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James_Miller comments on Dead Child Currency - Less Wrong Discussion
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Inspired by Yvain's proposal, I have picked a student wearing jewelry in my introductory microeconomics class and asked her in front of the class how much the jewelry costs. After she gives me a dollar amount I say something like "No, I meant in terms of dead African children not dollars." Thanks Yvain. It's a great way of teaching about opportunity costs. Boredom is the true mind-killer.
Expensive jewelry is normally a gift from someone else. So you would be singling someone out for an expense she didn't even choose. (Although I did once hear a college classmate remark, "Dan knows if he ever bought me a diamond, I'd punch him in the face." So it's not as though recievers have no input on the matter...)
As a matter of pedagogy, I think you would be better off telling them how many children had to die so you could have your house, or your car, or your last vacation. What you are doing seems too much to me like singling someone out for embarassment which I would imagine would alienate many students rendering you relatively useless as a teacher.
No -- It's better to show how economics relates to their lives than mine.
No, because they know I could have done the same to anyone.
For better or worse, this is not psychologically reassuring to the student picked for the example. It's a cognitive bias, but that doesn't mean that singling out a student was low-risk. That said, you were there, and thus had a better sense of whether the benefit was worth the risk.
Interesting, does the bias have a specific name?
It probably does, but I tend to call it the "Why Me?" mode of thinking, people looking for an underlying reason for the bad things that happen to them by pure chance.
I'm not sure if the dynamic I was referencing has a specific description. But it is the case that in ordinary society, X can be true, everyone can know X is true, and someone declaring X is true will receive negative feedback. Cognitive-behavioral therapy might call it a part of the avoidance dynamic.
All I'm really trying to say is that college students who lack self-reflection can be giant pains for college professors. And someone upset by being singled out (per your example) has a reasonable justification for the emotional reaction, which the idiot the link discusses definitely does not.
the depressing reality is that the child in the emperor's new clothes would have been lynched.
The specific story described is perfectly plausible, because it involves political pressure rather than social, and (due to the technology level and the like) the emperor's guards can't kill everybody in the crowd, so once everyone starts laughing they're safe. However, as a metaphor for social pressure it certainly is overly optimistic by a long shot.
I would really like to know the name for that dynamic if it has one, because that's very useful.
Do you really do this? Do the students get really defensive about it? How does the conversation tend to go from that point on? I certainly can imagine how vividly it gets their attention.
Yes.
They find it amusing. We then continue to discuss opportunity costs.
Interesting. I could imagine some students reacting very, very negatively to being invited to consider every act of consumption in such ... moral terms.
My own reaction was to wonder 'gosh, I hope he doesn't do only the females and their jewelry...'
I teach at a women's college.
Yeah, I'm surprised that didn't turn into screaming or tears, or at least a dropped class.
How does the person singled out react?
I ask if anyone is wearing gold jewelry.
I don't see the relevance of your response to my question, care to elaborate?
Sorry.
Fine I think. It happens very quickly unlike later in the semester when I insist that a student trade me her jewelry for a glass of water.
To illustrate the fact that the value of goods is determined by their scarcity/abundance relative to demand?
Yes
You are the first person I've seen reacting appropriately to Yvain's "proposal". The default reaction is to take it dead seriously, which is not appropriate at all.
It seemed like a modest proposal to me....