From: Peter C. McCluskey (pcm@rahul.net)
Date: Mon Aug 12 2002 - 10:16:52 MDT
lcorbin@tsoft.com (Lee Corbin) writes:
>I've never had any problem with the calculation, because
>it went this way for me. When I was young, I was poor
>and very tight. I seldom tipped. The direct cost to
>me mattered (so much for looney theories that I was
>making the world somehow worse for me by being tight).
What looney theories are you refering to? Your behavior seems consistent
with the hypothesis that you get a finite benefit (reputational or warm
feeling) from tipping, but that the benefit isn't big enough that you are
always willing to pay for it.
>So let's say that I finally decide to cross the Atlantic,
>and go to Paris, which I'm sure I'll never re-visit. I
>think that I ought to leave a $20 dollar tip, if I don't
>want them to think I'm a cheapskate. Twenty dollars is
>not trivial to me. It's *very* safe to assume that no
>one who knows me knows that I am in the restaurant. I
It doesn't sound like a safe assumption to me. I don't have enough
data about my friends travel habits to make a good estimate of the
probability that one will be in Paris at any particular time. Also,
determining whether any current friend is present isn't quite what I
want, as there's also the chance that someone there will become my
friend in the future.
>would leave the tip, because I don't want to defect against
>them, and want them to feel appreciated. So far as I know,
>this is genuine altruism. (Having such genes enabled some
>of my ancestors to reproduce better, quite possibly because
>they helped my male ancestors appeal to females.)
Why would such genes have enabled your ancestors to reproduce better than
someone whose genes caused him to tip in order to establish his reputation
for niceness, or to tip in order to create warm feelings inside himself?
I strongly suspect that it is easier for evolution to insure that a
person's self-interest becomes whatever is needed to reap the evolutionary
benefits of niceness than it is to evolve a feeling that it is in his
self-interest to not be nice, and conflicting mechanisms to override
that self-interest.
There is, of course, much less evolutionary pressure for being conscious
of one's self-interest than there is for being conscious of one's niceness,
so I'm rather skeptical of your reports of your introspection.
-- ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Peter McCluskey | Free Jon Johansen! http://www.rahul.net/pcm |
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