From: Samantha Atkins (samantha@objectent.com)
Date: Mon Mar 18 2002 - 22:52:31 MST
> ---- Original message follows ----
> Research Shows Just How Much People Hate A Winner
>
> New research by economists at the Universities of Warwick and Oxford in the
> UK has provided surprising insight into just how much people hate a winner.
>
> It also shows what lengths human beings are prepared to go to damage a
> winner out of a sense of envy or fairness.
This is one of the reasons I have attempted to point to needed
changes in human psychology and social institutions. As long as
people believe that others having means they have less they will
react in these suboptimal and increasingly dangerous ways. The
same competition for limited resources type fear drives being
against human augmentation and seeking to marginalize or
penalize the more intelligent or capable. The same mechanism
will create great hatred of the first AIs.
I would not say the results show the dark side of human nature.
Saying that implies that we are stuck with this and there is
nothing we can do. I would say that this behavior shows the
logical consequences of certain deeply embedded assumptions. In
a world where scarcity has become sufficiently scarce we need
to learn how to question and overcome those assumptions in
ourselves and in our socio-economic lives. The ability to
create a viable future may well depend on it.
- samantha
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