--- On Wed, 12/10/08, Gilbert Lawrence <[email protected]> wrote: > >As usual some select to shoot the goanet messenger, perhaps because the >>message (or scientific paper) is above their level.:=)) >
Perhaps, Mario will respond appropriately to the all-encompassing wisdom imparted to us by Gilbert in the above post, and especially to whatever the heck he is saying in defense of the crimes of the inquisition in it. After all, as the quote above implies my level of understanding is below that required to grasp Gilbert's perception of scientific papers and his love of quotation marks and forward slashes inserted within incomprehensible sentences. However, I would like to correct the misinformation that Gilbert is spreading in this latest post of his. First, the title that I found silly is the title of this thread that Gilbert initiated, namely "Old Practice as New Science", not the title of the news report or the original scientific paper, as he suggests. Second, the title of the original paper in Science is "The long-run benefits of punishment". So the authors are indeed talking about punishment in the technical psychological sense, as I indicated separately, not just the threat of punishment. Finally, it is entirely thoughtless and nonsensical to suggest, as Gilbert does, (and apparently this is the point of his initial post) that the results of the study in question are just a confirmation of intuitive common sense, and therefore a waste of funds and time. It was not intuitively obvious to anybody, before, that the benefits of punishment in a social cooperation scenario may be time dependent. That punishment increases long-term co-operation compared to short-term. That the net co-operative earnings are reduced by punishment in the short run, but elevated in the long run. That co-operative social groups do better without punishment over short periods of time, but worse over longer periods of time. Moreover, there is nothing intuitive about evolutionary models of altruistic cooperation, which, in the true scientific tradition, this study was testing. It would be laughable to claim that critical experiments in the expanding and highly socially relevant field of evolutionary psychology amount to just old practice or intuitive common sense, and therefore, waste of time and money. I quote below the title, abstract and concluding paragraph of the actual short original study published as brevia in Science: BEGIN QUOTE The long-run benefits of punishment. Gächter S, Renner E, Sefton M. Centre for Decision Research and Experimental Economics, University of Nottingham, School of Economics, Sir Clive Granger Building, University Park, Nottingham NG7 2RD, UK. [email protected] Experiments have shown that punishment enhances socially beneficial cooperation but that the costs of punishment outweigh the gains from cooperation. This challenges evolutionary models of altruistic cooperation and punishment, which predict that punishment will be beneficial. We compared 10- and 50-period cooperation experiments. With the longer time horizon, punishment is unambiguously beneficial. END QUOTE BEGIN QUOTE Overall, our experiments show that punishment not only increases cooperation, it also makes groups and individuals better off in the long run because the costs of punishment become negligible and are outweighed by the increased gains from cooperation. These results support group selection models of cooperation and punishment (2, 3), which require that punishment increases not only cooperation but also group average payoffs. END QUOTE Cheers, Santosh --- On Wed, 12/10/08, Gilbert Lawrence <[email protected]> wrote: > > So IMO, contrary to what you and others claim, there it is nothing > wrong with the authors' title. > > The title was well chosen. It was "Threat of > Punishment Works, Study Suggests". The title is not - > "Punishment Works, Study Suggests". So > unfortunately, some did not read the title well enough (not > surprising); and chose to respond to their own version of > this paper and / or title. > > "Spare the rod and spoil the child" (my phrase) > does not mean "Use the rod every time". So too, > threat of punishment during the time of Goa's 17 th > century (under a political framework) is not dissimilar to > the current practice of using prosecution, fines, > imprisonment and capital punishment as a DETERRENCE to > crime; in a democratic or dictatorial regime. Yet > all offenses (then and now) are not punished with the > same punishment. So your statement "Inquisition, where > alleged heretics were mercilessly punished and tortured, > even put to death, by unspeakably cruel methods" is to > use your term "simply codswallop" and hyperbole. > > You rightly point out, "The salutary effect of some > negative consequences for inappropriate behavior makes > intuitive common sense." Yet we needed a scientific > paper in 2008, to confirm the "intuitive common > sense" and that was a point in my post. As a > conservative you should be saying, "How many millions > to fund and (wasted) time did it take for this > study?" Many individuals and institutions today put > away "intuitive common sense". Some coddle > those displaying "inappropriate behavior" backed > with some exquisite explanations. High on this list is the > "Nanny Government" that you so abhor. So I do > not know if you have a beef with this scientific paper (or > me). Likely not! As usual some select to shoot the goanet > messenger, perhaps because the message (or scientific paper) > is above their level.:=)) > > Regards, GL >
