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
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 18 2017, @04:30AM
You say:
Excellent point. Let's look at the content as well as the tone of your original comment:
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?
... which was in response to:
... which was in turn a response to:
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.