In communism, the State and the Party were the official sources of everything good. Private altruism meant competing with them—an activity futile at best (because the good thing you were doing would have been equally provided by the system if you didn’t interfere), and subversive at worst (because by doing it you were kinda suggesting that it actually wouldn’t). If an activity is good, then “obviously” it is better for it to be provided by the powerful State guided by the wise Party, than by an unreliable petty individual.
But this alone doesn’t explain the punishment by other individuals. (Why waste my resources on punishing someone for wasting their own resources?) The explanation is that if you were doing a subversive activity (an activity that could be potentially interpreted as subversive—and yes, that is a very large range of activities), sooner or later the State would find you and punish you; and afterwards it would start looking for your accomplices. By denouncing the altruists you were signaling your loyalty to the State. The stone you threw at the person trying to improve the world might become your get-out-of-jail card when the secret police started collecting potential enemies of the regime. -- Now the regime is gone, but the habits remained.
You are saying that the participants considered the experiment to be a private pro-social activity and as such, one opposed to the state. By punishing cooperators they were signalling their loyalty to the state.
I am saying that participants considered the experiment to be a state-run enterprise and the pro-social punishment to mean complicity with the (unfair) state. By punishing cooperators they were trying to disable state’s coercive mechanisms.
Those are almost exactly opposite explanations. I wonder if me can think of an experiment that would distinguish between the two?
I guess it would require to somehow trick the subjects into believing that they can form a coalition against the researchers. A kind of anti-Milgram experiment.
I wasn’t thinking about the experiment specifically, when I wrote that.
Rather, the concept of “punishing do-gooders” reminded me of a few people I knew on the… Mečiar side of political spectrum… and how they viewed any pro-social activity, whether spontaneous or a part of some non-governmental organization. Shortly, people who help others (not their relatives) are either idiots or (more likely) a part of some sinister conspiracy against our state (most likely organized by the evil Americans, just like everything bad that happens on this planet). And this is my hypothesis on how that mental monstrosity has evolved; that thinking this way was the safe thing to do during communism.
I wonder if me can think of an experiment that would distinguish between the two?
No idea. Instead of this, I would probably try to make a qualitative research, i.e. instead of setting up an artificial experiment I would let them talk about famous real-life “do-gooders”, ask sympathetically what exactly they hate about them most, and try to find the common topics in different people’s answers.
Oh, I guess I am making the same mistake again, by automatically assuming that the punished people in the experiment were perceived as actual “do-gooders” instead of repressive powers of impersonal state. Uhm, I guess I am not going to provide a better answer. Just saying that—whether it is relevant to the experiment or not—hatred against actual “do-gooders” is a thing that definitely exists in Slovak culture, and I suspect that it is actually a norm in many cultures, with Western culture being the “WEIRD” exception.
I’ve seen you are planning a meetup in Bratislava. Maybe it would be worth discussing the topic. Maybe people would come up with possible motivations we haven’t even thought of.
There will probably be many new people at the meetup, and starting with a political topic would give a completely wrong impression of the Less Wrong culture. So, please let’s keep this for the later part of the meetup. But I am also interested in other people’s explanations.
In communism, the State and the Party were the official sources of everything good. Private altruism meant competing with them—an activity futile at best (because the good thing you were doing would have been equally provided by the system if you didn’t interfere), and subversive at worst (because by doing it you were kinda suggesting that it actually wouldn’t). If an activity is good, then “obviously” it is better for it to be provided by the powerful State guided by the wise Party, than by an unreliable petty individual.
But this alone doesn’t explain the punishment by other individuals. (Why waste my resources on punishing someone for wasting their own resources?) The explanation is that if you were doing a subversive activity (an activity that could be potentially interpreted as subversive—and yes, that is a very large range of activities), sooner or later the State would find you and punish you; and afterwards it would start looking for your accomplices. By denouncing the altruists you were signaling your loyalty to the State. The stone you threw at the person trying to improve the world might become your get-out-of-jail card when the secret police started collecting potential enemies of the regime. -- Now the regime is gone, but the habits remained.
So we have two different explanations here:
You are saying that the participants considered the experiment to be a private pro-social activity and as such, one opposed to the state. By punishing cooperators they were signalling their loyalty to the state.
I am saying that participants considered the experiment to be a state-run enterprise and the pro-social punishment to mean complicity with the (unfair) state. By punishing cooperators they were trying to disable state’s coercive mechanisms.
Those are almost exactly opposite explanations. I wonder if me can think of an experiment that would distinguish between the two?
I guess it would require to somehow trick the subjects into believing that they can form a coalition against the researchers. A kind of anti-Milgram experiment.
I wasn’t thinking about the experiment specifically, when I wrote that.
Rather, the concept of “punishing do-gooders” reminded me of a few people I knew on the… Mečiar side of political spectrum… and how they viewed any pro-social activity, whether spontaneous or a part of some non-governmental organization. Shortly, people who help others (not their relatives) are either idiots or (more likely) a part of some sinister conspiracy against our state (most likely organized by the evil Americans, just like everything bad that happens on this planet). And this is my hypothesis on how that mental monstrosity has evolved; that thinking this way was the safe thing to do during communism.
No idea. Instead of this, I would probably try to make a qualitative research, i.e. instead of setting up an artificial experiment I would let them talk about famous real-life “do-gooders”, ask sympathetically what exactly they hate about them most, and try to find the common topics in different people’s answers.
Oh, I guess I am making the same mistake again, by automatically assuming that the punished people in the experiment were perceived as actual “do-gooders” instead of repressive powers of impersonal state. Uhm, I guess I am not going to provide a better answer. Just saying that—whether it is relevant to the experiment or not—hatred against actual “do-gooders” is a thing that definitely exists in Slovak culture, and I suspect that it is actually a norm in many cultures, with Western culture being the “WEIRD” exception.
I’ve seen you are planning a meetup in Bratislava. Maybe it would be worth discussing the topic. Maybe people would come up with possible motivations we haven’t even thought of.
Looking forward to meeting you the next week!
There will probably be many new people at the meetup, and starting with a political topic would give a completely wrong impression of the Less Wrong culture. So, please let’s keep this for the later part of the meetup. But I am also interested in other people’s explanations.
I am based in Zurich, won’t be able to come next week :/ But you are right, this topic could get toxic if discussed among strangers.