- Where's the gold? The Royal Canadian Mint is missing some. And, seigniorage only earned the Canadians about $75 million last year. I kinda like the "one brick at a time" scenario, implausible though it may be.
- Geoffrey Miller thinks we spend too much money on things that signal our status rather than on things that bring us happiness. So John Tierney surveys his readers: what have you spent most money on, and what brings you most happiness? Surprise: strong correspondence between the two. And what shows up as #2 on the "underrated" list (ie low spending, high happiness)? Alcohol. What shows up as #4 on the "overrated" list (ie high spending, low happiness)? Taxes.
- The Impunity Game. Take the ultimatum game, remove the penalty to the proposer for rejection, and check results. Offers still are rejected. But is this really evidence against negative reciprocity? I'm more inclined to think Pleistocene rules of thumb still fire regardless of whether there's an apparent disconnect between offer rejection and punishment of offerer: the costs of changing the heuristic outweigh the potential gains.
Tuesday, 30 June 2009
Afternoon roundup
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Has anyone studied the relationship between signaling status and happiness? That is, I would presume that signaling status has its own utility and the two are not so easily separated.
ReplyDeleteAlthough my daughter, Ava, is a smart 6 year old, she didn't actually write that last comment. It was actually me, a first time visitor here, but likely to return often.
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure of any direct studies, but you could compare the list of "signalling heavy" activities discussed here -- follow link to Robin Hanson's post, then check the list of activities by net affect Hanson puts together here. So a kid's education both generates happiness directly and is high in positionality; "washing, dressing, etc" is also of moderate affect and of high positionality. Not sure if there are any studies trying to go for a direct link between signalling activities and happiness; not sure how you'd disentangle the activity itself from the results of the activity. In other words, if status-signalling tends to give you better outcomes, do the outcomes or the signalling bring happiness. Would be interested in seeing any results, but I don't know of any offhand.
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