CoCos,
I'd probably prefer comments on the blog, where maybe we can get
non-subscribers involved. That said, here's the text of my latest post,
for folks who would rather converse here:
---begin quoted---
Not the first time I've been late to the party, and if you haven't
already seen Howard's 2005 TED Talk, take a look now.
Around minute 9 Howard says,
"The fundamental basis of neo-classic economics would tell you it's
irrational to reject a dollar because somebody you don't know in another
room is going to get ninety-nine."
I think Howard is right that this is accepted wisdom in some circles,
but so is spontaneous generation. The experiment as described does
nothing to counter deep, culturally ingrained drives toward fairness.
Those drives in turn are born of reinforced fear of reprisal or
reinforced reward to compliance or other such societal programming, but
in any case these drives are not made ineffective by the terms of the
experiment. To describe the result here as irrational really begs the
question of what is rational behavior, illegitimately discounting the
socialized preference for fairness as if such a widespread and
verifiable phenomenon could exist separate from a structured system of
reinforcements. It is no far stretch to say that adherence to social
norms of fairness may well represent "more utiles" than the utiles
represented by even the full one hundred dollars.
---end quoted---
Peace,
rl
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