The example with the unrepentant drunk reminds me of this joke:
A hunter goes into the woods to hunt a bear. He carries his trusty
22-gauge rifle with him. After a while, he spots a very large bear,
takes aim, and fires. When the smoke clears, the bear is gone.
A moment later the bear taps the hunter on the shoulder and says, "No
one shoots at me and gets away with it. You have two choices: I can
rip your throat out and eat you, or you can drop your trousers, bend
over, and I'll do you in the ass."
A lot of our irrationality seems to be rationality tuned for small sample sizes. When you live in a tribe of <200 people, any given event or opinion has a lot of weight. We evolved to do science on a small scale. How do we get around Dunbar's limit?
The example with the unrepentant drunk reminds me of this joke:
A hunter goes into the woods to hunt a bear. He carries his trusty 22-gauge rifle with him. After a while, he spots a very large bear, takes aim, and fires. When the smoke clears, the bear is gone.
A moment later the bear taps the hunter on the shoulder and says, "No one shoots at me and gets away with it. You have two choices: I can rip your throat out and eat you, or you can drop your trousers, bend over, and I'll do you in the ass."
The hunter decides that any... (read more)