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posted by Fnord666 on Saturday July 15 2017, @10:41PM   Printer-friendly
from the status-quo dept.

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

Human beings largely object to income inequality and are willing to correct injustice—unless, of course, it rattles their status quo.

That's the conclusion of a recent study looking at how far people would go to redistribute resources between the haves and have nots. Participants fiercely objected to "when winners become losers and losers become winners," researchers note in the paper, published in the latest issue of Nature Human Behaviour.

Researchers initially recruited Indian, American, and Chinese participants take part in an experimental game they called "the redistribution game." The gist of the game was simple: Participants were given a number of scenarios that would redistribute a fixed sum from a richer person to someone poorer. Participants were told the original standing of wealth was assigned randomly.

In the first scenario, participants had to decide if they wanted to transfer two coins from person A (who already had four coins) to person B (who had one). Researchers note the "transfer would reduce inequality," (as there's less of a gap between them), but person B would end up one coin richer than person A, reversing their status.

In the second version of game, participants were asked whether they'd transfer one coin to person B (where person A ended up with three coins and person B with two coins). Researchers ran a third and fourth scenario that allowed participants to transfer coins from person A to B, where the outcome still left person A with significantly more coins.

-- submitted from IRC


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  • (Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Monday July 17 2017, @02:24AM (5 children)

    by Azuma Hazuki (5086) on Monday July 17 2017, @02:24AM (#540127) Journal

    LOL, hateboner. Seriously? Understand something: I don't hate him, for the same reason I'm not trying to make him see sense either. And that reason is that it is not possible to "save" someone so far gone, nor would any amount of hate or any emotion reach him.

    My only intent in engaging his posts is to make sure anyone reading them gets a quick followup dose of the antidote to whatever memetic poison he's decided to spew at that particular point in time. Think of him as something like a small, mobile Superfund site of the mind, a walking (waddling?) cognitohazard. He himself is lost, and for all I know was lost since before I was born. It's sad, but this is all that can be done.

    --
    I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
    Starting Score:    1  point
    Karma-Bonus Modifier   +1  

    Total Score:   2  
  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 17 2017, @04:06AM (4 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 17 2017, @04:06AM (#540169)

    "God damn it, why don't we have a "-1, Fractally-Wrong" mod? That statement is wrong on every scale you examine it on. I realize you've said you're here to troll, but at some point good taste needs to win out over the urge for your daily dose of shitzngiggles."

    That's your idea of a memetic antidote? It's basically poo-flinging, with somewhat less panache and grace than the second-rank chimp at the zoo.

    • (Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Monday July 17 2017, @07:03AM (3 children)

      by Azuma Hazuki (5086) on Monday July 17 2017, @07:03AM (#540207) Journal

      Believe it or not, yes, it is. Let me explain: first impressions matter a whole hell of a lot. If you were new here, you'd see just two people up there, one poster and one respondent.

      Now, Uzzard has stated that he is here mainly to troll. Leaving aside the fact that that's about as convincing as someone who admits to "ironic racism," having that pointed out directly below means that a casual viewer will be less likely to take him seriously, in this post *or any other future one.* That right there is a sort of global if low-strength immunization to anything he further spews.

      Ripping apart individual posts of his is actually *less* useful, mainly due to the way human minds work. This is a consequence of two things: 1) it's easier to, as it were, shit on the rug than clean a shitstain out of the rug, and 2) human minds are lazy and will be annoyed with a massive wall-o-text. They may also, if even subconsciously, suspect that the person posting said wall-o-text in response actually has a weaker position than in reality *because* it took a lot of text. (In other words: tl;dr: "tl;dr").

      Make sense now?

      --
      I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 17 2017, @03:36PM (2 children)

        by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 17 2017, @03:36PM (#540344)

        "Make sense now?"

        In theory, sure.

        In theory, there's no difference between theory and practice.

        In practice I see one moderately snarky but relatively sober voice, and one shrieking, hysterical, over-emotional response to everything the sober voice says.

        If you want to be the persuasive one, you have to look saner.

        • (Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Monday July 17 2017, @04:55PM (1 child)

          by Azuma Hazuki (5086) on Monday July 17 2017, @04:55PM (#540396) Journal

          Oh, you again.

          See, your response tells me one thing: tone is more important than content to you. That's fine; unfortunately a lot of humans work that way :/ All it means is you can't be saved either. Have fun in the playpen shittin' yourself with all the other useless degenerates.

          --
          I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 18 2017, @04:30AM

            by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 18 2017, @04:30AM (#540777)

            You say:

            See, your response tells me one thing: tone is more important than content to you. That's fine; unfortunately a lot of humans work that way :/ All it means is you can't be saved either. Have fun in the playpen shittin' yourself with all the other useless degenerates.

            Excellent point. Let's look at the content as well as the tone of your original comment:

            God damn it, why don't we have a "-1, Fractally-Wrong" mod? That statement is wrong on every scale you examine it on. I realize you've said you're here to troll, but at some point good taste needs to win out over the urge for your daily dose of shitzngiggles.

            Tone: Ah yes. Nothing but unadulterated sober professionalism at work here... well, maybe a little schoolyard whining ... or no, actually, it's straight from the heavy trolling playbook.

            Content: A statement to the effect that the parent is wrong, and a self-proclaimed troll, and an appeal for good taste.

            So what did TMB originally state to merit this response?

            You have to do some wicked mental gymnastics to buy that bullshit. Make sure to stretch first.

            ... which was in response to:

            The rich are rich because society existed and gave them the opportunity to make that money, and a fair amount of luck is required on top of that. You cannot name a single person who achieved great wealth entirely on their own. They had to be born and raised at the very least. The rugged individualist is a myth; simply trace their life back to when they were in diapers which someone else was changing.

            ... which was in turn a response to:

            I think the issue is that people have an innate sense of what is Fair. and no matter how you slice it, taking something away from someone who has it just isn't fair to that person. You might be improving the state of the poor person, but at the end of the day, everybody is going to know, deep down, that the rich person didn't do anything to deserve an injustice like that. The only way forward is to generate new coins and give them to the poor persons, not steal from people who haven't done anything wrong. Now if the richer person willingly donated, it's different. Strong-arming the goods out of them is theft, though, plain and simple.

            Given that julian was referring to the value of society, the reasonable interpretation of TMB's statement appears to be a rejection of the connection of society's role to the justification for expropriating the property of the wealthy.

            At its most feeble, TMB's position is at best an expression of opinion on the merits of socially-motivated expropriation. You then sail into the argument with a personal criticism topped off by unsupported contradiction.

            This is like a classic Navy argument: flat statement (julian) followed by flat contradiction (TMB) followed by personal abuse (AH).

            But you know what? I'll bite. Explain to me, slowly and with specific reference to the interpretive details, precisely how you're providing what you are pleased to call a memetic antidote, because right now I don't see it, and as someone who reveres notions well-represented among the liberal arts, your stooping to his level (and worse) is like watching a fellow soldier shoot himself in the foot.