Fun to extrapolate from psychology experiments, but I would not want to justify a conclusion based on this. There are a lot of other very good arguments. And this is not a "liberal" position. As Roth observes, Sarah Palin gets it.
Read it at Asymptosis
When Do Humans Want to Share the Wealth?
by Steve Roth
8 comments:
Monkeys do better than Steve Roth's humans - Monkeys Show Sense Of Fairness, Study Says
Quote:
If you expect equal pay for equal work, you're not the only species to have a sense of fair play. Blame evolution.
Researchers studying brown capuchin monkeys (Cebus apella) have found that the highly social, cooperative species native to South America show a sense of fairness, the first time such behavior has been documented in a species other than humans.
The question of whether human aversion to unfair treatment—now shown by other primates—is an evolved behavior or the result of the cultural influence of large social institutions like religion, governments, and schools, in the case of humans, has intrigued scientists in recent years.
The new finding suggests evolution may have something to do with it. It also highlights questions about the economic and evolutionary nature of cooperation and its relationship to a species' sense of fairness, while adding yet another chapter to our understanding of primates.
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What Steve Roth also forgets is the impact of the 2% of human individuals who are born sociopaths, and who because of that lack of sense of fairness (conscience,) and in the absence of social strictures rise to the top of the pack - this I believe has been increasingly the case over the last few decades.
...and in the absence of social strictures... (which their autopilot cleverly absorbs and avoids)
...rise to the top of the pack... (evade the pack, honing detection skills, probably aided by social rejection as a feedback mechanism)
this I believe has been increasingly the case over the last few decades. (Isn't technology marvelous!)
This is another series of exchanges where I see a conflation of "fairness" and "equality".
From the article: "show a sense of fairness," and from Pres O: "So now let’s look at a key line in President Obama’s State of the Union address: “we can restore an economy where everyone gets a fair shot, and everyone does their fair share, and everyone plays by the same set of rules.”
You see the word "fair" here. (btw is O describing a Randian utopia? WTF?)
Now "equality": "The compression went into reverse in the 1980s, and since then, inequality has risen to levels approaching those of 1929. Democrats have long sounded the alarm about rising inequality, but for decades they got little traction "
Now you see "equality".
Which one is it? these are not the same concepts.
The author at the NYT piece seems oblivious to the distinction. Do we have another moron here? Oh, yes we do: "America is in deep fiscal trouble, and things are going to get far worse when the baby boomers retire (ed: sounds like our Bob Roddis). Normally, when a nation faces a threat to its very survival, a leader can press the shared-sacrifice button." (sacrifice? austerity? what the hell is this guy talking about??? his "comprehension is darkened")
'Fairness' doesnt automatically lead to 'equality'.
The Randian/Rockwells are "fair". Clonal, it's "fair", all anyone has to do is behave like a psychopath and you can get ahead right? What's not "fair" about that? just become a psychopath and anyone can do it right? We have "free will" right? So just choose to be a psychopath and screw everybody else and that's that... what's so hard about that? Can't you do that? ;)
Seems the Randians/Rothbardians value "fairness" and the Anarchist/Communists value "equality".
You can perhaps generally divide humanity into these two groups:
"10 And, coming, the first infer that they will be getting more. And they also got a denarius apiece.
11 Now, getting it, they murmured against the householder,
12 saying, 'These last do one hour, and you make them equal to us who bear the burden of the day and the scorching heat.'
13 Yet he, answering one of them, said, 'Comrade, I am not injuring you! Did you not agree with me for a denarius?
14 Pick up what is yours and go away. Now I want to give to this last one even as to you.
15 Is it not allowed me to do what I want with that which is mine? Or is your eye wicked, seeing that I am good?'
16 Thus shall the last be first, and the first last." Mat 20
You can see here how when the householder "made them equal" (from the point of view of the wicked ones), which even though it really was "fair" (hey, "a deal's a deal"), the wicked still would not accept it.
There are many of those among us who simply will not accept what they view as a classless or "equal" society as an economic outcome, even if it is "fair".
Further, the concept of "Thus shall the last be first" thru grace (unmerited favor) drives them absolutely insane.
Resp,
Matt,
Actually the capuchin experiments did a lot more than the experiment described - see Prosocial primates: selfish and unselfish motivations
Quote:
One such mechanism is attitudinal reciprocity, according to which individuals mirror the attitudes of their partners over short time intervals (table 1). This type of reciprocity was first experimentally demonstrated in capuchin monkeys using a delayed exchange task. First, one partner was given pieces of apple for 20 min while her partner sat at the other side of a mesh partition. In the following 20 min, the other was given pieces of carrot. It was found that the amount of food shared through the mesh by the second individual correlated with the amount of food he/she had received from the first. It is important to note that these results do not necessarily indicate that the monkeys were keeping track of food amounts, repaying food with food, even though this was the end result. They may simply have been responding to their partner's tolerant or intolerant attitude by being, respectively, tolerant or intolerant in return (de Waal 2000). The same monkeys exchanged food preferentially with partners who had just helped them in a cooperative pulling task (figure 1; de Waal & Berger 2000).
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But even if primates learn the benefits of exchange after considerable time intervals, we should keep in mind that spontaneous prosocial tendencies are a pre-condition for such learning (§3). Reciprocity is never purely a product of learning, but rather of a prosocial tendency fortified by learning. In addition, learned reciprocity is not the only kind in existence. The majority of exchanges may not depend on cognitively monitored contingencies, but rather grow out of long-term social bonds. If members of a species preferentially direct favours to their closest associates, the distribution of favours will automatically be reciprocal owing to the symmetrical nature of association (i.e. if individual A associates with B, B also associates with A). Such symmetry-based reciprocity obviates the need for scorekeeping, hence should be the default assumption whenever animals show reciprocity in long-term relations—such as between ‘mates’, ‘friends’ or ‘buddies’—whether it is among vampire bats (Wilkinson 1984) or primates (e.g. Barrett et al. 1999; Gomes & Boesch 2009). Matrix correlations between favours given and received across all dyads in a population can be fully explained by this cognitively less demanding mechanism (de Waal & Luttrell 1988). Affiliative ties act as an overarching emotional and neurohormonal mechanism (such as oxytocin; see Soares et al. 2010) to produce mutual benefits, as also suggested for humans (Brown & Brown 2006).
3. Unselfish cooperation and the altruistic impulse
The overall paper is quite educational.
To me it appears that there is increasing "selfishness" in alienated societies, US has, with the breakdown of extended families, separation of the work place and the home, two worker families, and "latch key" children, become increasingly so.
See also Americans are Increasingly Alienated from Society and Each Other
Quote:
Now, after years of exhaustive research, Putnam powerfully validates and deepens his original thesis: that over the past thirty years we have become ever more alienated from one another and from our social and political institutions, and that this disengagement poses a critical threat to our personal health, local communities, and national well-being.
Putnam relies particularly on two previously unexplored archives — the Roper Reports and the DDB Needham Life Style survey — that provide unprecedented data on the personal, social, and political behavior of Americans over the last quarter century. Together, they contain the results of nearly 500,000 detailed interviews covering an astonishingly wide range of information — from how many times the average American votes, volunteers, and goes to church, to how often he or she surfs the Internet, drinks a beer in a bar, or gives another driver the finger. By virtually any possible measure, Putnam found, Americans today are increasingly disengaged, not only from the public sphere, but from informal and private social relations. For example, we spend about 35% less time visiting with friends than we did thirty years ago, and American families have dinner together only two-thirds as often as they did a generation ago.
Individually and collectively, Putnam asserts, we are paying a heavy price for the loss of our "social capital," which is the product of communal activity and community sharing. Social bonds, for example, are by far the most powerful predictor of life satisfaction. In terms of measured happiness, getting married is the equivalent of quadrupling your income; attending a club meeting regularly is the equivalent of doubling your income.
Communitarians hold that social alienation is based on the breakdown of community, the commons, and closely shared interests bolstered by matrices of reciprocal relationships.
David Riesman, Nathan Glazer, and Reuel Denney explored alienation from self in The Lonely Crowd (1950) using sociological analysis to argue that it is outcome of the development of social complexity and the predominance of other-directness v. direction tradition or inner-directedness. Marxians focus on alienation based chiefly on Marx's adaption of Hegel's master-slave dialectic to capitalism. Abraham Maslow viewed psychological alienation in terms of frustration of the drive to self-actualize. Perennial wisdom also views alienation as the driving force of spiritual evolution as the inner urge for self-completion manifests itself naturally.
The general idea is that the natural state of human beings in groups is community, in that human beings are social animals. Why this does not often happen to a high degree therefore calls for explanation. An explanation to account for complexity necessarily has to be deal with that complexity by simplifying it for understanding. There are many factors involved, some spiritual and subjective, and others material and objective, and a third factor is the reciprocal interaction of the two in an integrated system.
Mainstream economics takes a rather simplistic approach based on rationality and utility. While these are factors involved they are hardly sufficient to account for the complexity. Mises basic principle of human action, that agent act to improve their condition, is similarly simplistic.
What differentiates organisms from mechanisms is "purpose," as Aristotle observed. Now we call this "motivation," and the study of motivation is a chief focus of social science and psychology. There is still a long way to go to arrive at a comprehensive understanding of motivation. Until then, humans are likely to be arguing in the face of insufficient information and underdeveloped theory.
Clonal,
thanks for all of these comments. I am reading all of these secular/scientific studies you link to wrt these behavioral issues.
The stuff on Ponerology is fascinating. Can you believe it: "the study of evil". My quick read: Small percentages.
imo it doesnt take a large % to screw everything up. Just a small % of people but in the right positions and evil can have it's way.
Thanks again... Resp,
This from the Ponerology wiki:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ponerology
"Łobaczewski defines many specific "characteropathies," which Western psychology would probably term "character disorders," as paving the way for the ultimate rule of "essential psychopaths" in full-fledged "pathocracy." This is what he says takes place when society is insufficiently guarded against the minority of such abnormal pathologs ever-present in its midst (Łobaczewski asserts that the etiology is almost entirely bio-genetic.) He believes that they infiltrate any institution or state, prevailing moral values are perverted into their opposite, and a coded language not unlike Orwell's "double-think" circulates into the mainstream, using "paralogic" and "paramoralism" in place of genuine logic and morality."
"in place of genuine logic": ie they are truly "morons" (stupid ones).
Ok, that is a good secular observation from the ponerology scientists, now for the scriptural:
"18 For God's indignation is being revealed from heaven on all the irreverence and injustice of men who are retaining the truth in injustice,
19 because that which is known of God is apparent among them, for God manifests it to them (Ed: even monkeys know how to "do someone a solid").
20 For His invisible attributes are descried from the creation of the world, being apprehended by His achievements, besides His imperceptible power and divinity, for them to be defenseless,
21 because, knowing God, not as God do they glorify or thank Him, but vain were they made in their reasonings, and darkened is their unintelligent heart.
22 Alleging themselves to be wise, they are made STUPID..."
Like the scientists studying Ponerology say: "in place of genuine logic", ie in the scriptural: "they are made stupid".
Let's all be thankful that we are not as they....
resp,
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