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Experimenting with Altruism
There are a couple of popular beliefs concerning altruism, both with extensive history and cultural bias. Some people think it is a core aspect to a good life, and selfishness is abhorrent, in my opinion this is an incoherent statement, and reflects the point of view of many others, that true altruism does not exist and what many call altruism is still motivated by self-interest. Whether the interest is in receiving a smile, good will, heaven, self-satisfaction of the ego etc.
But all of that semantics rubbish aside. Experiment, deduce hypothesis based on results and expected results, make note of biases and context, reflect, improve hypothesis.
Walk down a street, or into a block of flats, and place an envelope into a/many letterboxes containing money. Then walk away. If you never, ever, thought about this action ever again it could probably be called altruism. A lot of people would call it fucking stupid. I think it would create many interesting responses. A few points to consider, or tweak, if anyone actually wants to run this. May have already been run before.
Gathering results could be as simple as asking them a week later to discuss the experience. More complicated by planting someone else in their home/workplace aware of what was going on to monitor the parties of interest. Perhaps do it to a friend and see them frequently in the next week to see if they mention it. Have the accuser record their observations, when asking for the money back and even take a quantitative study on how many people gave up the money straight away, after a brief exchange or never, confronted with person x versus person y.
Scientific experimentation on humans has some pretty stringent ethical controls, so there'd be a limit to how far you go - a $10,000 drop that was followed up a day later by a pock-marked thug getting uppity might be a little too emotionally disturbing for some people. Similarly if everyone in a 5 mile radius of some point found $100 in their letter boxes the same morning and started discussing it the results may be very hard to analyse. But then would people begin ransacking other's letterboxes?
What do you think? I think it would be really interesting to see what happened. (Who wants to give me a few thousand dollars so I can try it out? :) )
But all of that semantics rubbish aside. Experiment, deduce hypothesis based on results and expected results, make note of biases and context, reflect, improve hypothesis.
Walk down a street, or into a block of flats, and place an envelope into a/many letterboxes containing money. Then walk away. If you never, ever, thought about this action ever again it could probably be called altruism. A lot of people would call it fucking stupid. I think it would create many interesting responses. A few points to consider, or tweak, if anyone actually wants to run this. May have already been run before.
- Depending on the amount of money, the people receiving it may feel; thankful, confused, scared, anxious, happy, angry...
- Whether or not the envelope had the address of where it was posted, anything written on it or a note inside, "thanks for last night", "whoever finds this can keep it", "go to the cafe around the corner and tell the man you want an earl gray tea with an extra shot of espresso and a cardboard cupcake and the money is yours"
- Send someone to their door an hour, day, week, after the envelope has been collected asking about the money; suspiciously or openly, make the someone a person they know/don't, wearing a suit, carrying a badge or looking like a thug.
Gathering results could be as simple as asking them a week later to discuss the experience. More complicated by planting someone else in their home/workplace aware of what was going on to monitor the parties of interest. Perhaps do it to a friend and see them frequently in the next week to see if they mention it. Have the accuser record their observations, when asking for the money back and even take a quantitative study on how many people gave up the money straight away, after a brief exchange or never, confronted with person x versus person y.
Scientific experimentation on humans has some pretty stringent ethical controls, so there'd be a limit to how far you go - a $10,000 drop that was followed up a day later by a pock-marked thug getting uppity might be a little too emotionally disturbing for some people. Similarly if everyone in a 5 mile radius of some point found $100 in their letter boxes the same morning and started discussing it the results may be very hard to analyse. But then would people begin ransacking other's letterboxes?
What do you think? I think it would be really interesting to see what happened. (Who wants to give me a few thousand dollars so I can try it out? :) )
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