[ExI] experiment regarding ethical behaviors vs status: was RE: Will robot cars be TOO good?

[Kelly Anderson]

On Sun, Mar 25, 2012 at 1:34 PM, spike <spike66 at att.net> wrote:
> Cool check this article:
> http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2012/02/shame-on-the-rich.html?ref=hp
>
> I had a great idea, worthy of a nice science fair project.
>
> Near my house is a freeway with a right-merge lane.  Drivers are given
> plenty of warning that the far right lane is ending.  This gives them a
> choice to match speeds with other traffic and merge early, thus extending
> the time for their own trip but smoothing traffic.  These are the
> cooperators.  They have the choice of speeding ahead in the empty right lane
> up to the front of the line and stuffing their car ahead of other patient
> drivers who are now well behind, but overall wads up traffic, so it
> penalizes the cooperators twice.  These are the defectors.

We have (or at least had; construction) a similar traffic setup here.
I found that I defected when I was in a big hurry, and that I
cooperated when I had the time to do so. Perhaps the rich are in a
hurry more often than the poor... :-)

> I might be imagining it, but I feel like I have observed that there a lot of
> Porsche and Beemer drivers who are over-represented among the defectors.
> Those particular makes stick in my mind; in general it seems like sporty
> German cars are way over-represented in the defector class.  This defies
> intuition, for one would think the driver in the ratty old pickup with the
> gun-rack in the back window would be the defector: she can force her way in
> up front with that 50 dollar rattletrap and you must let her in; she
> probably doesn't have insurance, and one more dent on her rusty prolemobile
> would scarcely be noticed.  But I seldom see gun-rack pickups do that
> defector trick.  It's the shiny German buckmeisters who seem to defect.

It would not be imagining... it would be filtering. I think you are
right, the experiment must be done to know the result. However, yours
is a reasonable hypothesis to test.

> I would like to take some video of this phenom, which is a continuous
> experiment that runs 24/7, and try to extract some useful data.

Sounds fun.

As for the rich being less ethical than the poor, let me give you my
take on it (having been both). Rich people may get the idea that since
they are rich, and they get paid more than everyone else for their
time, that their time is more valuable than that of other people.
Thus, the economic thing to do is to "cheat" when they can save time
or effort because that will benefit society to the greatest extent.

I had a boss who was fairly well off. He computed the value of his
time, and the cost of the occasional speeding ticket (in both time
waiting at the side of the road and actual cost) and figured out the
optimal speed that he should travel. Because he made well in excess of
$200 an hour, the optimal speed was well above the posted speed limit.
Once he reached the point of nearly losing his license, he recomputed
the cost of having to hire a chauffeur... and slowed back down... LOL.

So perhaps Adam Smith's invisible hand is playing with the minds of
the rich. Perhaps when they cheat they justify doing so with the idea
that they are benefiting society to a higher degree than everyone
else. There is a certain logic to this way of thinking, even though it
is very easy to see how it feels disturbing to those who are not rich.
And it tends to explain why the rich get richer and the poor get
poorer...

This is not a simple subject. And it's one that I've spent a lot of
time analyzing in myself and in those around me. As you may remember,
I've hung around with lots of people on both ends of the spectrum.

I'm rich, therefore I'm important to society, therefore society should
give me a little break now and then because the rest of the moochers
are riding home on my back. It's logical, ask Ayn Rand. It is only
ethical if you buy into Objectivism or some other similar philosophy
that appeals to the rich... :-)

I'm not asking anyone to like this. But it is my take on what happens
inside the head of the rich person.

-Kelly