12 Comments

How about 'I hurt her but it really wasn't my fault the devil mad me do it.'

Since I can admit my involvement but not my responsibility you must pay, not me. If I paid there would be two victims not one and since everything I give you is gravy not giving you a full scoop doesn't deprive you of anything because you did not have it to begin with.

With an argument that complex one is never wrong.

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I was being sarcastic. People use any study that describes behaviour vaguely similar to that of their political opponents as a shot against the other group, while having no way of showing that the behaviour described in the study is actually what causes their opponents' actions.

Also, of course socialists are hypocritical - everyone is hypocritical and socialists are people.

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Maybe one of you should spell out this reasoning; I don't see it.

The obvious parallel is when the banks recently caused a depression, and now their political representatives advocate that others suffer austerity. Maybe in our day's Orwellian language calls finance capital socialist.

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You're right - this does sound vaguely similar to what socialists do! Those socialists sure are hypocrites.

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Undoubtedly the extreme case is a toy model. How often do you have a low likelihood of subsequent interaction? Is there any reason to expect this effect to show up only in the most extreme case?

Furthermore, the fact that the dictator game is "unrealistic" doesn't necessarily say anything about how interesting the result is. This still raises the question as to why people behave this way.

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"Researchers then had these guilty folks divide up money ... such people give more money to the guilty person"

Hmm, what?

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Actually Philo, there is something equivalent. When people vote for expenses to be paid for by others' taxes it's not very far from the dictator game. This is especially true for the set of Americans who have no net tax obligation or whose taxes are low enough that any changes in upper bracket taxes are irrelevant. Ditto for support for tariffs, affirmative action, busing, etc. Even when the person voting is tangentially affected, the bulk of the benefits and harms are usually borne by others.

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You should add a like button to your blog posts to elicit less verbose and more emotional feedback. I like.

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The headline should have read: "I hurt her so you get a less generous award from me."

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The "dictator game" is unrealistic. Very seldom do I interact with another person in complete confidence that there will be no subsequent interaction. Thus the other person is never without influence on my behavior towards him: I know that if I now do something he dislikes he may retaliate later, while he is more likely to cooperate with me later if I act considerately towards him now.

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A successful competitive entity needs to be good at externalizing as many costs as possible - even when this competitive entity is built with putatively anti-competitive impulses, like empathy.

This is a BAD THING.

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The welfare state succinctly explained!

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