= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
Mycroft65536 comments on Doing your good deed for the day - Less Wrong
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
= 783df68a0f980790206b9ea87794c5b6)
Loading…= b715d02e85f7b3b4ae65ca3d3e450868)
Subscribe to RSS Feed
Powered by Reddit
= f037147d6e6c911a85753b9abdedda8d)
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
Comments (54)
This reminds me of an article I read about taxi drivers who would go home early after making their daily quota instead of staying on the road longer when business was good. Everyone (the drivers, their company, the potential customers) would be better off if they kept working.
Similarly, when people meet their daily quota of good deeds, they stop being good, even though it would be better for everyone (the do-gooder, their society, and the people they counterfactually could have been good to) if they kept doing good.
Is there a general quota-bias at work here? Or is my pattern-finding algorithym misfiring?
Mike Caro, a poker player, writes about this sort of behavior. The idea here is that people psychologically want to do a little above the median each day. They work late to get up to normal money, and quit early when they do well. Whereas optimal behavior is the opposite.