| ▲ | alexpotato 2 days ago |
| Scott Adams [0], who recently passed away, had a great line on human behavior (paraphrased): Whenever people are unsupervised and there is a chance for fraud or bad behavior and, due to the lack of supervision, they believe they won't be caught, you should ALWAYS assume that people will behave badly. For another example, the Google case where it was exposed how many nefarious activities they were up to around auction bidding. 0 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scott_Adams |
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| ▲ | jrflowers 2 days ago | parent | next [-] |
| Scott Adams had some deeply bizarre opinions about human behavior/relationships. https://www.reddit.com/r/cursedcomments/comments/wqc1an/curs... |
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| ▲ | N_Lens 2 days ago | parent [-] | | It's funny that you'll find rich commenters aligned with opinions like Adams' on HN. I guess either wealth makes you paranoid, or the other way around perhaps. | | |
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| ▲ | ninjagoo 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| > Whenever people are unsupervised and there is a chance for fraud or bad behavior and, due to the lack of supervision, they believe they won't be caught, you should ALWAYS assume that people will behave badly. Do you have any evidence to support your claim? On the contrary, a 2019 analysis [1] combined 400+ experimental treatments, 44,000+ participants, and 47 countries. Participants surrendered roughly three-quarters of the money they could have obtained through maximal lying. In repeated experiments, fewer than one participant in twenty consistently claimed the payoff-maximizing outcome. Increasing the potential reward from a few cents to approximately $50 did not cause people to approach maximal dishonesty. In a field experiment [2] with 17,000+ apparently lost wallets in 355 cities across 40 countries, people were generally more likely to report wallets containing money than wallets containing no money. The effect appeared in 38 of the 40 countries. The researchers’ follow-up evidence pointed to concern for the owner and an increased aversion to thinking of oneself as a thief when more money was involved. [1] https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.3982/ECTA14673 [2] https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aax5034 |
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| ▲ | brynnbee a day ago | parent | next [-] | | I don't think these studies meaningfully replicate the motivation of real life situations where there is either a lot of money on the line or emotional investment. Anyone can be honest when it's $20 on the line | |
| ▲ | Grimeton a day ago | parent | prev [-] | | This is so typical. It is known for millennia that people tend to steal and enrich themselves whenever an opportunity arises. Common sense so to say. And you show up with a study. Sorry but I had to point this out. It's not all people, but always people. | | |
| ▲ | ninjagoo a day ago | parent [-] | | > It is known for millennia that people tend to steal and enrich themselves whenever an opportunity arises. Common sense so to say. People also believed in witches, ghosts and other paranormal and magic phenomena for millennia. Didn't make it reality. > It's not all people, but always people. Approx. 1% of the general population are estimated to be psychopaths, with broader estimates going up to 4.5% depending on which diagnostic tool is used. [1] Rates are significantly higher in specific environments - for example, 15% to 25% in prison inmates. [2] Does it make sense to tar the 95% for the sins of the 5%? > Does it make sense to tar the 95% for the sins of the 5%? Only if one exhibits psychopathic tendencies :-) There's also the bagel study [3] that shows, among many other interesting stats, that folks up the corporate ladder tend to steal more than those on the lower rungs. Some of the other stats in that study support the notion that people are generally honest, in line with the formal experiments. Since most society is organized hierarchically, negative behavior at the top can propagate throughout the org. Google's 'Don't be evil' motto comes to mind. [1] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8374040/ [2] https://www.apa.org/monitor/2022/03/ce-corner-psychopathy [3] https://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/06/magazine/what-the-bagel-m... |
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| ▲ | PunchyHamster 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| "Trust but verify" and "Locks keep honest people honest" Some people might be absolutely moral, but most just don't want to experience consequences |
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| ▲ | sandworm101 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| >> "Whenever people are unsupervised and there is a chance for fraud or bad behavior.." Idle hands are the devil's workshop. / The devil makes work for idle hands. When the leave is too long, the soldier goes wrong. |
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| ▲ | aitchnyu 2 days ago | parent [-] | | There was a story about some gunmen who got into a swordfighting gang war while off duty. By Alexander Dumas. |
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| ▲ | energy123 2 days ago | parent | prev [-] |
| In one of my college courses, 100% of my fellow students cheated, including me. This is when I learned that virtually every person is deep down a liar and a cheat if they think they won't face consequences and it's in their benefit, and any public facade of virtue that people put up, common in this industry, is a manipulation strategy that is just more cheating, although of a different kind. |
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| ▲ | cataphract 2 days ago | parent | next [-] | | I don't think that's the lesson. What I take from that is that people adapt to norms and incentives they have. Despite all the talk about "academic integrity" and whatnot, very rarely were there punishments for people who cheated. For every professor that wrote FRAUD in the grade sheet and escalated to the Disciplinary Committee, there were 100 that turned a blind eye or at most confiscated a paper being passed around when the exam was being administered. This hypocrisy irked me much more than the cheating itself, in which I didn't partake mostly because 1) I thought it was kind of beneath me, something only mediocre students did (which I came to realize was not really true) and 2) I didn't care that much about the grade. | | | |
| ▲ | zippyman55 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | At my federal job, there was a student intern position that was available. The only requirement was a 3.0 gpa or better. Unofficial transcripts were submitted each semester. One day they asked for official ones and eight people immediately quit. | | |
| ▲ | rootsudo 2 days ago | parent [-] | | Tbf it costs $5-20 to submit official transcripts. Paying an amount to qualify for an interview for a position may be too much. I understand what you’re inferring, just official transcripts aren’t free or easy enough. | | |
| ▲ | zippyman55 2 days ago | parent [-] | | I guess they were printing their grades and then fat fingering them to inflate their grades.
I get your point, but it drives home how people can cheat if there’s a way.
Probably the employer could fork over the fees to verify the grades would rectify most of this. |
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| ▲ | ninjagoo 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | > This is when I learned that virtually every person is deep down a liar and a cheat if they think they won't face consequences I would argue that the opposite is true, that people are more likely to lie or cheat to avoid consequences, especially significant consequences. This is why, the aviation industry that has made commercial flying safer than other transportation modes, grants immunity for reporting incidents [1]. [1] https://asrs.arc.nasa.gov/overview/immunity.html | |
| ▲ | jancsika 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | I take this comment as a cautionary tale about just how big a problem the p-hacking issue can be in the social sciences. | |
| ▲ | robomc 2 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | i don't even understand the benefit of cheating on a college course, unless you think you're going to fail | | |
| ▲ | Groxx 2 days ago | parent | next [-] | | Yea, same. I had many opportunities in college (who doesn't?), never did. It's not hard, you just need to actually try to learn. If I was in a course where it was so poorly taught that cheating was the only feasible way to pass, I'd go talk to the dean. Things like that don't get fixed unless people complain, because how would anyone making decisions know? It sometimes works, there's no reason to leave stuff like that for the next group of people to suffer through too. E.g. I'm extremely proud of my wife for this kind of thing, as she managed to get nearly a whole class to complain about an awful pseudo-science-pushing teacher, and got them kicked out in fairly short order. | | |
| ▲ | iamflimflam1 2 days ago | parent [-] | | Most low level petty fraud or criminal enterprises appear to involve ludicrous amounts of work. You’d be better off actually doing a normal job. Yet some people prefer the former. |
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| ▲ | energy123 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | More job opportunities due to better grades. It's not mutually exclusive with learning the material, it's just an additional bump. | |
| ▲ | crummy 2 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | I remember taking general ed classes in college that I didn't want to do but had to to get required credits. |
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