Take That, Economics

[melindadansky]

Behavioral study shows: kindness spreads

“It is often supposed that individuals in experiments like the one described here selfishly seek to maximize their own payoffs,” wrote Fowler and Christakis. “The equilibrium prediction is to contribute nothing and to pay nothing to punish noncontributors, but the subjects did not follow this pattern

Comments

[buymeaclue]

I love the juxtaposition of this story with your journal title. :-p

[melindadansky]

:-)

Kindness to idiots is cruelty to the rest of us.

[matgb]

economists grudgingly accept that decades of psychological research [and a bunch of game theorists within the economics discipline] may be on to something

Seriously, I can remember doing stuff on this in my Game Theory courses over ten years ago, and Game Theory is normally used for economics analysis. The best strategy in a lot of situations is cooperation, there's maths and stuff.

Sure, a lot don't like to admit that, but every discipline has its ideologues.

[melindadansky]

Sure, a lot don't like to admit that, but every discipline has its ideologues.

I'm just kind of appalled that the ideologues have managed to take the discipline over so thoroughly.

11 years ago, I decided I was a bad economist because none of what I was being taught made any sense. Now, I've decided being a bad economist is probably a sign of intelligence.

[matgb]

Pretty much; was lucky, my game theory teacher was Andy Hindmoor (now off in Oz unfortunately), more than a bit of a lefty and a Blair supporter back in 1999 when we started on it.

He was very good at showing the tools and pointing out you could use them to get different results and similar.

Number of people who take the 'selfish' approach as the end result is boggling, but, y'know, they get their results wrong and discredit the rest of us constantly.

[kuroshii]

remember "propigating the nice?"
yeah.