wouldn't heppen.

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Obviously not. If opposable thumbs created a greater liability than benefit, they wouldn't have happened.

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Then I'm not sure what the point of the illustration was.

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But I think that your idea does have some application. The more likely it is that any interaction really will be a single interaction, the less useful it is to be civilized, nice, fair, well behaved, etc. I think this nicely explains the culture of large cities like New York, where people have small interactions hundreds or thousands of times a day with people they know they will never, ever see again. Niceness and civility go out the window, and rudeness rules the day.

[/ QUOTE ]

Also, consider a worker who is going to leave his job in a few weeks. As he nears the date of completion, he going to become progressively less productive; high time preference behavior (laziness) simply becomes more useful, because there is no reason for him to be competitive. (Businesses can counter this behavior to some degree, though, by providing bonuses upon completion of his term. He might also need a reference and want to go out on good terms. But he's still going to tend toward laziness, not greater productivity)

[/ QUOTE ]

Yep.

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I just take umbrage to your claim that it's somehow capitalism that makes fairness somehow obsolete.

[/ QUOTE ]

I was strictly talking about fairness of result. If it is genuinely the case that our fairness drive is directed toward results primarily because of socialization, I concede.

[/ QUOTE ]

Well, obviously I can't prove my claim. It just doesn't seem like the selection pressures nor the historical evidence point that way.

Borodog

10-26-2006, 03:29 PM

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But neither of those things supports hmk's assertions that people naturally see relative disparities of material wealth as inherently "unfair" thus setting the table for socialism. There is plenty of historical evidence to the contrary. The mere fact that a tiny ruling class could live in unbelievable splendor at the expense of entire populations living in abject poverty, as has occured again and again throughout history, belies this theory.

[/ QUOTE ]

Note that there are also many instances of Bolshevism. (Communist overthrow, Frensh Revolution, labor unions, slave revolts, etc)

[/ QUOTE ]

True, but I wasn't claiming that such things don't occur, only that the historical existence of socially and materially stratified societies for centuries or millenia shows that "righteous indignation against material disparity" can't be all that powerful of a human drive.

All of those examples you gave happened because of cultural revolution, revolution of ideas, not because of some innate biology.

hmkpoker

10-26-2006, 03:38 PM

[ QUOTE ]
A big point people seem to be missing is that many of the suboptimal behaviors we are talking about are difficult to modify - for good reasons. Let's take the drug abuse thing as an example since it's the simplest. On a superficial level, you would imagine that it would be selected out. But once you realize what the circuitry involved is and why it's there and made up like it is then you see that changes in that circuit would have profound effects on several other essential behaviors (such as eating, sex, etc.) so there are severe constraints against changing this.
This kind of thinking is relevant to many of the nonoptimal behaviors you alluded to. You cannot just say "Oh, this behavior is detrimental so it's selected against." "This behavior is fitness-promoting so it's selected for." There's a really complex relationship here because behaviors do not have dedicated and separate circuits for them. It's not just whether or not a behavior is threatening in itself. No behavior is an island. Changing the circuitry responsible for a "threatening" behavior could have wide-ranging and more damaging effects than the behavior had in itself.

[/ QUOTE ]

The caveat is that the principles of evolution can occur on levels usually not associated with evolution. This gives me an excellent idea for an OP.

Borodog

10-26-2006, 03:38 PM

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[ QUOTE ]
It's like saying the zeta wolf, indignant that the alpha wolf gets the most meat, tries to steal meat from the alpha wolf. It's not going to turn out well. There is a positive incentive to avoid such conflicts. There is a selection pressure to respect the property rights of those with more than you, and to admire and emulate them, and as always to trade with them, so that you can improve your own position without resorting to conflict with someone who has far more resources than you.

[/ QUOTE ]

How much do you know about wolves? The omega (not zeta) wolf lives on the fringes of the pack. It's usually somewhere on it's way out and is abused constantly. Other subordinate wolves are constantly trying to take over the top spot. Life at the top is hard and you have to defend it constantly.
Same goes for other hierarchical carnivores and primates.
There's absolutely no respect for property rights or whatever you want to call it here.

[/ QUOTE ]

That was precisly the point of my P:GLP thread. /images/graemlins/tongue.gif

I never said that life at the top of a pack was not hard, or that the alpha was not constantly challenged by near-alphas. I said that the omega (happy?) does not challenge the alpha. There is a selective advantage in avoiding conflict with individuals who are very likely to be able to kick your ass. If you are second from the top, the benefits of being on the top may well be worth the risk of taking on the top dog, hence it becomes +EV to challenge the alpha.

Also, the whole point of this was just to illustrate why it makes sense for people to not develop a sense of "righteous indignation" against those who have more than they do; such emotions could lead one to initiate conflict with someone who has far more resources than they themselves do, which as I said, is a recipe for getting your genes removed from the pool. In other words, there is a selective pressure to behave in a civilized way.

None of which is to be taken to imply that human beings are generally like wolves; we are not, as I explained in my P:TGF thread.

FortunaMaximus

10-26-2006, 03:46 PM

Very nice refutation, Boro.

Rduke, the lion is regarded as the king of the jungle, and the hyenas as the laughing scavengers, whereas the dynamics of predatory work and benefit is concerned.

It's a bit more complicated than that, and the dynamic has evolved to the point where the lions do very little actual hunting, preferring to sleep all day and leave the hyenas to do the work. The caloric carrying capacities work out well for both species because lions have a low-function, high-activity metabolism and sleep most of their lifespan.

When an alpha lion gets hungry, it goes to the nearest kill and basically dominates the source until it's had enough. There's always enough for the hyenas, who have high-function, high-activity metabolisms.

The hyenas don't seem to mind so much, as they take genuine pleasure in their function, and so, too, I'm sure, do the lions.

But remove either element from the dynamic, a lot of protein biomass goes to waste and overpopulation becomes a concern for herbivore consumption in the savannah.

And the Sahara belt acts as an effective deterrent for much of population mesh out of Africa.

H. sap's spread is intriguing, because we seem to be adaptable to every possible climate and availiability condition on Terra, and we're certainly the ones with the best cranial-logic developments to take it farther and out into the System.

Any more and I really enter into the realm of pure speculation. There are enough biological elements and diversity that a purely non-biological adaption of our body forms to different gravities and accelerations aren't necessary. All the solutions and redundancies have been developed in the biosphere.

The next logical step is to expand the biosphere, and who better to do that than primates with the capability for forethought and structured planning.

It's weird, really, because I can speculate a different biochemistry and large-scale dynamic and development tree...

But the permutations are finite, and that makes Fermi solvable, if not provable, where the sheer size of this Universe are concerned.

And there's no way of knowing if the initial conditions are correct or within reasonable parameters. They just are and we're emergent.

Another solution set for Fermi could be that we're the first emergent process in this Universe, and by that aside, it is our Universe. But that's hardly probable.

What's certain, however, the inter-relationship dynamic of evolutionary processes, even if they have intelligent design, are by their nature, emergent self-design.

Borodog

10-26-2006, 03:47 PM

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Evolution only prepared us for tribal anarchy. It did not prepare us for civilization, which conquered scarcity so much that reproduction, the primary focus of our biological motivations, is now often a liability.

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I think this is the point Boro is disagreeing with. I think this is an excellent point and I agree with you.

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Well that makes one of us /images/graemlins/tongue.gif See my response to boro.

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I shouldn't have to point out that evolution can accidentally create a survival mechanism that accidentally counter-acts another survival mechanism. For example, the sex drive is strong, and is designed to get us to reproduce. Opposable thumbs make grasping and manipulating things very easy...yet they also enable us to fulfill the sex drive in a manner that definately doesn't result in reproduction.

[/ QUOTE ]

I think another example along these lines would be drug abuse.

[/ QUOTE ]

As pointed out in boro's post, behavior that is more threatening to survival gets destroyed while behavior that is conducive to survival (or well-being, in the civilized world) expands. Human beings are much better suited for addictive drugs than animals are, which is why opiates haven't rendered us extinct; we are capable of realizing that certain substances can have highly unfavorable effects through prolonged usage, and can apply that information usefully. This is why the industrial revolution was able to coincide with the first heroin outbreak and result in more technology, wealth and a greater population, whereas a lab mouse with the ability to administer heroin to itself will inject until it dies. Heroin never could have been proliferated by mice, because they would have all died out.

[/ QUOTE ]

I think your point is still valid. Don't give up so easily /images/graemlins/smile.gif
We are talking both about evolutionary constraints and optimality.
A big point people seem to be missing is that many of the suboptimal behaviors we are talking about are difficult to modify - for good reasons. Let's take the drug abuse thing as an example since it's the simplest. On a superficial level, you would imagine that it would be selected out. But once you realize what the circuitry involved is and why it's there and made up like it is then you see that changes in that circuit would have profound effects on several other essential behaviors (such as eating, sex, etc.) so there are severe constraints against changing this.
This kind of thinking is relevant to many of the nonoptimal behaviors you alluded to. You cannot just say "Oh, this behavior is detrimental so it's selected against." "This behavior is fitness-promoting so it's selected for." There's a really complex relationship here because behaviors do not have dedicated and separate circuits for them. It's not just whether or not a behavior is threatening in itself. No behavior is an island. Changing the circuitry responsible for a "threatening" behavior could have wide-ranging and more damaging effects than the behavior had in itself.
Constraints people.

[/ QUOTE ]

You can't get away with just saying, "There could be constraints." You have to show that such constraints actually exist in order to explain some observed behavior. My whole point is that the angle hmk took, that people have some innate sense of "righteous indignation over material disparity" doesn't seem to be empirically or historically present; it seems to be entirely cultural.

Couple that with the fact that there are demonstrable logical selections pressures that favor "righteous indignation over unfair treatment", but disfavor "righteous indignation over material disparity", and I think the observations are perfectly inline with both evolutionary and economic theory.

Borodog

10-26-2006, 03:49 PM

By the way, this has turned out to be a fantastic discussion. Excellent thread.

hmkpoker

10-26-2006, 04:16 PM

[ QUOTE ]

Even the need for food is never met completely. It can be met temporarily. But in just a few hours, you must eat again, and the longer you delay that satisfaction, the more freaking important it becomes. Only a tiny fraction of people ever accumulate enough capital to completely withdraw from production for the rest of their lives. The vast majority of people simply must continue to produce in order to continue to consume.

[/ QUOTE ]

This is not the same as saying that it is never met. Food is far less of a priority for us than it was for people of centuries past; while the need does regularly arise, it is less urgent, and less important that we "stock up." Accordingly, we have the luxury of not having to worry about food, and may focus ourselves on matters that are of lesser priority (security, ego needs, etc).

[ QUOTE ]
And even those that could withdraw from production and entirely and live off of capital consumption for the rest of their lives have an evolutionary incentive to keep producing, at ever higher rates, and continue to accumulate capital far in excess of their capability to ever consume what they have produced: They aren't providing for themselves, they are providing for their genes. Those who accumulate capital and leave it to their children are benefiting their genes, and hence their is a selective advantage to do so. The fact that people are quantitatively more consumptive as they become wealthier is simply reflective of the fact that they have more resources; the best saver-accumulators consume an ever smaller fraction of their productive capacity as they become wealthy, even if the absolute amount they consume goes up (although this may not even happen).

[/ QUOTE ]

This is not only goofy, it also represents a very bleak view of humanity. If this were true, why would people retire and experience the "second childhood" of golden years' high time preference fun? The incentive of low time preference is greater satisfaction during later high time preference behaviors. The anomaly is the case of the "workaholic," who associates an intrinsic benefit to savings, and ironically engages high time preference in areas traditionally suited for low time preference.

Moreover, while human beings are bound to fall out of homeostasis from time to time and have needs, the urgency of their need is not always the same. Go have a night of great sex and tell me what you're acting toward right after you climax. My guess is, nothing. You're sated. Happy. Content. There simply is no state of affairs more preferable than your current state, so there is no reason to exchange them. One could easily find a way to find action in this state, and while it is too subjective to measure, no reasonable person can say that the disparity of percieved future states of affairs in this situation is the same in magnitude in the disparity of percieved future states of affairs in the case of a homeless person giving handjobs for smack.

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True, but I wasn't claiming that such things don't occur, only that the historical existence of socially and materially stratified societies for centuries or millenia shows that "righteous indignation against material disparity" can't be all that powerful of a human drive.

[/ QUOTE ]

It may simply be the case that there some sort of natural balance of the disparity of wealth. Too much disparity tends to result in class warfare, but the other extreme (total egalitarianism) is inherently unstable too.

chezlaw

10-26-2006, 04:26 PM

[ QUOTE ]
Declining in the ultimatum game may not be as irrational as the article suggests. In the short run, it is clearly -EV, however if you were to play an iterated version, punishing small offers would certainly be necessary to maximize one's expected value. Considering that we seem to have evolved mechanisms for reciprocation in the prisoner's dilemma, this seems like an extension of that; however, when viewed in a single iteration (which is unnatural and uncommon for us, considering that the social circumstances where we would apply such behavior are almost never singular), it appears irrational.

As always, great article, please post more /images/graemlins/smile.gif

[/ QUOTE ]
Don't know if anyone is interest in the unhijacked thread but this idea of a single iteration is mistaken. Even if we play the game only once its not irrational to offer a fairly generous split and turn down a derisory offer.

Effectively for humans there are no single iteration scenarios. Its all just more of the same.

chez

Borodog

10-26-2006, 04:42 PM

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]

Even the need for food is never met completely. It can be met temporarily. But in just a few hours, you must eat again, and the longer you delay that satisfaction, the more freaking important it becomes. Only a tiny fraction of people ever accumulate enough capital to completely withdraw from production for the rest of their lives. The vast majority of people simply must continue to produce in order to continue to consume.

[/ QUOTE ]

This is not the same as saying that it is never met. Food is far less of a priority for us than it was for people of centuries past; while the need does regularly arise, it is less urgent, and less important that we "stock up." Accordingly, we have the luxury of not having to worry about food, and may focus ourselves on matters that are of lesser priority (security, ego needs, etc).

[/ QUOTE ]

You're equivocating. Quit producing for a year or ten (i.e. including poker and any source of income), don't borrow any money from Dad, and get back to me on how "not worrying about food" is going.

[ QUOTE ]

[ QUOTE ]
And even those that could withdraw from production and entirely and live off of capital consumption for the rest of their lives have an evolutionary incentive to keep producing, at ever higher rates, and continue to accumulate capital far in excess of their capability to ever consume what they have produced: They aren't providing for themselves, they are providing for their genes. Those who accumulate capital and leave it to their children are benefiting their genes, and hence their is a selective advantage to do so. The fact that people are quantitatively more consumptive as they become wealthier is simply reflective of the fact that they have more resources; the best saver-accumulators consume an ever smaller fraction of their productive capacity as they become wealthy, even if the absolute amount they consume goes up (although this may not even happen).

[/ QUOTE ]

This is not only goofy, it also represents a very bleak view of humanity. If this were true, why would people retire and experience the "second childhood" of golden years' high time preference fun? The incentive of low time preference is greater satisfaction during later high time preference behaviors. The anomaly is the case of the "workaholic," who associates an intrinsic benefit to savings, and ironically engages high time preference in areas traditionally suited for low time preference.

[/ QUOTE ]

It's not goofy at all, it's a simple fact. First, people living long enough to be able to "retire" is an extremely recent innovation, and only happens for a small fraction of people. Second, retirement and elederly "second childhood" doesn't refute anything that I said. As you ger elderly, production gets harder and harder. If you've accumulated enough to live on, obviously you may decide to retire from production and begin capital consumption. But that doesn't change the fact that very often people choose to continue producing long, long after they've reached the point where they could just live off of capital consumption, nor that there is a selective advantage in doing so.

[ QUOTE ]
Moreover, while human beings are bound to fall out of homeostasis from time to time and have needs, the urgency of their need is not always the same. Go have a night of great sex and tell me what you're acting toward right after you climax. My guess is, nothing. You're sated. Happy. Content. There simply is no state of affairs more preferable than your current state, so there is no reason to exchange them. One could easily find a way to find action in this state, and while it is too subjective to measure, no reasonable person can say that the disparity of percieved future states of affairs in this situation is the same in magnitude in the disparity of percieved future states of affairs in the case of a homeless person giving handjobs for smack.

[/ QUOTE ]

I don't see what your point is or how this refutes anything I said.

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True, but I wasn't claiming that such things don't occur, only that the historical existence of socially and materially stratified societies for centuries or millenia shows that "righteous indignation against material disparity" can't be all that powerful of a human drive.

[/ QUOTE ]

It may simply be the case that there some sort of natural balance of the disparity of wealth. Too much disparity tends to result in class warfare, but the other extreme (total egalitarianism) is inherently unstable too.

[/ QUOTE ]

How much more disparity can you get between a Pharoah and millions of subsitence farming Egyptians?

hmkpoker

10-26-2006, 04:49 PM

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You're equivocating. Quit producing for a year or ten (i.e. including poker and any source of income), don't borrow any money from Dad, and get back to me on how "not worrying about food" is going.

[/ QUOTE ]

But human life is finite. While it is impossible for someone to produce enough resources to live off of forever (assuming he is immortal), it is entirely possible to secure enough resources to not worry about food for the rest of one's life.

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How much more disparity can you get between a Pharoah and millions of subsitence farming Egyptians?

[/ QUOTE ]

I agree. I also believe that free market capitalism will naturally result in a desirable, stable level of wealth disparity given enough time. I'd write an OP on this, but I don't feel like it. You do it /images/graemlins/smile.gif

Rduke55

10-26-2006, 04:53 PM

[ QUOTE ]
Rduke, the lion is regarded as the king of the jungle, and the hyenas as the laughing scavengers, whereas the dynamics of predatory work and benefit is concerned.

It's a bit more complicated than that, and the dynamic has evolved to the point where the lions do very little actual hunting, preferring to sleep all day and leave the hyenas to do the work. The caloric carrying capacities work out well for both species because lions have a low-function, high-activity metabolism and sleep most of their lifespan.

[/ QUOTE ]

Source? While lions do scavenge quite a bit, from everything I've read, the percentage of their diet from animals killed by non-lions rarely passes 50% .

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When an alpha lion gets hungry, it goes to the nearest kill and basically dominates the source until it's had enough.

[/ QUOTE ]

Most of the time it was killed by female lions in his pride.

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There's always enough for the hyenas, who have high-function, high-activity metabolisms.

[/ QUOTE ]

Then why do they displace female lions?

(what are the metabolisms you're talking about? I've never heard the terms used in that way.)

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The hyenas don't seem to mind so much, as they take genuine pleasure in their function,

[/ QUOTE ]

What?

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Any more and I really enter into the realm of pure speculation....
....however, the inter-relationship dynamic of evolutionary processes, even if they have intelligent design, are by their nature, emergent self-design.

[/ QUOTE ]

What?

Rduke55

10-26-2006, 04:57 PM

[ QUOTE ]
You can't get away with just saying, "There could be constraints." You have to show that such constraints actually exist in order to explain some observed behavior.My whole point is that the angle hmk took, that people have some innate sense of "righteous indignation over material disparity" doesn't seem to be empirically or historically present; it seems to be entirely cultural.

[/ QUOTE ]

Well, that's what neuroeconomics is trying to determine.

On the other side, based on what we know about other neural/evolutionary constraints on behavior, why are you taking the cultural view as the default? With the wealth of literature on the neuroscience of decision making (that still needs a lot more work) I'd think that you'd have to be convinced that there aren't these types of constraints.

Rduke55

10-26-2006, 04:58 PM

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By the way, this has turned out to be a fantastic discussion. Excellent thread.

[/ QUOTE ]

I agree. I expected it to die out with only one or 2 posts saying "Interesting." when I posted it.

Borodog

10-26-2006, 04:59 PM

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[ QUOTE ]
You're equivocating. Quit producing for a year or ten (i.e. including poker and any source of income), don't borrow any money from Dad, and get back to me on how "not worrying about food" is going.

[/ QUOTE ]

But human life is finite. While it is impossible for someone to produce enough resources to live off of forever (assuming he is immortal), it is entirely possible to secure enough resources to not worry about food for the rest of one's life.

[/ QUOTE ]

Hello! That's what I've been saying! Yet people continue to produce after they've far surpassed that point, and there is selective pressure to do so, because they can leave their accumulated capital to their genes, I mean, their children.

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How much more disparity can you get between a Pharoah and millions of subsitence farming Egyptians?

[/ QUOTE ]

I agree. I also believe that free market capitalism will naturally result in a desirable, stable level of wealth disparity given enough time. I'd write an OP on this, but I don't feel like it. You do it /images/graemlins/smile.gif

[/ QUOTE ]

I really don't see how one level of wealth disparity can be more desirable than any other, objectively.

luckyme

10-26-2006, 05:00 PM

[ QUOTE ]
Don't know if anyone is interest in the unhijacked thread but this idea of a single iteration is mistaken. Even if we play the game only once its not irrational to offer a fairly generous split and turn down a derisory offer.

Effectively for humans there are no single iteration scenarios. Its all just more of the same.

chez

[/ QUOTE ]

Two hands reach out from a curtain, voice says, "please take one or the other, no strings attached". One hand has $.001 and the other has $1. why should I to take the $.001?

The curtain opens. Bill Gates is standing beside Warren. Warren tells me, "if you take the $1 I'll give $9 to Bill, otherwise he gets nothing." I should take the $.001 for what reason?

It's tough to do these experiments in the necessary blind setting, but by keeping the money small and by dealing with strangers it comes close enough in the original. If we increase the amount to $10 Million to split, not too many people would turn down $1Million to 'teach that SOB a lesson' or whatever emotion is pulling the strings.

The original is trying to test the other end of that spectrum, where the amount is not very significant and we have no reason to favor one stranger over the other. I can understand the rationality of offering a decent split, but if I turn down free money with no strings I know in my case it'd be an fu response not a rational one.
"I'll be better off doing this.".."the world will be better off if I do this" doesn't seem to apply.

"Effectively , for humans there are no single iterations" .. seems a hi-falootin way of covering up emotionalism. ??

luckyme

Borodog

10-26-2006, 05:06 PM

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[ QUOTE ]
You can't get away with just saying, "There could be constraints." You have to show that such constraints actually exist in order to explain some observed behavior.My whole point is that the angle hmk took, that people have some innate sense of "righteous indignation over material disparity" doesn't seem to be empirically or historically present; it seems to be entirely cultural.

[/ QUOTE ]

Well, that's what neuroeconomics is trying to determine.

On the other side, based on what we know about other neural/evolutionary constraints on behavior, why are you taking the cultural view as the default? With the wealth of literature on the neuroscience of decision making (that still needs a lot more work) I'd think that you'd have to be convinced that there aren't these types of constraints.

[/ QUOTE ]

I've already explained it. There are selective pressures against "righteous indignation over material disparity", and human history is rife with millenia-long examples of enormous wealth disparity.

If human beings actually had a tendency to become righteously indignant when others had more stuff than they did, we'd still be in the Stone Age (if that).

Rduke55

10-26-2006, 05:21 PM

[ QUOTE ]

I've already explained it. There are selective pressures against "righteous indignation over material disparity", and human history is rife with millenia-long examples of enormous wealth disparity.

[/ QUOTE ]

That is the other debate you guys are having. I'm not sure where I'm at there.
But for many of these weird economic things my point is, that despite these selection pressures, people still act the wrong way - which suggests that there are constraints.

At some point today I will get some work done...maybe.

chezlaw

10-26-2006, 05:27 PM

[ QUOTE ]
"Effectively , for humans there are no single iterations" .. seems a hi-falootin way of covering up emotionalism. ??

[/ QUOTE ]
Who's trying to cover it up? Most humans are emotional and its illogical to ignore that when we make decisions. I'm trying to get the non-math phobics to stop being so irrational.

If I try to cut a cake in half and chose who gets the biggest bit then you do.

chez

Borodog

10-26-2006, 05:27 PM

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]

I've already explained it. There are selective pressures against "righteous indignation over material disparity", and human history is rife with millenia-long examples of enormous wealth disparity.

[/ QUOTE ]

And my point is that, despite these selection pressures, people still act the wrong way - which suggests that there are constraints.

[/ QUOTE ]

I explained that. 1) People can be culturally influenced into behaving this way, particularly by 2) convincing them that material disparity is prima facie (oh noes!!1 Latin!!1) evidence of unfair treatment, which people do have an innate sense of righteous indignation over.

Rduke55

10-26-2006, 05:31 PM

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]

I've already explained it. There are selective pressures against "righteous indignation over material disparity", and human history is rife with millenia-long examples of enormous wealth disparity.

[/ QUOTE ]

And my point is that, despite these selection pressures, people still act the wrong way - which suggests that there are constraints.

[/ QUOTE ]

I explained that. 1) People can be culturally influenced into behaving this way, particularly by 2) convincing them that material disparity is prima facie (oh noes!!1 Latin!!1) evidence of unfair treatment, which people do have an innate sense of righteous indignation over.

[/ QUOTE ]

But you seem to be accepting that as the obvious answer and not considering the alternative. That's the way you're presenting it.

hmkpoker

10-26-2006, 05:34 PM

[ QUOTE ]

Hello! That's what I've been saying! Yet people continue to produce after they've far surpassed that point, and there is selective pressure to do so, because they can leave their accumulated capital to their genes, I mean, their children.

[/ QUOTE ]

I was going to suggest that this would not be true if the person is sterile or not planning on having kids, however the same urge may just present itself in philanthropy.

[ QUOTE ]

I really don't see how one level of wealth disparity can be more desirable than any other, objectively.

[/ QUOTE ]

All right, then substitute "stable." Extreme levels of disparity/equality will fall apart. There is an unconscious force maintaining a "reasonable" level of hierarchy in the forms of class warfare and economic depression.

Borodog

10-26-2006, 05:39 PM

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]

I've already explained it. There are selective pressures against "righteous indignation over material disparity", and human history is rife with millenia-long examples of enormous wealth disparity.

[/ QUOTE ]

And my point is that, despite these selection pressures, people still act the wrong way - which suggests that there are constraints.

[/ QUOTE ]

I explained that. 1) People can be culturally influenced into behaving this way, particularly by 2) convincing them that material disparity is prima facie (oh noes!!1 Latin!!1) evidence of unfair treatment, which people do have an innate sense of righteous indignation over.

[/ QUOTE ]

But you seem to be accepting that as the obvious answer and not considering the alternative. That's the way you're presenting it.

[/ QUOTE ]

No, I've considered the alternative and reject it. If human beings had an innate, biologically based "righteous indignation over material disparity" then civilizations like ancient India's, with rigorous caste systems where one class lives in splendor while other classes live as poor subsistence farmers, would not exist. It would be quite easy for the millions of poor to depose and loot the very few rich, as can easily be seen when cultural reasons arise that lead to just such events (like, for example, the Enlightenment and the English, French, and American Revolutions, and the advent of Marxist socialism and the Russian Revolution).

Propertarian

10-26-2006, 05:41 PM

[ QUOTE ]
The mere fact that a tiny ruling class could live in unbelievable splendor at the expense of entire populations living in abject poverty, as has occured again and again throughout history, belies this theory. It's entirely culturally dependent.

[/ QUOTE ] Notice that many people in all areas have always been people who are opossed to and enraged by the existensce of a class that lives in splendor while others live in abject poverty, regardless of what set of social and cultural norms were prevalent in that area at the time. Human males hate to be dominated, and, when it is easy to do so, they will attempt to form coalitions to avoid hierarchy.

I'm simply going to assert that you are wrong about human behavior for now, and suggest that you this book (http://www.amazon.com/Hierarchy-Forest-Evolution-Egalitarian-Behavior/dp/0674006917/sr=8-1/qid=1161898498/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/104-3934927-0204704?ie=UTF8&s=books) , or at least read a review of it (a googled one is probably better than the amazon ones).

Edit: Here's a short and good review of the "Hierarchy in the Forest: The Evolution of Egalitarian Behavior (http://www.americanscientist.org/template/BookReviewTypeDetail/assetid/26508;jsessionid=aaa5LVF0)

Propertarian

10-26-2006, 05:46 PM

[ QUOTE ]
If human beings had an innate, biologically based "righteous indignation over material disparity" then civilizations like ancient India's, with rigorous caste systems where one class lives in splendor while other classes live as poor subsistence farmers, would not exist. It would be quite easy for the millions of poor to depose and loot the very few rich,

[/ QUOTE ] THe problem with this argument is that you are presupposing that human beings act as collective actors as opposed to individuals. While it would be true that if their was no such thing as a free rider problem it would be very easy for the poor to despose the rich, given the existensce of collective action problems, a poor person cannot suddenly decide that all poor people are going to rise up and overthrow the wealthy, but only whether or not they as an individual will or will not try and overthrow the wealthy. However, they are aware of the fact that they themselves cannot single-handedly overthrow it...so look at what the results are.

In situations where the free rider problem isn't very important (e.g. small hunter gather socieities where everybody knows everybody else and can use disaproval and reciprocity to avoid the free rider problem), hierarchies are overthrown.

hmkpoker

10-26-2006, 06:00 PM

[ QUOTE ]
While it would be true that if their was no such thing as a free rider problem it would be very easy for the poor to despose the rich, given the existensce of collective action problems, a poor person cannot suddenly decide that all poor people are going to rise up and overthrow the wealthy, but only whether or not they as an individual will or will not try and overthrow the wealthy. However, they are aware of the fact that they themselves cannot single-handedly overthrow it...so look at what the results are.

[/ QUOTE ]

Disproof by example: the Bolshevik and French Revolutions.

Borodog

10-26-2006, 06:04 PM

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
If human beings had an innate, biologically based "righteous indignation over material disparity" then civilizations like ancient India's, with rigorous caste systems where one class lives in splendor while other classes live as poor subsistence farmers, would not exist. It would be quite easy for the millions of poor to depose and loot the very few rich,

[/ QUOTE ] THe problem with this argument is that you are presupposing that human beings act as collective actors as opposed to individuals. While it would be true that if their was no such thing as a free rider problem it would be very easy for the poor to despose the rich, given the existensce of collective action problems, a poor person cannot suddenly decide that all poor people are going to rise up and overthrow the wealthy, but only whether or not they as an individual will or will not try and overthrow the wealthy. However, they are aware of the fact that they themselves cannot single-handedly overthrow it...so look at what the results are.

In situations where the free rider problem isn't very important (e.g. small hunter gather socieities where everybody knows everybody else and can use disaproval and reciprocity to avoid the free rider problem), hierarchies are overthrown.

[/ QUOTE ]

If everyone in society were seething with an innate righteous indignation over the material disparity between their millions and the few elites, rebellion would be started no sooner than the populace had finished their evening brew.

Propertarian

10-26-2006, 06:06 PM

[ QUOTE ]
If everyone in society were seething with an innate righteous indignation over the material disparity between their millions and the few elites, rebellion would be started no sooner than the populace had finished their evening brew.

[/ QUOTE ] First, it's not everyone (evolution does not work in an "everyone or no-one" manner), and second, you are wrong. Just because somebody is enraged or rather upset about something does not mean they are going to do something about it, because of collective action problems. You can refuse to believe this, but it is obviously true.

For example, 2/3 of the people in the U.S believe that income disparities are "too high" in the U.S (despite all the social norms that exist in favor of disparities of income and attempts by the powerful to justify income disparity), which is amongst the lowest if not the lowest % of any industrialized nation. Are 2/3 of the people doing something about this? No.

hmkpoker

10-26-2006, 06:08 PM

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
If everyone in society were seething with an innate righteous indignation over the material disparity between their millions and the few elites, rebellion would be started no sooner than the populace had finished their evening brew.

[/ QUOTE ] First, it's not everyone (evolution does not work in an "everyone or no-one" manner), and second, you are wrong. Just because somebody is enraged about something does not mean they are going to do something about it, because of collective action problems. You can refuse to believe this, but it is obviously true.

For example, 2/3 of the people in the U.S believe that income disparities are "too high" in the U.S, which is amongst the lowest if not the lowest % of any industrialized nation. Are 2/3 of the people doing something about this? NO.

[/ QUOTE ]

[ QUOTE ]

Disproof by example: the Bolshevik and French Revolutions.

[/ QUOTE ]

Propertarian

10-26-2006, 06:13 PM

I don't know what you are trying to "disprove" here (my view? Borodog's?)...The American revolution was also a revolution against hierarchy. The free rider problem is occasionally avoided even in larger scale societies and I'm not sure why (it's something that I suddenly plan to study...I imagine that if the idignation gets strong enough, that is, if non-instrumental reasons for acting get powerful enough, a movement will get started, where, if strong enough, more and more people will get involved in denouncing the status quo and arguing for change...-Olson's theory predicts, for example, that more people will vote in close elections (which is true)...If people have good reason to believe that a social movement will be sucessful they are probably ceterius paribus more likely to join in that movement)...but in most times and places collective action problems prevent people from getting many things that they want.

hmkpoker

10-26-2006, 06:18 PM

[ QUOTE ]
I don't know what you are trying to "disprove" here

[/ QUOTE ]

Your statement that the freerider problem prevents class revolutions in large populations.

[ QUOTE ]
The American revolution was also a revolution against hierarchy. The free rider problem is occasionally avoided and I'm not sure why (it's something that I suddenly plan to study...I imagine that if the idignation gets strong enough, that is, if non-instrumental reasons for acting gets powerful enough, a movement will get started, where, if strong enough, more and more people will get involved)...but in most times and places collective action problems prevent people from getting many things that they want.

[/ QUOTE ]

You just demonstrated that a lack of activism shows that they don't want these things very much.

I would muchly prefer that my boss gives me the money out of the cash register. I'm not going to actually try to rob him, though, unless I'm actually screwed and willing to deal with/don't care about the reprocussions. Same with revolutions. Excessive oppression results in revolution, as we've seen in the last two centuries.

The reason the peasants aren't revolting like they did centuries ago is because they're not being oppressed enough to warrant any action...at which case we have to ask, just how bad is the problem if they don't want to do anything about it?

Borodog

10-26-2006, 06:22 PM

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
If everyone in society were seething with an innate righteous indignation over the material disparity between their millions and the few elites, rebellion would be started no sooner than the populace had finished their evening brew.

[/ QUOTE ] First, it's not everyone (evolution does not work in an "everyone or no-one" manner), and second, you are wrong. Just because somebody is enraged or rather upset about something does not mean they are going to do something about it, because of collective action problems. You can refuse to believe this, but it is obviously true.

For example, 2/3 of the people in the U.S believe that income disparities are "too high" in the U.S (despite all the social norms that exist in favor of disparities of income and attempts by the powerful to justify income disparity), which is amongst the lowest if not the lowest % of any industrialized nation. Are 2/3 of the people doing something about this? No.

[/ QUOTE ]

They are doing something about it. They're voting themselves the property of others, because people like you have convinced them it's morally right.

Propertarian

10-26-2006, 06:26 PM

[ QUOTE ]
I would muchly prefer that my boss gives me the money out of the cash register. I'm not going to actually try to rob him, though, unless I'm actually screwed and willing to deal with/don't care about the reprocussions. Same with revolutions. Excessive oppression results in revolution, as we've seen in the last two centuries.

The reason the peasants aren't revolting like they did centuries ago is because they're not being oppressed enough to warrant any action...at which case we have to ask, just how bad is the problem if they don't want to do anything about it

[/ QUOTE ] Good point.

However, it is still pretty obvious to me that people are much more likely to do something if no collective action problem is involved. For example, I'm willing to type this because I know nobody else has to do anything in order for it to be posted. But if I had to get 5,000 other people to type the same thing in order for this post to be created, their is no way I'm going to write up this post.

Another example: I'd much rather have a more egalitarian society than a night on the town. But since all I have to do in order to go out is to walk into a bar, I do that.

Also, see my reply to Borodog re: they are willing to do something about it if doing something does not come at a potentially great cost to themselves.

Propertarian

10-26-2006, 06:32 PM

[ QUOTE ]
They are doing something about it. They're voting themselves the property of others, because people like you have convinced them it's morally right.

[/ QUOTE ] Right, and they can be convinced that is the case despite the fact that the wealthy control almost everything in the society (politicans are wealthy, media owners are wealthy, business owners are usually wealthy etc.) and despite the social norms in favor of property, demonstrating that people have a tendency to be averse to hierarchy.

Notice, however, that voting is much less costly to the individual involved then fighting in a revolutionary war is, and that many people vote because they believe it is the right thing to do, not because of any instrumental considerations (other than them feeling better about themselves for doing the right thing), whereas war is considered something that should be avoided if possible.

Borodog

10-26-2006, 06:38 PM

If any appreciable fraction of the people in society agreed with you because of an innate righteous indignation about material disparity, getting your egalitarian society would be just as easy as picking up a torch and a pitchfork and joining the mob. There is no freerider problem. The odds of you or any other individual being harmed are incredibly small because of the numbers involved. Even a fraction of the population is far larger than the ruling class. And you are all innately hopping mad, filled with righteous indignation, remember?

The American Revolution was fought and won by 9% of the colonists, for entirely economic, philosophical and ideological, i.e. cultural and not biological, reasons.

Propertarian

10-26-2006, 06:52 PM

Once again, this is pure assertion. The chances of someone being harmed in a war you are talking about is actually quite high, because the ruling class can buy the best weapons and hire soldiers. And being injured in the war is not the only cost of participitation: people who fight in a war must also injure or kill other human beings (a huge cost to one's psyche, and many if not most people consider these things to be highly immoral;) and take the time and effort to do the work.

Also, "hopping mad, filled with righteous indignation" might be a little strong for the tendency that occurs. Evolution makes me hungry, but I don't get "hopping mad, filled with righteous indignation" because I've gone eight hours without food.

Also, while people are averse to being at the bottom a hierarchy (that is, being dominated), many if not most people are not opposed to being at the top of one (dominating).

[ QUOTE ]
There is no freerider problem.

[/ QUOTE ] Just because you don't understand something does not mean it does not exist. I saw your post on it in politics. I know others have told you this, but you are really going to have to read and refute Mancur Olson's work on collective action if you want to convince anybody who is educated on the subject.

[ QUOTE ]
economic, philosophical and ideological, i.e. cultural and not biological, reasons.

[/ QUOTE ] Economic, philosophical and ideological reasons, like all reasons, are all some kind of blend between "biological and cultural reasons"; no action makes sense otherwise.

luckyme

10-26-2006, 06:54 PM

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
"Effectively , for humans there are no single iterations" .. seems a hi-falootin way of covering up emotionalism. ??

[/ QUOTE ]
Who's trying to cover it up? Most humans are emotional and its illogical to ignore that when we make decisions. I'm trying to get the non-math phobics to stop being so irrational.

If I try to cut a cake in half and chose who gets the biggest bit then you do.

chez

[/ QUOTE ]

Aren't you looking at a different level? Of course his action ( saying 'stuff it, you prk) is rational from my outside view...the researcher. Just as the bird flying away when I open the door is rational, or hortense jumping when I grab him from behind. But at the Hortense level, it's an emotional decision not a rational one. When he jumps up and puts his head thru the glass and loses an eye, I don't think he'll claim.."hey, that was a well thought out, reasoned, heck, even rational response I came up with".

Sure, in the big picture our instinctive actions 'make sense' but they can be ludicrously stupid one-by-one case-specific. Well, they don't even qualify as stupid because they aren't formed by intelligence/non-intelligence, we simply pull our hand back from the fire because it has usually been the right thing to do and it's automatic.
Saying 'stuff it' is in that league.

luckyme

Borodog

10-26-2006, 07:00 PM

[ QUOTE ]
Once again, this is pure assertion. The chances of someone being harmed in a war you are talking about is actually quite high, because the ruling class can buy the best weapons and hire soldiers. And being injured in the war is not the only cost of participitation: people who fight in a war must also injure or kill other human beings (a huge cost to one's psyche, and many if not most people consider these things to be highly immoral) and take the time and effort to do the work.

Also, "hopping mad, filled with righteous indignation" might be a little strong for the tendency that occurs. Evolution makes me hungry, but I don't get "hopping mad, filled with righteous indignation" because I've gone eight hours without food.

[ QUOTE ]
There is no freerider problem.

[/ QUOTE ] Just because you don't understand something does not mean it does not exist. I saw your post on it in politics. I know others have told you this, but you are really going to have to read and refute Mancur Olson's work on collective action if you want to convince anybody who is educated on the subject.

[ QUOTE ]
economic, philosophical and ideological, i.e. cultural and not biological, reasons.

[/ QUOTE ] Economic, philosophical and ideological reasons, like all reasons, are all some kind of blend between "biological and cultural reasons"; no action makes sense otherwise.

[/ QUOTE ]

Blah blah blah. Your point is refuted by the fact that when significant fractions of the populace actually have become hopping mad at the ruling elite they actually do violently overthrow them, so apparently the "freerider problem" didn't actually stop them, and the fact that societies with dramatic wealth disparity between enormous populations and tiny ruling elites persisted for thousands of years, so apparently whatever level of inherent righteous indignation over material disparity they might have had, it couldn't be too [censored] much.

Christ.

Propertarian

10-26-2006, 07:14 PM

Please. Have you ever heard of something being ceterius paribus true? The logic of collective action problems is utterly impecable (I gave the logic of them in a post during that thread about an "economic AC problem"). Perhaps we should see them more as a strong constraint than an absolutely, positively impenetrable barrier against cooperation??????????????????????????????????????

chezlaw

10-26-2006, 07:15 PM

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
"Effectively , for humans there are no single iterations" .. seems a hi-falootin way of covering up emotionalism. ??

[/ QUOTE ]
Who's trying to cover it up? Most humans are emotional and its illogical to ignore that when we make decisions. I'm trying to get the non-math phobics to stop being so irrational.

If I try to cut a cake in half and chose who gets the biggest bit then you do.

chez

[/ QUOTE ]

Aren't you looking at a different level? Of course his action ( saying 'stuff it, you prk) is rational from my outside view...the researcher. Just as the bird flying away when I open the door is rational, or hortense jumping when I grab him from behind. But at the Hortense level, it's an emotional decision not a rational one. When he jumps up and puts his head thru the glass and loses an eye, I don't think he'll claim.."hey, that was a well thought out, reasoned, heck, even rational response I came up with".

Sure, in the big picture our instinctive actions 'make sense' but they can be ludicrously stupid one-by-one case-specific. Well, they don't even qualify as stupid because they aren't formed by intelligence/non-intelligence, we simply pull our hand back from the fire because it has usually been the right thing to do and it's automatic.
Saying 'stuff it' is in that league.

luckyme

[/ QUOTE ]
people involved in an experiment about their decisions only operate at one level. They make the decision they prefer and if someone is going to be happier telling someone else to stuff it then that's rationally what they should do if they want to maximise their happiness.

but the anti-emotion argument is self-defeating. On a purely rationally basis it makes no difference which decision you make.

All rationality is good for is taking us from what we emotionally want to making good decisions.

chez

Propertarian

10-26-2006, 07:16 PM

[ QUOTE ]
when significant fractions of the populace actually have become hopping mad at the ruling elite they actually do violently overthrow them

[/ QUOTE ] Every single time in history when "significant fractions of the populace have become hoping mad at the ruling elite they actually overthrow them"???? You might want to check the history books again. I would estimate that less than 1 in ten times that "significant fractions of the population become hopping mad at the ruling elite" they overthrow them, probably less than 1 in 100 times. "Significant fractions" of the populace are hopping mad at the ruling elite in most countries AT THIS VERY SECOND!!!!

Borodog

10-26-2006, 07:23 PM

[ QUOTE ]
Please. Have you ever heard of something being ceterius paribus true? The logic of collective action problems is utterly impecable (I gave the logic of them in a post during that thread about an "economic AC problem"). Perhaps we should see them more as a strong constraint than an absolutely, positively impenetrable barrier against cooperation??????????????????????????????????????

[/ QUOTE ]

Purple monkey dishwasher?

Do you realize that your thesis on this topic is (thank you hmkpoker for pointing this out over IM) that the only reason we don't have perpetual violent class warfare is the freerider problem? Not to mention that you've violated the Superfluous Punctuation Rule?

I'm done with this branch of the discussion.

Propertarian

10-26-2006, 08:11 PM

Perhaps the free rider problem is good then? Or perhaps we'd have a society with all worker controlled and owned firms if it were not for the free rider problem. Or perhaps people think both violence and inequality are wrong?

Anyway, here's a question for you and HMK: Did the civil rights movement occur in the 1950s and 1960s (as opposed to sometime during the previous 90 years) because A) Minority groups were not hopping mad about segregation and discrimination until the 1950s or B) Some other reason?

I rest my case.

hmkpoker

10-26-2006, 09:18 PM

[ QUOTE ]

However, it is still pretty obvious to me that people are much more likely to do something if no collective action problem is involved. For example, I'm willing to type this because I know nobody else has to do anything in order for it to be posted. But if I had to get 5,000 other people to type the same thing in order for this post to be created, their is no way I'm going to write up this post.

Another example: I'd much rather have a more egalitarian society than a night on the town. But since all I have to do in order to go out is to walk into a bar, I do that.

[/ QUOTE ]

C'mon, you're smarter than that. I would prefer a Mercedes to a convenience store meal. Duh. Who wouldn't? But it costs a lot more. If I could get 8,000 or so people to pitch in the amount of money I'd otherwise spend on my hoagie, I'd have my new car. The obvious problem with that is, I'm not going to find 8,000 people who want to buy me a goddamn Benz. It people were hell-bent on my happiness, or if I was content to own 1/8,000 share of the Benz, the situation would become a reality. But it's not.

You can't compare political movements to hobbies. Anyone would prefer their ideal society's implementation to their favorite activity. It's like comparing apples to washing machines.

You also need to violate the rules of the freerider problem in order to effectuate democracy, btw. See my post here. (http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/showflat.php?Cat=0&Number=7818273&Main=7755846#Pos t7818273)

hmkpoker

10-26-2006, 11:14 PM

[ QUOTE ]
Perhaps the free rider problem is good then? Or perhaps we'd have a society with all worker controlled and owned firms if it were not for the free rider problem. Or perhaps people think both violence and inequality are wrong?

Anyway, here's a question for you and HMK: Did the civil rights movement occur in the 1950s and 1960s (as opposed to sometime during the previous 90 years) because A) Minority groups were not hopping mad about segregation and discrimination until the 1950s or B) Some other reason?

[/ QUOTE ]

I said before that oppression of the masses is unstable because it tends to lead to class conflict until some sort of social homeostasis is achieved. Just how much oppression and for how long it must occur is required before society hits "critical mass" is something I can't even begin to describe. It seems obvious that it doesn't happen immediately, but beyond that, I doubt anyone has the necessary understanding of social science to come up with an accurate prediction. The French and Russians, to the best of my knowledge, were oppressed for even longer before they said "we're not gonna take it."

Propertarian

10-27-2006, 03:15 AM

I don't think that we should think of it as something that is simply ended when it goes on for a long time or gets too bad. In the 1870s blacks were as opressed as they were in 1950s, and there wasn't really any reason to think that some end point was in sight.

We also need to consider how likely it is that the opression will be ended; people need hope that a social movement will occur or be sucessful before engaging in one/starting one.

Propertarian

10-27-2006, 03:20 AM

[ QUOTE ]
C'mon, you're smarter than that. I would prefer a Mercedes to a convenience store meal. Duh. Who wouldn't? But it costs a lot more. If I could get 8,000 or so people to pitch in the amount of money I'd otherwise spend on my hoagie, I'd have my new car. The obvious problem with that is, I'm not going to find 8,000 people who want to buy me a goddamn Benz. It people were hell-bent on my happiness, or if I was content to own 1/8,000 share of the Benz, the situation would become a reality. But it's not.You can't compare political movements to hobbies. Anyone would prefer their ideal society's implementation to their favorite activity. It's like comparing apples to washing machines.

[/ QUOTE ] I suppose I didn't make my point clear enough with that example. It would have been better if I had simply sad "If 5,000 other people had to type the same thing in order for this post to be created, their is no way I am going to post it"; leaving out the part about me having to do something to convince them to do it.

That is the problem with public goods and collective action; that other people also must contribute for them to be sucessful AND that your own contribution is not the deciding factor. Assume that it did take 5,000 people making a post for that post to be created. I wouldn't consider making that post; if 5,187 (12,000) people made that post, it would get posted regardless of whether or not I personally made one of the posts. If 3,150 people made the post, it would not be posted regardless of what I did.

The same logic apples to actual public goods (e.g. avoiding crime in an area, not overfishing the oceans). However, if people do something primarily because they think it is the right thing to do-as opposed to for instrumental considerations- then the public goods problem is avoided-this is the case with voting.

Edit: using your example I might be able to better illustrate this. A man walks up to you and a group of 999 other people. He says: If 800 of you contribute $1,000 bucks to me secretly, I will buy one of you a mercedes. Which one of you that will get the Mercedes will be decided by a lottery. The lottery will include all of your names i.e. you can win the car whether or not you contribute the 1,000$ or not, as long as at least 800 people contribute. Assume you know the dealer is telling the truth. Do you contribute 1k to him?

hmkpoker

10-27-2006, 11:36 AM

[ QUOTE ]
I suppose I didn't make my point clear enough with that example. It would have been better if I had simply sad "If 5,000 other people had to type the same thing in order for this post to be created, their is no way I am going to post it"; leaving out the part about me having to do something to convince them to do it.

[/ QUOTE ]

That's extremely misleading, because you're aligning the action that one takes to undergo a large reformation (one requiring the consent of 5,000) with a result that obviously doesn't justify it. Large, cooperative reformations carry higher transaction costs. Duh. But they do so in a democracy just as in a free market; read my last post in the freerider problem.

[ QUOTE ]
I suppose I didn't make my point clear enough with that example. It would have been better if I had simply sad "If 5,000 other people had to type the same thing in order for this post to be created, their is no way I am going to post it"; leaving out the part about me having to do something to convince them to do it.

[/ QUOTE ]

More ridiculous analogy. You're assuming that no one incurs any cost to producing the post, because there is none (so who cares if there's a freerider?) A better analogy would be to say that a certain public good would be great for a certain small democracy. The good costs $100,000, there are 500 people in the democracy, so each has to pay $200. But alas, no one's going to pay it individually.

All one has to do is set up a conditional contract, an agreement to pay a certain amount upon fulfillment of the condition that everyone else has paid. If the public good is genuinely desirable, there should be no problem. The only people who aren't going to sign are those for whom it isn't worth $200 for them (in which case, why should they have to pay?) If you're concerned about a few sticklers who don't want to pay for it, simply raise the cost and lower the conditional requirements to compensate. If you still can't get enough signatures, well your public good is probably not that valuable now is it?

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Edit: using your example I might be able to better illustrate this. A man walks up to you and a group of 999 other people. He says: If 800 of you contribute $1,000 bucks to me secretly, I will buy one of you a mercedes. Which one of you that will get the Mercedes will be decided by a lottery. The lottery will include all of your names i.e. you can win the car whether or not you contribute the 1,000$ or not, as long as at least 800 people contribute. Assume you know the dealer is telling the truth. Do you contribute 1k to him?

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No, because I can calculate EV and no mercedes is worth $800,000. I'll say yes if what I'm winning is worth more than $800,000 to me. This is a lottery, totally different. Lotteries flourish in the free market. That should seem obvious. The only thing stopping them from flourishing now is government. I don't see what your point is.

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I don't think that we should think of it as something that is simply ended when it goes on for a long time or gets too bad.

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It ends when the oppressed finally value their revolutionary action more than the benefits of their consent. That's all there is to it.

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We also need to consider how likely it is that the opression will be ended; people need hope that a social movement will occur or be sucessful before engaging in one/starting one.

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When the oppression gets bad enough, individuals will start sending signals of their wilingness to cooperate via activism. If half this country suddenly went anarcho-capitalist overnight, the ancaps would all rapidly become aware of each others' preferences and revolution would break out.

Propertarian

10-27-2006, 04:07 PM

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All one has to do is set up a conditional contract, an agreement to pay a certain amount upon fulfillment of the condition that everyone else has paid. If the public good is genuinely desirable, there should be no problem. The only people who aren't going to sign are those for whom it isn't worth $200 for them (in which case, why should they have to pay?) If you're concerned about a few sticklers who don't want to pay for it, simply raise the cost and lower the conditional requirements to compensate. If you still can't get enough signatures, well your public good is probably not that valuable now is it?

[/ QUOTE ] You still don't understand public goods. A public good is something that everyone gets regardless of whether or not they contribute to the fund; hence no individual has an incentive to even enter into this conditional contract, because they are going to get a share of it whether they pay for it or not. Hence, regardless of whether or not someone wants the public good in question , if they are rational they will not agree to one of these conditional contracts. This does absolutely nothing to solve the public goods problem.

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No, because I can calculate EV and no mercedes is worth $800,000. I'll say yes if what I'm winning is worth more than $800,000 to me. This is a lottery, totally different. Lotteries flourish in the free market. That should seem obvious. The only thing stopping them from flourishing now is government. I don't see what your point is.

[/ QUOTE ] No, this isn't a lottery: you've missed the key point. In a lottery, a person must actually buy a ticket in order to win. In this case, a person can win the car regardless of whether or not they buy a ticket, which is what makes this a public goods problem. Given that buying a ticket doesn't increase your chances of getting the Mercedes, it makes no sense to buy one.

BTW-I should have said $100 bucks.

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When the oppression gets bad enough, individuals will start sending signals of their wilingness to cooperate via activism.

[/ QUOTE ] History simply betrays your viewpoint. The opression of blacks in the U.S. was not worse in the 1950s than it was in the 1870s. The fact of the matter is that in the 1950s blacks belived that they had a chance of ending that opression, contra what people belived in the 1860s and 1950s.

The sad reality is that people are just as likely to lay down and die when confronted with opression such as this, given the difficulties of collective action.

hmkpoker

10-27-2006, 04:33 PM

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You still don't understand public goods. A public good is something that everyone gets regardless of whether or not they contribute to the fund; hence no individual has an incentive to even enter into this conditional contract, because they are going to get a share of it whether they pay for it or not. This does absolutely nothing to solve the public goods problem.

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Public goods have to come from somewhere. The measurement of whether they are in fact worthwhile (economically preferable) or not is blurred; contrast this with the market where valuable goods are voluntarily chosen. If there is genuinely enough want in society for a certain good, even if it confers some benefit upon those who are not willing to pay the full price, there is an incentive to create a conditional contract to ensure compliance in a free market. Moreover, the proposition of a democratic offer must originally be voluntary and conditional anyway, as I mentioned throughout the freerider problem thread. All the freerider problem does is ignore the possibility of conditional contracts, which is why it's invalid. I don't see what your point is.

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No, this isn't a lottery: you've missed the key point. In a lottery, a person must actually buy a ticket in order to win. In this case, a person can win the car regardless of whether or not they buy a ticket . Given that buying a ticket doesn't increase your chances of getting the Mercedes, it makes no sense to buy one.

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This is pathological. Why would anyone set this up? If you want to make an analogy to a public good, you should suggest that, upon the distribution of a certain number of signatures, a communal Benz will be provided. Of course, this also makes no sense, because no one's going to pay for a [censored] communal Benz. It's a highly privatizable good. However, if enough people want a public park, and the park requires a conditional contract with a high number of signatures and a low cost, there is a high incentive to sign so that the park actually has a shot in hell of coming into existence. Your situations always assume that everyone believes the resulting good is inevitable, which is not the case. Participation in conditional contracts is instrumental in the acquisition of the good.

The belief that any good can be fully publicized (with no additional reward incentives to be bestowed upon those that directly support it) is also ridiculous.

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History simply betrays your viewpoint. The opression of blacks in the U.S. was not worse in the 1950s than it was in the 1870s. The fact of the matter is that in the 1950s blacks belived that they had a chance of ending that opression, contra what people belived in the 1860s and 1950s.

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Uh, yeah. Same with any revolution. Revolution is more likely when people are more able to send signals about their intentions, and thereby adjust their own accordingly into beneficial behavior. I said before in this thread that greater availability of information tends to cause better decisions (just like in the market). You didn't say anything about that, other than "it's complicated."