Re: children and cooperation
Another observation that may or may not be related to the children are much less cooperative tha adults-thesis is this: children are some of the best soldiers in terms of ruthlesness and willingless to kill (something it can be very hard getting well trained adult soldiers to do - even in it's him or me situations). I must admit that I am basing my statement on children soldiers primarily on anecdotal evidence (the pol pot regime, wars in africa, etc) - maybe someone on the list knows otherwise Anyway. If true, thi´s could point to the explanation that children are simply less socialised / civilised than adults. - jacob braestrup Why are adults so much more cooperative than children? A contrarian might dispute this, but I'd say it's pretty obvious. Kids resort to violence very quickly, adults very slowly. Kids go out of their way to hurt other kids' feelings; adults try to avoid saying anything that might get back to someone they don't like. Kids steal stuff from other kids much more readily than adults would. Etc. A few explanations: 1. Adults have a much higher absolute IQ than kids (i.e., kids' IQs are age-adjusted, adults' IQs are not), so they are smart enough to recognize the indirect effects of their behavior. 2. Adults have lower time preference than kids. 3. Adults have had more time to learn about indirect consequences. 4. Adults are just less spiteful. 5. Adults face harsher punishment. 6. The child and adult worlds are in two very different coordination equilibria. Notice how drastically the 12th-grade high school culture differs from the 1st-year college culture. Other ideas? -- Prof. Bryan Caplan Department of Economics George Mason University http://www.bcaplan.com [EMAIL PROTECTED] He wrote a letter, but did not post it because he felt that no one would have understood what he wanted to say, and besides it was not necessary that anyone but himself should understand it. Leo Tolstoy, *The Cossacks* -- NeoMail - Webmail
Re: children and cooperation
Bryan: Couldn't you test your first possibility -- 1. Adults have a much higher absolute IQ than kids (i.e., kids' IQs are age-adjusted, adults' IQs are not), so they are smart enough to recognize the indirect effects of their behavior. -- by checking whether adults with lower IQs exhibit less cooperative behavior? Is there any evidence of this? Yours, Asa -- These are the times that try men's souls. -- Thomas Paine, The Crisis
Re: children and cooperation
Bryan Caplan wrote: I'm sure that all of what you says applies to some degree (lower IQ, less punishment, etc), but it really comes down to biological development. Child brains simply aren't developed enough to (a) remember past behavior correctly, (b) connect behavior to punishment, (c) calculate risks. But children in fact do all of the above. They do them to a lesser and worse extent, but that is a different matter. I agree with Bryan; this seems to be an adaptation to the environment of children, not a mistake due to ignorance. Let me propose a signaling story. The young try more to signal to each other that they would be good allies and mates, while the old are already matched more and need to get along. The young need to show that they know how to be and are capable of being cooperative, but they also need to show that they are tough, will defend their allies, etc. Robin Hanson [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://hanson.gmu.edu Asst. Prof. Economics, George Mason University MSN 1D3, Carow Hall, Fairfax VA 22030- 703-993-2326 FAX: 703-993-2323
RE: children and cooperation
From my experience with 6 children in my house (one adopted at 8 years old, two nieces than came in as teenagers) and having done foster care with my wife who is a clinical social worker...your number 3 and 5 are on the right track but I would highlight on the indirect consequences for children...adults can tend to be less consistent with children than with adults. The consequences of the market (whether that be obtaining toys for good behavior or getting to go to the pool for keeping the room clean, etc) is often not consistently applied. The child learns he/she can be a free rider in these markets! They don't need to cooperate! This could be tested and I think you will find in the social work area that it has been tested. Consistency in parenting is critical. Treating the child fair and applying the same rules across the board is critical. This is related to number 5...I don't think it is harsher all the time, but again more consistent. Debacker wrote...which I don't agree with... They may be included as explanations 1 and 3 on Bryan's list, but maybe: A) Children aren't aware of the benefits of trade (cooperation). Most things they have are provided from their parent(s), and so they don't see much benefit to cooperating with others. B) Children know that trade gets them something, but their gain from trade are not are great as adults. Children might not have much to offer each other. Cooperating with another kid might get you another friend, but cooperating with another adult might get you a job or other tangible benefit. This could help explain why kids might disrespect other kids, but might be polite in front of adults (in addition to being taught manners). On A...in my house children understand the benefits of trade and they understand cooperation runs two ways. They do not get what they want if they don't cooperate. And we (my wife and I) will out play the child no matter how long it takes since we do understand the long term effects of children not thinking they have to cooperate. My children are by no means perfect, but they are better than many of the adults I run into. On B...children I think get more from trade than adults since they are without means to support themselves. This is especially true in younger kids...my teenagers have more resources. It is what value the adult puts on the trade. Is the adult willing to give up near term items to make a point? Too often I find the adult wants something just as bad and thus when the child doesn't cooperate they just give in. Bad move! Governance in the firm starts to break down and pretty soon the costs to gain cooperation goes way up. Every transaction gets costly since the rules are not consistent and penalties are not really known. More supervision is required. My house (due mainly to my wife...the drill sergeant in this firm) runs like a well oiled machine due mainly to the high cost of non-cooperation and the consecutiveness of penalties to the social group. Information on the losses due to non-cooperation are well know in the Driessnack Firm! Yes they are free to participate or not..but oh how great are the benefits for all when trade has low transaction costs. jdd John D Driessnack Professor, Defense Acquisition University NE-Capital Campus, Faculty Department Program Management and Leadership 703-805-4655 (DSN-655) [EMAIL PROTECTED] FAX 703-805-9670 Why are adults so much more cooperative than children? A contrarian might dispute this, but I'd say it's pretty obvious. Kids resort to violence very quickly, adults very slowly. Kids go out of their way to hurt other kids' feelings; adults try to avoid saying anything that might get back to someone they don't like. Kids steal stuff from other kids much more readily than adults would. Etc. A few explanations: 1. Adults have a much higher absolute IQ than kids (i.e., kids' IQs are age-adjusted, adults' IQs are not), so they are smart enough to recognize the indirect effects of their behavior. 2. Adults have lower time preference than kids. 3. Adults have had more time to learn about indirect consequences. 4. Adults are just less spiteful. 5. Adults face harsher punishment. 6. The child and adult worlds are in two very different coordination equilibria. Notice how drastically the 12th-grade high school culture differs from the 1st-year college culture. Other ideas? -- Prof. Bryan Caplan Department of Economics George Mason University http://www.bcaplan.com [EMAIL PROTECTED] He wrote a letter, but did not post it because he felt that no one would have understood what he wanted to say, and besides it was not necessary that anyone but himself should understand it. Leo Tolstoy, *The Cossacks*
Re: children and cooperation
--- Robin Hanson [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Let me propose a signaling story. The young try more to signal to each other that they would be good allies and mates, while the old are already matched more and need to get along. The young need to show that they know how to be and are capable of being cooperative, but they also need to show that they are tough, will defend their allies, etc. Some adults in tough neighborhoods place much value in respect, and the slightest offense that seems disrespectful is countered with immediate hostility: verbal threats or violence. Many adults remain unsophisticated in that they do not filter emotions and actions but blurt out the feelings that pop into their minds and often react without first poindering the outcome. Children are this way. They are therefore deliberately taught how to behave in polite society: that one does not hit others or call them bad names. Those so trained learn to be cool in reaction. The natural human capacity for sympathy with others is a trait that needs to be developed in order to become part of one's character. Children learn to achieve greater self-control partly from experience but in large part also by being deliberately taught by adults. This pattern then becomes a habit and second nature. So it seems to me that cooperation is something that, in part, needs to be taught as manners. It is a matter of becoming more conscious and sophisticated in human relations. It does not always happen just from mere experience in interaction, since some never learn cooperation. Fred Foldvary = [EMAIL PROTECTED] __ Do You Yahoo!? Sign up for SBC Yahoo! Dial - First Month Free http://sbc.yahoo.com
Re: children and cooperation
--- Robin Hanson [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Let me propose a signaling story Perhaps it is an evolutionary artifact: dominance hierarchies are established when young, and children are just doing what evolution has hard wired in their brains. So rather than asking why children don't cooperate as well as adults, we should be asking why do adults cooperate as well as they do? Possible answers: It takes that long to overcome evolutionary hard wiring (consider how violently adults of other species compete), or any of the economic models for cooperation that one favors, or something else clever that I can't think of. Considering that if you look a dominant macaque in the eyes he'll jump on your head and rip your face off, perhaps child social behavior better represents the null hypothesis (so to speak) and adult cooperation represents the break from nature that needs to be explained. Best regards, jsh = ...for no one admits that he incurs an obligation to another merely because that other has done him no wrong. -Machiavelli, Discourses on Livy, Discourse 16. __ Do You Yahoo!? Sign up for SBC Yahoo! Dial - First Month Free http://sbc.yahoo.com
Autism, brain damage and cooperation
In any case, all of the deficiencies in children's brains you point out more or less sound like extensions of their low absolute IQ. Not really. One listed deficiency is memory. That might be correlated with IQ, but it's certainly not the same as IQ. Analogy: a computer with a small storage capacity might have sophisticated software (analogy with low memory/high IQ). Real world example: Autistic children. Their behavior is described as misbehavior because they simply can't learn how to interact with adults. However, they can perform very complex tasks such as math problems and some autistic people have been able to score well on IQ tests. Abother real world example: In the book Descarte's Error, a well adjusted rail road worker in the 19th century is injured on the job. He recieves a severe trauma to the head which results in localized brain damage. According to the author, the part of the brain which was damaged many scientists believe is responsible for producing emotions, which may conflict with detached rationalist thinking. Once the railroad worker recovered from his injury, he abandoned his job, started to consort with criminals and lived the rest of his life as a con-artist. As far as people could tell, he retained his cognitive abilities but his personality completely changed. My conclusion from such facts is that the ability to conduct normal social interactions is a combination of learning, IQ, percpetion, memory and other mental abilities. You really can't bundle them all together. Child misbehavior is not reducible to IQ, but might be a result of one or more of a deficiency in one or more of these mental abilities. A simple economic model really seems to leave a lot out. Fabio
Re: children and cooperation
Fred Foldvary wrote: Let me propose a signaling story. The young try more to signal to each other that they would be good allies and mates, while the old are already matched more and need to get along. ... Some adults in tough neighborhoods place much value in respect, ... Many adults remain unsophisticated in that they do not filter emotions ... So it seems to me that cooperation is something that, in part, needs to be taught as manners. John Hull wrote: Perhaps it is an evolutionary artifact: dominance hierarchies are established when young, and children are just doing what evolution has hard wired in their brains. ... Considering that if you look a dominant macaque in the eyes he'll jump on your head and rip your face off, perhaps child social behavior better represents the null hypothesis (so to speak) and adult cooperation represents the break from nature that needs to be explained. The theory that modern adults must learn to be more cooperative because the modern environment differs from the environment we evolved in could be tested by comparing child vs. adult cooperativeness in hunter-gather tribes today. If children are less cooperative even there, it would look more like their behavior is more of an adaption for children to act less cooperatively than adults. Robin Hanson [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://hanson.gmu.edu Asst. Prof. Economics, George Mason University MSN 1D3, Carow Hall, Fairfax VA 22030- 703-993-2326 FAX: 703-993-2323
Re: Autism, brain damage and cooperation
fabio guillermo rojas [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: ...a well adjusted rail road worker in the 19th century is injured on the job. It was Phineas Gage, he had a tamping iron blown throught his head. The Malcolm Macmillan School of Psychology has a homepage dedicated to him at www.deakin.edu.au/hbs/GAGEPAGE . It is fairly thorough. -jsh __ Do You Yahoo!? Sign up for SBC Yahoo! Dial - First Month Free http://sbc.yahoo.com
Re: Autism, brain damage and cooperation
Come on, Fab - pointing out examples of brain differences explaining behavioral differences is hardly convincing evidence that brain differences are the right explanation in this case. My point is that behavior is more than cost-benefit calculations with IQ as an intervening variable. My purpose in citing this kind of evidence is that behavior depends on cognitive faculties which are dependent on well developed parts of the brain. Damasio's book shows some evidence that brain differences *might* lead to behavioral differences. I'm not an anatomist, but I wouldn't be surprised if children's brains simply didn't have all the parts developed for correctly learning social behavior. Yes, there are cognitive abilities with low g-loading, and memory is one. But now that I think about it, I shouldn't have let you get away with citing memory differences in the first place. Children in fact seem to have much *better* memorization ability than adults in numerous respects. Prof. Bryan Caplan It's well documented that long term memory is nil for children less than five years of age (doctors call it pediatric amnesia) and is very spotty until about 12. Maybe children can remember strings of numbers well in labs, but they can't remember things from a year or two ago terribly well. And it's this long term learning that's needed for socialization. Social behavior draws from a large pool of past experience, not the short term memory tested in laboratories. (Do a real world test: ask a 7 year old about how they misbehaved two years ago. If you get anything remotely accurate, I'll buy you lunch.) Also, while were at it, I think you overinterpret the G-loading thing. A G-loading is essentially a factor analysis of responses to a standardized test. Statistically, you estimate a linear model. G - response to Question 1 G - ... Question 2, etc. G is often called a latent factor that is *unmeasured*. See any non-economics statistics book (economists rarely use this and it's not in Golderger, Amimiya or Greene). Then you can test alternative models like G1 - Q1, Q2, Q4 G2 - Q3, Q5, etc. and do model comparisons. IIUC, the psychometric literature has found that the first model has a really good fit while other models have poorer fits for tests of abstract thinking. What is this G? It's a *construct* from the test, not a direct measurement of anything. Which means to assert one single process called IQ is really strecthing it. What you can safely say is that G is the dimension along which test responses vary. This dimension can be the consequence of a bunch of other things and you can collect data to test hypotheses about these more complex models: F1, F2 -- G -- Q1, Q2, Q3. My whole point is that obsessing over G might lead one to ignore the stuff that leads to G. In a lot of these IQ/behavior debates people seems to take extreme positions that IQ is this all powerful explanatory device, or that it is meaningless when it's neither. I really think that some people are more intelligent than others and that this matters alot, but explaining everything in terms of G seems a bit dicey to me. Fabio
Re: Autism, brain damage and cooperation
--- fabio guillermo rojas [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: It's well documented that long term memory is nil for children less than five years of age (doctors call it pediatric amnesia) The Hippacampus isn't fully developed, and it's the organ of the brain responsible for transferring short term memories into long term memories. It is well documented that adults with hippacampal lesions cannot put memories into long term storage. The brain goes through alot of development and fine tuning up through adolescense, and the formative years are when all the major pathways are solidified. Additionally, it's also the time when all the unused neurons die; the only time more neurons die than in early childhood is at death. Still, it nevertheless seems odd to address the question to children's non-cooperation--Mr. Hanson's post notwithstanding. Cooperation as we think of it here in the west is not really a species wide phenomenon; i.e. it's probably not instictive. As I understand it, about 40% of adult male Yanomami have killed another person and about 25% of adult males will die from some form of violence. That's hardly the sort of peacful social cooperation that this string seems to assume. In some cultures it is considered kosher to hide in wait and actually hunt people. While I WOULD be interested to see how child cooperative behavior compares between modern societies and hunter-gatherer societies, as Mr. Hanson suggested, it still seems a bit unreasonable to suggest that adult cooperative behavior as we understand it is the standard against which the strangeness of child behavior should be guaged. Rather one should ask: 1. Is child social behavior more stereotyped across the species? And if so 2. Why does adult behavior develop the way it does in so many different forms? Or possibly 3. If child social behavior not stereotyped across the species, what accounts for the differences. Thanks for your time, jsh __ Do You Yahoo!? Sign up for SBC Yahoo! Dial - First Month Free http://sbc.yahoo.com
Why do people pick stocks?
If it is common knowledge that picking stocks is no better than using an index, then why is stock picking so popular? Ie, why do people accept lower returns just for the privilige of picking the stocks themselves? Fabio
Re: children and cooperation
Cooperating = complying with social norms. Social norms are learned behavior. Many social norms are quite at odds with evolutionary psychology. Adults have learned more than children; and children must learn before they are able to comply with social norms. You may find it diffucult to cooperate with adults who were exposed to greatly differing social norms; as may hapless sailors have discovered. Social dysfunctions aside, I really don't see it being any more complicated that this. Adam
Re: Why do people pick stocks?
What makes you think that picking stocks is no better? What is an Index, but a portfolio of stocks someone else has picked? Your entire base asssumptions are flawed. People may choose to pick stocks instead of pre-defined (indexes) or third-party defined (mutual funds) portfolios because: a) they trust their judgement better than others (don't you?) b) they can choose their risk level (and correlating return potential) c) they may be sophisticated investors (expert in certain industries) d) they may choose to invest in companies they trust, share vision with, or share moral values. e) they may wish to conduct their own due diligence on their investments (read the prospectus, SEC filings, etc). Adam - Original Message - From: fabio guillermo rojas [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Friday, July 12, 2002 6:56 PM Subject: Why do people pick stocks?[via LSMTP - see www.lsoft.com] If it is common knowledge that picking stocks is no better than using an index, then why is stock picking so popular? Ie, why do people accept lower returns just for the privilige of picking the stocks themselves? Fabio
options for employees
Can someone explain exactly how employee stock options operate? 1a) In the market, the owner of a stock can write a call option on stock he owns, meaning a buyer pays the stock owner a market price for the option. The option buyer is paying for the rights to the future gains from the stocks, the stock owner giving up rights to the gains. 1b) When a firm pays an employee with stock options, A) does the firm in effect write options on stocks held by the firm, or B) does the firm create options by fiat, based on no shares? If B, the employee option owner gains at whose expense? 1c) The true cost to the firm seems to be the market price of the option. Is this what accountants and reformers say would be charged to expenses? 2) When the option is exercised, the option owner pays the exercise price, which I presume is usually very low. a) Does the firm typically issue new shares of stock for this sale, or b) does the firm sell shares that it buys or previously owned? If the firm issues new shares or buys shares, it seems this is a second expense, since issued shares dilute the value of other shares, and bought shares are an explicit cost. Are newly issued shares for options exercised recorded as an expense to the shareholders? Fred Foldvary = [EMAIL PROTECTED] __ Do You Yahoo!? Yahoo! Autos - Get free new car price quotes http://autos.yahoo.com
Re: Why do people pick stocks?
If it is common knowledge that picking stocks is no better than using an index, then why is stock picking so popular? Fabio 1) It is not common knowledge to many investors. 2) Some stock pickers indeed do better than average. 3) Investors tend to be overconfident as to their abilities. This is generally found by behavioral economists. Ie, why do people accept lower returns just for the privilige of picking the stocks themselves? Besides being overconfident, they enjoy the picking and owning, and some like the thrill of risk. Fred Foldvary = [EMAIL PROTECTED] __ Do You Yahoo!? Yahoo! Autos - Get free new car price quotes http://autos.yahoo.com
