
Anti-social Punishment - type0
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/X5RyaEDHNq5qutSHK/anti-social-punishment
======
dcx
Just to share anecdata - I grew up in Malaysia but am generally based in
Australia, and have noticed a vein of this tendency in the Southeast Asian
culture (not covered in the study).

It's only a small percentage, but there really is a type for whom public goods
are a concept which only have a flimsy existence. Instead they hold the belief
that the smartest people are the ones who try to grab the most for themselves,
to an insane level. It doesn't really matter how much the damage their lack of
cooperation does, and they get a personal satisfaction from "winning" or
"being smart". If punished for that behaviour I would expect retaliation -
they were just trying to do the smart thing after all!

Some extreme examples - I heard about uni students who upon graduation took
out credit cards, bought a bunch of nice things, then moved home for good and
skipped out on the bill. And they clearly didn't desperately need the money as
they were medium rich overseas students. One guy I knew personally (who was
eventually kicked out of our student group) would do stuff like grab giant
stacks of napkins from restaurants and take home rolls of TP from public
restrooms. So gross!

The people I met who had this tendency all had a poorer or working class
family background, but were all middle class or higher now. My theory is this
might be something to do with intergenerational experiences in these poorer
countries that (1) the commons will definitely not look after you, and (2) if
you didn't have enough you and your family might literally starve to death.
And so the right thing to do is look after yourself first at all costs.
Looking after the public good might feel like a luxury or foolish behaviour
under these circumstances.

~~~
silvestrov
This behaviour is also found in Denmark. It is not constrained to poor
countries.

~~~
dcx
Fair point, I'm sure it exists everywhere. Free riding is never going to
completely disappear (psychopathy seems to be evolutionarily stable after
all). But when you look at the outcomes of the Public Goods with Punishment
game in the link, there's definitely more free riding happening in the poorer
countries studied. Maybe weak institutions and proximity to starvation result
in a greater percentage of this behaviour in the population? The causality is
tricky to figure out though.

------
whack
It's a fascinating experiment, but I don't buy the author's explanation for
anti-social punishment. He's talking about punishing "rats/narks" (which is
also a big social taboo here in USA), whereas all punishment in the experiment
is completely anonymous.

I think a more plausible explanation is status envy. Someone who is publicly
altruistic, is likely to gain compliments and plaudits from others. This would
then boost their status, and bring down the relative status of others. This is
likely to engender status-envy on the part of others, and they act upon their
status-envy by inflicting punishment on the do-gooder. It's worth mentioning
that I've personally seen such behavior here in America as well, especially
when wealthy individuals or corporations engage in altruistic acts.

~~~
taurath
> especially when wealthy individuals or corporations engage in altruistic
> acts

I've found that rather than status envy, its cynicism towards the intentions
of the person. If they believe the purpose of the altruism is to gain social
standing rather than an actual belief in solving the problem they're likely to
disparage them. For example - when a company spends $50k to send a sick child
on a vacation and then puts down a $50 million marketing spend to show off
what they did. It feels like 99% of politics in the US has the same problem.

That sort of leads to the question - what is an effective way to communicate
that you want to be an effective do-gooder, without triggering the cynicism?
Is attention truly orthogonal to people believing that you have good
intentions? I'd argue not, but its been lost. It seems like we don't have many
cultural heroes anymore. Einstein comes to mind - Bill Gates perhaps (though
certainly not in the 90s)..

~~~
TeMPOraL
> _what is an effective way to communicate that you want to be an effective
> do-gooder, without triggering the cynicism?_

A more important question, I believe is: is there a way for such method to not
be immediately perverted by those seeking to exploit the status bonus? I can't
imagine there is; it seems to me that every honest signal that brings goodwill
is soon coopted by scammers and marketers.

~~~
kopo
I think communicating your do-gooder status in a hyper connected society is
highly over rated. Its like trying to figure out who is the best ant in the
ant-hill. Not because there is some value to it to the ant hill, but because
the data allows us to count and rank things.

We have all this data pouring in and so have ant rankings. But if Bill Gates
gets hit by a bus tomorrow world history isn't going to change much. Wasn't
the case in a less connected world in the past.

------
Tade0
A quote from the comment section:

 _I 'm surprised nobody proposed : "This person is promoting a social norm
more stringent than my current behavior, I'll whack him."._

The part about promoting social norms is accurate. Interestingly enough it
translates to other areas of life making people fear things like "the
promotion of homosexuality".

I guess societies that in the past were forcefully transformed tend to be
conservative.

~~~
escherplex
Interesting last point: who where a sizable liberal faction in Roman Empire
around the year 300? Answer: early Christians, the same group with fanatical
penchants who mercilessly eviscerated the Alexandrian
mathematician/philosopher Hypatia. Under Constantine, Christianity became a
recognized religion of Rome, with Constantine one of its chief advocates.
Curiously, who are the most conservative block today?

~~~
394549
> the same group with fanatical penchants who mercilessly eviscerated the
> Alexandrian mathematician/philosopher Hypatia.

IIRC, that's a bit of a myth. According to Wikipedia, she was murdered due to
a political power struggle in Alexandria:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypatia#Death](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypatia#Death):

> Socrates Scholasticus presents Hypatia's murder as entirely politically
> motivated[95] and makes no mention of any role that Hypatia's paganism might
> have played in her death.[95] Instead, he reasons that "she fell a victim to
> the political jealousy which at that time prevailed.

This is also interesting:

> ...Hypatia['s] sudden death not only left her legacy unprotected, but also
> triggered a backlash against her entire ideology.[146] Hypatia, with her
> tolerance towards Christian students and her willingness to cooperate with
> Christian leaders, had hoped to establish a precedent that Neoplatonism and
> Christianity could coexist peacefully and cooperatively.[147] Instead, her
> death and the subsequent failure by the Christian government to impose
> justice on her killers destroyed that notion entirely[147] and led future
> Neoplatonists such as Damascius to consider Christian bishops as "dangerous,
> jealous figures who were also utterly unphilosophical."[147] Hypatia became
> seen as a "martyr for philosophy"[147] and her murder led philosophers to
> adopt attitudes that increasingly emphasized the pagan aspects of their
> belief systems[148] and helped create a sense of identity for philosophers
> as pagan traditionalists set apart from the Christian masses.[149] Thus,
> while Hypatia's death did not bring an end to Neoplatonist philosophy as a
> whole, Watts argues that it did bring an end to her particular variety of
> it.[150]

> Shortly after Hypatia's murder, a forged anti-Christian letter appeared
> under her name.[151] Damascius was "anxious to exploit the scandal of
> Hypatia's death", and attributed responsibility for her murder to Bishop
> Cyril and his Christian followers.[152][153] A passage from Damascius's Life
> of Isidore, preserved in the Suda, concludes that Hypatia's murder was due
> to Cyril's envy over "her wisdom exceeding all bounds and especially in the
> things concerning astronomy".[98][154] Damascius's account of the Christian
> murder of Hypatia is the sole historical source attributing direct
> responsibility to Bishop Cyril.[154]

And the ideologically-motivated myths seem build from there.

~~~
escherplex
Agreed. Emotive contemporary documentaries and cinema paint Hypatia as an
early feminist martyr for science but actual records of the political/social
dynamics surrounding her death are sketchy.

------
lordnacho
I wonder how much of this result is self-perception. For instance, people in
Denmark are constantly told what a trusting society they live in, and that
that trust is part of the reason why they are so wealthy. So a researcher
comes by with an obviously contrived game, and the Danes play like they are
supposed to.

For the same reason I wonder about the periodic happiness survey that makes
headlines each year.

~~~
pjc50
Self-perception of norms _is_ culture, surely? Society is, after all, socially
constructed.

~~~
lordnacho
But the question is how do people play the game when they're not playing a
game?

Pretty hard to answer.

You'd have to look at some sort of natural experiment and adjust for a bunch
of factors.

~~~
cirgue
Agreed. All ‘commons’-style games are inherently iterative to infinity from
the point of view of most actors, and that has game-theoretic implications
that aren’t really present in a lab, to say nothing of the fact that
communication is a constant backdrop for all of them in the real world.

------
twoquestions
So how would one attempt to do good (start a business/charity/what have you)
in such an environment? I can feel my part of the United States inching slowly
to this kind of social norm, is there anything regular people can do to
counteract this?

~~~
mercutio2
The US used to stylize itself a high trust society.

I’m not sure how much that was a fantasy dependent on horrific repression’s
from slavery to Jim Crow, and how much it actually adhered even amongst groups
of people that weren’t based on racial exclusion.

Regardless, I worry for US culture. Trust in institutions seems to be at an
all time low; institutions take generations to build, we won’t get them back
easily or quickly.

~~~
dsfyu404ed
> Trust in institutions seems to be at an all time low; institutions take
> generations to build, we won’t get them back easily or quickly.

So what? I see nothing wrong with reliance on government being replaced with
reliance on more local entities (i.e. one's friends, neighbors, church
congregation, local government, etc) which is what happens in the near term
when trust in higher level authority collapses. If the state doesn't think the
feds will give them money for roads then they'll figure out a way to build it
themselves. If the community college doesn't think they'll get federal grant
money they'll get the state to give it to them or fund-raise it themselves.

Sure, if the federal government just stopped handing out SSI checks, highway
dollars and research grands tomorrow it would suck a lot for a lot of people
in the short term but in the long term you'd see towns and states running
their own programs to compensate. Something always creeps in to fill the
vacuum.

Edit: JFC people, I'm not advocating for some sort of near-anarchy where the
only government is local. I'm saying that government action should always be
performed on the most local level possible and I see no problem with an
erosion of trust in Federal government as a means to that end.

~~~
bilbo0s
>*I see nothing wrong with reliance on government being replaced with reliance
on more local entities..."

But then you just replaced one government with another. Worse, the one you
replaced it with has fewer abilities. How does it get fuel for logistics. (ie
- the food pantries get food from where? The federal government is gone, so
the oil tankers don't dock anymore and the pipelines aren't full anymore.)

Sure, Chicago would be golden, it's on lake Michigan. But what happens if you
live in Arizona? Where does your water come from?

Who helps if a hurricane guts Miami FL?

Who helps if a tornado guts Norman OK?

Etc etc etc.

Our way of life just doesn't support hyper local governments doing whatever
they want, and hording resources from other hyper local governments. We, for
better or for worse, are set up on the premise of bountiful energy, and
through that energy, bountiful access to resources. That's just how we survive
currently. No one has the stomach or the constitution to go back to being
local farmers.

~~~
wott
> *Our way of life just doesn't support hyper local governments [...] No one
> has the stomach or the constitution to go back to being local farmers.

Er... guys, your American states are as large as European countries (the
largest ones being in the range of France, Germany, Spain down to UK, the
smaller ones in the range of Switzerland down to Belgium). As bit less
populated (and even that is not really a drawback since it typically means
more available resources per inhabitant), but otherwise... why wouldn't they
be able to support themselves? Furthermore, having different
governments/countries does not block the flow of goods.

~~~
bilbo0s
OK. I'm going to assume that you aren't American.

Imagine a European country...

a lot of space right?

Now imagine it's in the middle of a desert. Literally.

OK, do you have that picture in your head? Great!

Now... imagine that it's _ALSO_ landlocked.

If you've followed along to this point, then I want you to answer the
following question in as honest a fashion as you can:

How many, "resources per inhabitant", would that nation realistically have
available?

Continuing with our thought experiment, imagine there was no federal
government to provide the structure for, say, Texas, to share its energy
resources with other states...

now, ask yourself why Texas would continue to give Idaho free energy
resources? Should Texans continue the charitable practice, in exchange for a
few Idaho potatoes? There are just better markets for those resources. And I
wouldn't blame Texans one bit for availing themselves of the opportunities
those markets present.

Governments, and common sense, can, and _do_ , block the flow of goods.

What I'm trying to point out, is that I don't think you've thought this whole
thing through.

------
mercutio2
The toy games described, the variance in different countries, and especially
the explanation of the psychology that might be at play here is startling.

I am excited to be able to add this to my toolbox of ways to understand public
goods and their interplay with the surrounding culture.

~~~
52-6F-62
My thoughts exactly. Except I'm excited/not excited. It's bittersweet, if
that's appropriate.

It was definitely a compelling read, and I'm sure I'll end up thinking about
it often.

------
jstanley
I don't think the explanation covers it.

Wanting to punish people who cooperate with the state (because the state just
takes everything away) doesn't imply wanting to punish people who cooperate in
the contrived example game where the game does not take anything away. Unless
OP means to imply that people can't mentally separate the machinations of the
state from the rules of a game, I don't think the explanation is satisfactory.
(Although I don't have a better explanation myself).

~~~
stickfigure
_Unless OP means to imply that people can 't mentally separate the
machinations of the state from the rules of a game_

Yes, I think that's exactly it. Lifelong behavior is internalized,
subconscious, and incredibly persistent.

~~~
theptip
Agreed -- humans aren't reassessing the utility of a given pattern of action
(e.g. group cooperation vs. selfish behaviour) every time they engage in it,
they are building mental heuristics that permit quick decisions without re-
evaluating the priors (system 1 vs. system 2 thinking, if you will).

Under that model, it's expected that humans would have a similar attitude to
group/commons cooperation in a game as they would in their real-world
interactions.

Taking the next step from this observation -- I wonder how much meta-level
discussion would be required to break this tendency? Could we apply such meta-
level discussion to the real-world, too, and improve cooperation in the
societies where these old strategies perhaps don't apply as much now?

------
TomMckenny
You'll notice that many such systems deteriorate into a sub-optimal
equilibrium because humans naturally have an "us" vs "them" or "me" vs
"everybody-else" world view. You'll note that such experiments require the
participants to be strangers.

I imagine this has an incredibly strong evolutionary origin, but I think it's
interesting to note.

~~~
TeMPOraL
What's also interesting is that if you put a large enough bunch of strangers
in a room and get them to play a game (or even do some work), they'll quickly
divide into groups and start showing the "us vs them" dynamic.

------
Ivoirians
Original paper here:
[http://www.umass.edu/preferen/You%20Must%20Read%20This/herrm...](http://www.umass.edu/preferen/You%20Must%20Read%20This/herrmann-
thoni-gachter.pdf)

The explanation in the linked article isn't fully convincing, IMO. The paper
speculates about several more explanations at the end, and has some more data
to support them, e.g. people seemed to be punishing low-contributors in an
effort to make them contribute more.

If only the experimenters had conducted some interviews...

------
michaelkeenan
Robin Hanson wrote about similar experiments in 2010:
[http://www.overcomingbias.com/2010/07/looking-too-
good.html](http://www.overcomingbias.com/2010/07/looking-too-good.html)

As others here have suggested (e.g. jpfed, Tade0), it seems that extreme
generosity can be regarded as establishing an undesirable behavior standard.
The post suggests a workaround, if your productivity/generosity greatly
exceeds others: under-report your output and give credit to others.

------
Nasrudith
I suspect sexual selection is partially to blame for this behavior
subliminally. People who are "better" are a threat to finding good mates and a
source of envy and thus despised.

------
phkahler
While reading I kept thinking that cooperating in the game has a tendency to
equalize everyone in terms of savings. If everyone has very little, someone
with something may feel he's a bit ahead and cooperation would effectively
erode that savings. This is of course just speculation on my part but it's
what came to mind. Kind of like how people making a bit above minimum wage
(even in the US) resent the idea of raising minimum wage because in some ways
it puts them at the bottom.

------
kazzizi
I took part in this experiment. It was about 12-15 years ago.

The test was administered by the department of Economics of the University.
They put flyers around the campus for volunteers, who would then get to keep
any money they earned. Such experiments attracted students that wanted to make
some money. Most students did not bother to participate .

The screenshots in the supporting material match what I saw on the computer
screen. We were given the instructions and had some time to digest the rules.
I calculated that the best reward would come if all were cooperating and I
hoped that everyone else would figure it out. In that way, our group of four
anonymous participants would get away with some extra money.

I was willing to cooperate, although I come originally from a country that did
abysmally bad in this test.

During the first two rounds, I would put all funds into the pool. The rest of
the group did not pick up the signal, did not put any funds or they put just a
little. The game would work if everyone put all they funds in the pool, and in
that case we would earn even more from the "bank". On the third round, I did
not put any funds in the pool. I noticed though that some of the others
players would persist in putting some small funds in the pool, as if they did
not figure out what was going on.

Before reading this post, I thought that the experiment I took was rigged and
you were playing against three computer players who on purpose were not
cooperating.

During the next set of rounds with punishments, I did not contribute and
neither did most of the others. There were some random punishments by the
others which did not make sense.

Looking back, I can feel the inexperience of an undergraduate who could not
understand that there could be a strategy that is beneficial to all.

Some comments said that communism can make people less willing to cooperate. I
don't think so. The problem is the cultural attitude of the society, which
transcends communism.

~~~
nkurz
Just wanted to say thank you for taking the trouble to sign up to offer your
first hand experience! It's both beautiful and little sad that your summary of
the main finding (antisocial punishment) is "There were some random
punishments by the others which did not make sense".

Reading the supplemental materials
([http://science.sciencemag.org/content/sci/suppl/2008/03/06/3...](http://science.sciencemag.org/content/sci/suppl/2008/03/06/319.5868.1362.DC1/Hermann.SOM.pdf))
it looks like the difference in "reward" for a cooperative strategy was on the
order of $10 USD. Does that seem about right?

------
zby
I have the feeling that it has something to do with the fact that being too
cooperative makes live easy for the non cooperators. There must be many
equilibria and some cultures stay at some middle level, they don't aim at the
most productive ones out of fear not to be pushed into the least productive.

Imagine being a cooperator with an evil dictatorship:
[https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/X5RyaEDHNq5qutSHK/anti-
socia...](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/X5RyaEDHNq5qutSHK/anti-social-
punishment#TB6L54XEXry3qWCxT)

------
ryandrake
Reminds me of the Ultimatum Game experiment[1].

1:
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultimatum_game](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultimatum_game)

------
emmanueloga_
Disclaimer: tangent/speculation ahead :-)

"how people from different societies deal with cooperation and punishment"

Whenever I read some writing from Sustrik I wonder how related it is to his
experiences in the nanomsg/ZeroMQ debacle [1].

Similarly, maybe I'm completely wrong but when I learned about Hitjens' "The
Psychopath code" [2], and because of the timing, it was hard not to make a
guess whose psychopath Hitjens had in mind :-).

I'm kinda curious to know how deep did the grudge between these two Software
Engineers / Philosophers go.

1: [http://hintjens.com/blog:112](http://hintjens.com/blog:112)

2: [http://hintjens.com/books](http://hintjens.com/books)

------
jokoon
Not sure if that game is really measuring a cultural effect in a relevant
manner. Is that really cultural after all?

On top of this, it is really difficult to see if the politics translate this
cultural selfishness or altruism well into policies that are doing what is
expected.

------
fjsolwmv
It's a good time to remember that the replication crisis in social science
still exists even if when a result confirms your preconceived notions, and
that the bulk of the article is speculative brainstorming of hypotheses, not
research.

------
jpfed
"Why do you have to make us look bad?"

------
sometime
Could someone summarize this for people with reading difficulties (and for
karma)?

~~~
twoquestions
Most Americans want to punish people when they harm the public good, but some
cultures (especially former Communist countries) punish people that _help_ the
public good for some reason. There's more speculation on why that is in the
comments, but as always be careful reading those.

~~~
Shaddox
I'm eastern european so I hope you don't mind me chipping in my opinion as a
reply to you.

I just simply don't trust the 'public good', aka the government. When I'm
looking at my payslip, 46% goes to the state in the form of taxes. Out of all
that's left, no matter if I save or spend, at least 19% of it will go to the
government again in the form of VAT. A lot more if I want to become an
entrepreneur or buy something big like a house or a car.

I pay a lot in taxes. A lot of people pay a lot in taxes, yet things have
always been the same. Add in the political scandals that happen pretty much on
a weekly basis: money siphoning or laundering, weird law bills, election fraud
etc. and it's easy to see why people are distrustful of the government.

------
dwd
Was surprised by the Melbourne result given the city is one of the most
multicultural places in the world which you would assume give it a median
result.

Done in 2008 so the current housing price blowout wouldnt explain everyone
being totally out for themselves. Maybe tall poppy syndrome or the anti-dole
bludger (freeloader) mentality would account for it?

------
rwmj
Those graphs could be so much clearer without the key, instead just have a
straight line linking the data line with the name of the country, ordering the
country names appropriately to avoid too many crossing lines.

------
foxhop
If you find this surprising you should check out "The Ugly Indian" TED talk.

[https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=tf1VA5jqmRo](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=tf1VA5jqmRo)

------
hashkb
This article made me go back and play with
[https://ncase.me/trust/](https://ncase.me/trust/) my favorite society
simulator.

~~~
froasty
My only complaint about this presentation is the lack of forgetfulness and
recovery of old strategies. In a word, it ignores context.

A world with only tit-for-tats effectively becomes a world of always-cooperate
once the knowledge that defectors are a thing disappears from visceral
collective memory.

And as an inevitable aftermath of that, the world of always-cooperate invites
the return of always-cheat. Which invites the arrival of tit-for-tats.

However, the presentation's conclusion remains the same: viable actions in the
world we inhabit are largely--but not totally--defined by the contexts that
everyone brings to the table. And in most contexts, it pay out more to forgive
than to retribute in the long run.

------
rfugger
Voting for Trump might be an anti-social way of punishing those do-gooder
liberals.

------
gammateam
Hm I thought that conclusion was interesting, they should try this in any US
ghetto then, instead of just Boston for their check-the-box US representation.

I think it would have similar outcomes as the Ostblock countries, and less
similarities with "The West and its strong rule of law"

~~~
bilbo0s
I think it would be even further along the axis of cooperation. I happened to
be in Detroit for some work in the late 90's. I took the opportunity to do
some volunteering and saw some really weird things. Like farms that were
basically squatting in collapsed buildings out in certain areas of the city.
Basically, "secret" farms, that were secret to no one in the area, and nearly
everyone was using. (Both planting and harvesting.) How anything got
coordinated was beyond me? That said, one thing they _did_ have a handle on
was who had done what, and people would argue when one of the "freeloaders"
for lack of a better term, came along.

(I know. They were _ALL_ freeloaders, as it was _HIGHLY_ doubtful in my mind
that any of them owned that property. But you know what I mean.)

I didn't really know the terms "pro-social" punishment, and "anti-social"
punishment. But these guys were _FIRMLY_ in the "pro-social" punishment camp.
And I got the very real sense that you just didn't mess with that.

~~~
somebodythere
Another way to look at it is that none of them were freeloaders, as all (or
most) of them were making constructive use of the property.

------
anon49124
From Martin Sustrik a-la ZeroMQ.

