[HN Gopher] Civic honesty around the globe (2019)
___________________________________________________________________
Civic honesty around the globe (2019)
Author : denysonique
Score : 115 points
Date : 2023-07-07 13:53 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.science.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.science.org)
| digdugdirk wrote:
| Looks like they picked the 5 largest cities in each country
| listed. I'd be far more interested to see the disparity between
| large cities, smaller cities, and smaller towns/villages for each
| country.
| dleslie wrote:
| Indeed, for instance: Canada is a rather diverse country and I
| think it would be safe to expect a different experience in
| Montreal, Toronto, Winnipeg, Calgary and Vancouver; but an
| enormous difference between those and the rural areas of each
| province.
| bshipp wrote:
| This rural/urban divide is probably a dynamic worth exploring
| regardless of region. The relative anonymity of large urban
| areas provides very different incentives toward maintaining
| personal integrity than in a small rural town where
| reputation damage can result in real and permanent losses.
|
| I'm not arguing rural is better than urban; on the contrary,
| damage caused by idle gossip can permanently ostracize a
| person for reasons beyond their control and result in long
| term economic and social damage. The dynamic of smaller
| groups vs large anonymous groups is one worth exploring, in
| my humble opinion.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| Look into the Supplementary Information linked at the end,
| which addresses some of your concerns and enables you to design
| your own experiment.
| dirtyid wrote:
| There's note editors reply to comments at bottom of study on why
| PRC was included authors knowing wechat was dominant acknowledge
| creating 1000s of phone numbers and social accounts not
| realistitic. ALso this claim:
|
| > cross-country comparisons were not the focus of our paper. We
| largely focused on how lost wallet reporting rates were affected
| by the amount of money inside the wallet
|
| Despite baity title "Civic honesty around the globe" - which they
| also acknowledge was baity. And then imply Chinese are basically
| dishonest due to some questionable correlations on shadow
| banking, test cheating, unpaid UN diplomat parking tickets,
| corruption index lol. And a bunch of rationalization why Japanese
| data was excluded despite having even lower return rates due to
| reasons that applied to PRC. It's long read explanation that's
| well rationalized sometimes and raise eyebrows others depending
| on your biases. This was big news on PRC net when study was first
| released and IMO authors didn't really address the criticisms of
| prejudice sufficiently. That said I think broadly believable, low
| email use, secular country (not concerned with karma), people too
| busy to bother a shit, probably result in low return rates. PRC
| can always pull a south Korea and use surveillance to enforce
| wallet returns or face fans.
| 5e92cb50239222b wrote:
| Not surprised to see Kazakhstan at the bottom of the list (I am
| more surprised to find us there at all). We have insane levels of
| corruption: almost anything can be "solved" by knowing the right
| people and spending a bit of money. There has also been somewhat
| of a news streak recently about taxi drivers fleecing hundreds of
| dollars off credulous tourists for a ride around the block.
|
| Most people communicate over the internet through WhatsApp and
| Telegram, but everyone I know has an email account and knows how
| to use it, so I don't think that's the reason.
|
| The only consolation is that China has managed to score even
| worse.
| arc-in-space wrote:
| My main takeaway is to keep a bit of cash and an email adress in
| a wallet. Also, I have to wonder how much the fact that the
| assistants would have been perceived as foreigners in most of
| these countries skews the results.
| davetannenbaum wrote:
| Definitely a concern. We took steps to examine if there were
| specific "experimenter effects", that is whether response rates
| were affected by one research assistant rather than another,
| and don't find evidence that was a factor. But that doesn't
| address your broader concern that things might be different if
| the person dropping off the wallet was native to the country.
| FWIW the wallets were designed to signal that the owner was
| probably a local and not a foreigner.
| arc-in-space wrote:
| Thank you for the response! I did miss the supplementary
| material notes.
| ndlan wrote:
| [flagged]
| throwbadubadu wrote:
| In what way?
| dpc050505 wrote:
| there's an obvious correlation between population density and
| civic honesty (as well as pretty much every other QOL metric)
| renewiltord wrote:
| The Asian countries score high on these (Japan isn't listed
| in the table but would have been high). That sort of makes
| this conclusion not fact-supported.
| Tade0 wrote:
| I have to ask which way, because China and Poland have
| roughly the same population densities but are on other ends
| of the scale.
| kergonath wrote:
| Why would that be? And do you have any data about this?
| eertami wrote:
| Switzerland is 25% immigrants yet it is also top of the leader
| board.
| ndlan wrote:
| [flagged]
| lusus_naturae wrote:
| Lots of brown ones, evidently:
| //en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Switzerland
|
| I think the issue is that if you create an economically and
| culturally hostile environment, it prevents assimilation.
| It doesn't matter what your race, religion etc. is at that
| point. Recall the state of Irish immigrants in the early
| U.S., that's where the meme "paddy wagon" results from.
| lo_zamoyski wrote:
| One glaring presupposition (which is false) of "rationalist
| approaches", but also those who reject them, yet maintain the
| same inherently hyper-individualistic, atomistic conception of
| human beings[0], is immediately apparent in the first sentence of
| the abstract: "Rationalist approaches to economics assume that
| people value their own interests over the interests of
| strangers."
|
| It is NOT in my interest to be dishonest. To think it is is to
| fail to understand that human nature is _thoroughly social_ and
| that, because of that, there is a common good. The common good is
| prior to private good; the latter depends on the former, not the
| other way around, as liberal philosophy conceives it.
|
| Thus, maximizing my own interest, by which I mean my own good, is
| to live maximally in conformity with human nature, and part of
| that means living in a way that recognizes the primacy of the
| common good. Dishonesty _per se_ is also harmful to the
| individual in the _very act_ of being dishonest. A person is
| corrupted in the _very act_ of being dishonest.
|
| [0] I am _not_ denying the existence or worth of individuals. I
| reject collectivism which is ready to throw the individual under
| the bus for the collective (which is rather incoherent). I mean
| only the conception of human beings as _atomic_ , in which
| society is merely transactional or contractual, instead od
| recognizing transactions as a subset of actions that occur within
| a social context and only where transactions are appropriate and
| make sense).
| alephxyz wrote:
| What happens if you're in a society where most people are
| dishonest and expect other people to also be dishonest?
| ikekkdcjkfke wrote:
| Humans are deceptive by nature so we always have to read
| between the lines and pick up on hints and context
| PaulHoule wrote:
| Would note the U.S. is absolutely average but China is very bad.
| mc32 wrote:
| Question is, how did the US slide down below Russia and
| Romania? That's not a good sign.
| mihaic wrote:
| As a Romanian, I completely agree. The US does need a bit
| more civic spirit that can't be generated from market
| incentives -- it needs to be indoctrinated so to speak from a
| young age.
| dauertewigkeit wrote:
| What sort of question is that? Why do you assume that Russia
| and Romania should rank low in civic honesty?
| tetromino_ wrote:
| Russia and Romania, as compared to the US, are known for
| dishonesty in some other areas: corruption and bribery in
| the government, cheating in schools and universities,
| counterfeit goods, financial fraud, tax evasion, etc. So it
| might be surprising to see honesty when it comes to
| returning a lost wallet.
|
| (I think the important difference might be "being dishonest
| to the system" vs. "being dishonest to a concrete
| individual in your community".)
| dontlaugh wrote:
| "Known for" mostly stands for "western media paints them
| as".
| mc32 wrote:
| In Eastern countries, officially things were "cooperative"
| centric, in reality, breadlines and such meant you looked
| out for number one.
| myth_drannon wrote:
| That's extreme generalization and is not based on
| reality. I will assume the author never been to Eastern
| bloc. Breadlines are a thing of just end of 80's. So 5
| years max of entire history of the region?
|
| I find the culture was less individualistic. Now of
| course it shifted but still core values remain. And each
| part of the bloc has variations of course.
| xyzzyz wrote:
| Lines for literal bread were only 80s thing to be sure,
| but general shortages of everything, bribing officials to
| be advanced in a queue to get apartment, or a car, or
| bribing shopkeepers to get dibs on building materials, or
| bribing doctors to get better care, or bribing nurses to
| get better rooms and beds, has been a constant throughout
| most of 20th century.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| I would suspect that choosing five major cities in the US
| doesn't make for a representative sample, and you could end
| up with wildly different overall results depending on which
| five cities you chose.
| bogtog wrote:
| Romania is very different from Russia
| Valodim wrote:
| Not sure this "slid" anywhere, selfishness was never a
| particularly unacceptable character trait culturally in the
| US...
| yostrovs wrote:
| You can have selfish people that don't share their winnings
| with others, but who are nonetheless decent and would
| return another's wallet.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| I'd point out selfishness has different dimensions.
|
| When Chinese people get egoism and selfish behavior
| pointed out (in contexts where this could happen to
| soneome of any ethnicity) frequently they'll tell you it
| is oriented around their family and not their "self".
| That is a circle of concern bigger than your "self" but
| can also be an extension of the self and certainly can
| draw people away from being supportive of the community.
| lo_zamoyski wrote:
| That's a bit vague, though. On the one hand, there is
| _most definitely_ a prioritization of love and concern
| (close family comes before extended family, and onward,
| all the way up to the entire human species according to
| principles of subsidiarity), so you have a moral
| obligation to prioritize those closer to you, all else
| remaining equal.
|
| But you don't get to _intentionally_ (undesirable side
| effects can be permissible) commit _evil_ acts against
| people of less concern (like robbing your neighbor to
| send your kid to college) for the sake of people of
| greater concern (or vice versa, of course). That 's how
| the mafia operates. It's analogous to the difference
| between patriotism (the healthy and obligatory love of
| and concern for one's own nation) and chauvinism (the
| idolatrous and narcissistic "love" of one's own nation
| _coupled with_ contempt and condescension for other
| nations).
| dontlaugh wrote:
| Not a good sign for whom exactly?
| mc32 wrote:
| Good sign for Russia and Romania, a bad trajectory for the
| US.
| justinsaything wrote:
| Honestly USA is seen as an individualistic country and by
| extension its citizens as selfish. Total opposite of Eastern
| European countries like Romania and Russia.
| zdragnar wrote:
| It is also a stereotype that doesn't fit most of the US,
| just like most stereotypes Americans have of Russia and
| Romania are wildly inaccurate.
| justinsaything wrote:
| On the contrary I think it fits most of the USA save for
| maybe the Southern States. As an Eastern European myself
| I'm interested in knowing excactly which stereotypes
| Americans hold. They might be mostly true as well.
| kurthr wrote:
| The problem with measuring USA, China, Russia is that
| they are so large and diverse that you'll get very
| different results depending on where you are. It would be
| like saying "Europe". Apparently, they used the largest 5
| cities in each country, which I suppose helps make for
| more comparable results. But for example in Texas I'd
| expect the results of San Antonio/Austin/Dallas to be
| significantly different (they are culturally) even though
| they are only separated by only a few hundred km.
|
| However, I can say in the US one of the biggest
| differences is just rural vs urban. The likelihood of
| things disappearing in cities vs towns is higher, I
| suspect because fewer people know each other. I'd also
| say that changes over time are fairly dramatic. Many
| people in the US didn't lock cars or homes until the 80s
| and 90s or even 00s.
| avgcorrection wrote:
| > The problem with measuring USA, China, Russia is that
| they are so large and diverse that you'll get very
| different results depending on where you are. It would be
| like saying "Europe".
|
| No it wouldn't, not for the US. Europe has 50 different
| countries and 24 official languages. The US has two
| widespread languages and _apparently_ has so little
| cultural variety that you can move across the country
| without any major culture shocks (at least I haven't
| heard any).
|
| It could sometimes make sense to, at a distance, talk
| about certain regions like a monolith, like for example
| Scandinavia. But it makes no sense to talk about Belgium
| and Greece in the same sentence.
|
| > However, I can say in the US one of the biggest
| differences is just rural vs urban.
|
| Interestingly people often generalize "Europe" based on
| what happens in the handful of 4 million+ cities.
| kurthr wrote:
| Hmm, is this why there are subtitles on reality TV shows
| based in the south? Suburbia is fairly uniform, but not
| so much the urban or rural areas.
|
| I would expect culture shock between NY and Dallas,
| Seattle and Atlanta, much less Salt Lake and Boston. I
| can get Cajun drawl, but not Southie without a fair bit
| (not quite Glasgow levels) of concentration.
| avgcorrection wrote:
| > Hmm, is this why there are subtitles on reality TV
| shows based in the south?
|
| There are (sometimes, rarely) subtitles on Norwegian TV
| for Norwegian dialects. Doesn't make it diverse (
| _homogeneous_ as Americans like to say).
| kurthr wrote:
| You should visit. A dialect that millions of people speak
| separated by thousands of km, income, and livelihood is
| not equivalent to the language difference between Swiss
| Cantons, it's closer to the difference between Lombardi
| and Napoli. Just look at the driving, forget language.
| mc32 wrote:
| At the same time, we're one of the most volunteering and
| charitable countries. But, I think civility is decreasing
| --be that due to economic conditions, mass pop culture or
| demographics.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| I don't think it's 'charitable' when it involves a tax
| deduction. A lot of private enterprise takes place in
| 501c3 wrapping.
| DharmaPolice wrote:
| If I'm reading their experiment correctly, they're only targeting
| employees behind the counter in public buildings. I'd be curious
| to know whether that influences the results at all.
|
| Clearly there's a cultural element to dishonesty but I'd guess
| that poorer less equal countries are going to do worse vs richer
| more equal ones.
|
| edit: Also, I'm not sure if keeping the money is strictly
| speaking "dishonest". Yeah it's a bad thing but if your
| philosophy is finders keepers then, is that dishonest?
| davetannenbaum wrote:
| One of the study authors here.
|
| On targeting front-desk employees, we did this both to allow
| relatively portable cross-country comparisons and for reasons
| of internal validity (e.g., if we placed wallets on the ground,
| then can participants "select" into the study which compromises
| our ability to draw causal inferences).
|
| On your last point about whether it's dishonest to hold onto a
| wallet. The question is about the treatment effect --- all
| things equal, is it more dishonest to hold onto a wallet with
| money vs no money? We polled nationally representative samples
| in the US, UK, and Poland and in all three countries most
| people thought so.
| dshacker wrote:
| Amazing study, was really interesting to read. How do you get
| to do this studies? How does someone get into social science
| like this? How did you pay for all the tickets for all the
| cities?
| prometheus76 wrote:
| They said in their study that even when they accounted for GDP,
| the effect remained.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| Are there any ancient moral traditions that espouse 'finders
| keepers losers weepers'?
| [deleted]
| noduerme wrote:
| I accidentally left my wallet in a taxi on the way from Madrid
| airport into central Madrid. The taxi driver actually _called me_
| and came back a couple hours later. (I gave her 100 Euros that
| she could have simply taken).
|
| Unfortunately, the next day the same wallet was snatched out of
| my pocket in the Plaza Mayor, and I didn't realize it until I
| reached to pay for a meal. Talk about variance.
| [deleted]
| skilled wrote:
| I was doing sightseeing in Pokhara (Nepal) with my friend some
| years ago, and on a boat trip across the Phewa Lake, I left my
| camera behind in the boat and thought I had lost it. They
| actually came back to find me and give it back to me. I had
| already settled on the idea that I will never get it back.
| seer wrote:
| Ha, in Kerela, India my backpack fell off my bike, with cash,
| passport and laptop inside.
|
| 2 hours later when I started searching for it, a couple of
| ex-military dudes found me on the road - they were looking
| for me all around on their scooter, as they saw the backpack
| fall from the bike next to the dam they were guarding. Took
| nothing from it as well. I gave them some cash as a thank you
| of course.
|
| Rural India seems like a very safe space to loose things in
| as a lot of people seem to be helpful and not opportunistic.
|
| I guess they might just not be accustomed to european stuff
| so might not really know what to do with it. Regardless I was
| extremely grateful to those two guys that saved me a lot of
| hassle reissuing my passport.
| noduerme wrote:
| yes! It's amazing. Another one in this vein.. my girlfriend
| left her hat in a car when we were hitchhiking in France. We
| didn't realize it until we had wandered off around a village.
| An hour later the boy and girl who had given us a ride
| tracked us down and gave her her hat back. It _was_ a very
| cool Australian cowboy hat.
| hospitalJail wrote:
| Weird to see such high petty theft countries near the top of
| the list too.
|
| No one tells you to pin your pockets shut when you visit NYC.
| Everyone tells you all sorts of ways to keep your belongings
| safe in Europe.
| melenaboija wrote:
| And no museum in Europe tells you to please leave your guns
| at the entrance to pick them up later.
|
| I guess weirdness is a matter of culture.
| cscurmudgeon wrote:
| And that doesn't have anything to do with the honesty issue
| we are discussing.
| callalex wrote:
| Where have you seen that?
| rootusrootus wrote:
| > And no museum in Europe tells you to please leave your
| guns at the entrance to pick them up later.
|
| I don't recall any museums in the US with such
| instructions, either.
| EliRivers wrote:
| _no museum in Europe tells you to please leave your guns at
| the entrance to pick them up later_
|
| Although in Plovdiv, an ancient Roman historical site
| accessed by stairs down on a busy shopping street, does
| have a sign explicitly indicating that you shouldn't take
| your guns in (also no dogs, no smoking);
| https://goo.gl/maps/ucGTpQQNwxK8hCMi6
| vladvasiliu wrote:
| I haven't been there in a few years, but last I remember,
| at the Louvre, they had signs saying you weren't allowed to
| bring in weapons or explosives.
|
| Sure, they didn't have a place for you to leave them and
| pick them up later, you were expected to figure storage on
| your own, I suppose.
|
| You can also see such signs at train stations.
|
| In France, it's very hard to legally own a gun.
| llbeansandrice wrote:
| I hate this whataboutism. The odds of getting shot in the
| US are so incredibly low especially for tourists.
|
| Not to mention I've never in my life seen a firearms check
| next to the coat check in any establishment.
| hospitalJail wrote:
| I don't really care about either side of the gun debate.
| I'm most annoyed with how much people care about it when
| its a tiny fraction of deaths and less than 1% if you
| remove suicides.
|
| Meanwhile as I age, the number of healthcare/medical
| related problems become more real.
|
| Few people talk about obesity being a problem, Fewer talk
| about the other 50% of causes of death.
| amanaplanacanal wrote:
| Wondering how you think that. As far as I can see people
| talk about obesity all the time. Unfortunately it's not a
| solved problem at population levels yet.
| CalRobert wrote:
| My mom is baffled that I'm more worried about my kids
| dying in a car crash than by getting shot.
| _a_a_a_ wrote:
| She may have a valid concern. How good is your driving?
| :)
| [deleted]
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| I have visited ancient churches in Norway that still have
| the weapon drop off rooms in the back :) Society ebbs and
| flows.
| noduerme wrote:
| It does seem that places with fewer guns tend to have fewer
| homicides but more petty theft. Someone should study that
| one.
| pvaldes wrote:
| Is not relevant probably. This kind of crime is 100%
| opportunistic and normally collaborative. Done by
| specialized gangs that came attracted to touristic areas
| like sharks by the blood. Being from a different country
| is not uncommon.
|
| In any case touristic areas show a distorted reflect on
| the honesty of the country. Honesty is directly
| proportional to stability. Work in touristic areas is
| seasonary and unstable
| marfil wrote:
| NYC. Chicago. Detroit. Atlanta. This ain't it chief.
| There is no correlation between "fewer guns" and "more
| petty theft". The common factor is culture of crime and
| it comes in different flavors. There are countries in
| Europe that completely outlawed even pistol ownership
| without extensive classes and expensive licenses, and yet
| they're some of the safest countries in the world. Has to
| do with culture and general population hostility, and the
| tensions and hostility will always naturally be higher
| among the armed population as been proved by history time
| and time again.
| Dig1t wrote:
| You can compare property crime and petty theft between
| San Francisco and Houston.
| burnished wrote:
| Its too goddamn hot for property crime and petty theft in
| Houston.
| varjag wrote:
| Are you kidding, it's some of the world's safest countries on
| the top.
| morsch wrote:
| _Pickpockets - This is one of the most common crimes
| happening in the city. ALWAYS watch your personal belongings
| and if possible don 't carry unneeded cash with you or any
| important documents such as passports or IDs. Be very wary in
| the metro especially during rush hour (if possible have your
| bag in front of you) and Times Square, which is a hotspot for
| pickpockets. Also, be on the lookout for outright muggings._
|
| https://wikitravel.org/en/New_York_City
| artificialLimbs wrote:
| So... come strapped?
| mrguyorama wrote:
| Now instead of being out a hundred bucks and your
| license, you are out a life because this is america and a
| gun is $400 on the open market.
| BitwiseFool wrote:
| >"you are out a life because this is america and a gun is
| $400 on the open market."
|
| Guncare for all! /s
| fsckboy wrote:
| if you are travelling, getting pickpocketed is a huge
| hassle, so telling tourists to be careful makes sense (not
| to mention, tourists bring their wallets out a lot, and
| stand slackjawed looking at things).
|
| But living in NYC, riding the subway, and walking through
| Times Sq on the regular (NYC's 25 screen multiplex is
| there, across the street from a 13 screen) I never heard of
| anybody getting pickpocketed.
| pyrale wrote:
| Living in Paris, no one I know ever got pickpocketed. But
| tourists get robbed day and night.
|
| Maybe there's a pattern there?
| marcosdumay wrote:
| > No one tells you to pin your pockets shut when you visit
| NYC.
|
| When I took my family from Brazil to visit Orlando, every
| single person and tourism agency told me to do just that (and
| hide the money out of pockets).
|
| I imagine they do that for NYC too. Looks like a universal
| rule that wherever you go there will pickpockets specialized
| in tourists.
| noduerme wrote:
| It's funny how times have changed. I remember public safety
| videos on British Airways when you would fly into New York,
| before you landed, they'd play a 5-minute clip about how
| dangerous it is and how to keep your wallet safe. As I recall
| it was in English and Japanese... but I was very young so
| maybe I'm not remembering perfectly.
| no1groyp wrote:
| [dead]
| lo_zamoyski wrote:
| It would be interesting to submit petty theft to a similar
| cultural analysis that this article uses. Neither NYC nor the
| aforementioned European cities are ethnically/culturally
| homogeneous. A study like this could either corroborate the
| findings of this article, or introduce an interesting
| dimension to the analysis, something non-trivial.
| tm-guimaraes wrote:
| From personal experience, non-confrontational petty theft in
| Europe tends to be an issue only in high density high tourist
| areas. So no wonder it can have weird contrast with civic
| metrics
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| In many places in Europe pickpockets waiting for tourists are
| not locals, shall we say.
|
| So, as another commenter remarked, I suspect that this plays
| a major role in the apparent contradiction you highlight.
| Helmut10001 wrote:
| USA is big. Europe is big. Really depends on which part of
| Europe you speak of. Norway is probably the most peaceful
| country in the world, next to NZ, from my subjective
| perspective. Also do not just listen to what "Everyone" tells
| you, reality is most often more nuanced than the information
| spread of provocations and rumor.
| marfil wrote:
| NYC is 1 city. Europe is 50 countries. To say you broadly
| generalized is to understate by a mile. Let's narrow it down
| to high density mixed cities like Paris or Berlin and you
| _may_ be onto something, but in reality you also have to be
| in a bad part of Berlin, or a particularly high density
| tourist area. Most cities and countries overall in Europe are
| completely safe. Most are actually much safer than even
| notoriously safe US cities.
| throwaway290 wrote:
| Anecdotally I heard this from many unrelated people about
| Paris, Berlin, Madrid, Barcelona (heard similar about
| London and major UK cities but that's mostly from stories
| online). Basically all your typical big Western European
| cities. Pretty level with NYC.
|
| It's a stark contrast with big cities in parts of Asia
| where I go. Sometimes I'm toying with an idea of moving to
| Europe but apart from troubles getting digital nomad visa
| petty crime is also a thing that scares me.
|
| (However it's not generally supported by published crime
| stats so I'm not 100% sure whether to be worried)
| TylerE wrote:
| How much of that petty crime would be violent crime in
| the US?
|
| I've I'm gonna get robbed, I'm gonna get robbed. Rather
| not have a Glock stuck in my face while it's happening.
| atlasunshrugged wrote:
| If you are comparing from the US to Europe, the crime and
| how concerned you should be is absolutely night and day.
| I've lived in SF, DC, SLC, and San Diego in the U.S. and
| Berlin, London, and Tallinn in Europe with plenty of time
| spent in Paris and elsewhere and I have never felt
| outright scared in any European city. Are there parts of
| them I wouldn't be comfortable in at night? Sure, same
| with any big city, but the lack of gun crime and better
| social safety net means a lot fewer mentally ill people
| and a lot fewer people with easy access to a firearm. And
| just overall, I always felt far safer in Europe (which I
| can't quantify, just a vibe), even as a tourist. That
| said, having lived in Beijing for a bit I would guess it
| is technically safer there, you just are living in a
| panopticon.
| kergonath wrote:
| > However it's not generally supported by published crime
| stats so I'm not 100% sure whether to be worried
|
| You should not. There is some level of crime anywhere,
| but big cities have become much safer than they used to
| be, at least in the West. Shit still happens sometimes,
| but there is no reason to be worried if you have a
| reasonable behaviour. I know of a couple of people who
| got their phone stolen or who had a burglary, but many
| more who lost wallets by dropping or forgetting them
| somewhere.
| BiteCode_dev wrote:
| YMMV also depending of who you are. In China, I look like a
| tourist, so pickpockets have a field trip with me, they don't
| even bother to be discreet.
|
| In Paris, I never had a problem, because I look local. But my
| mother from the country side actually got troubles, because
| she looked like an easy prey, despite take much more care
| about her sutff than I do.
| m463 wrote:
| I wonder if "personal honesty" and "professional dishonesty"
| correlate or not.
|
| Too bad japan isn't on the list. I would expect a high level
| of personal honesty there.
|
| That said, there is still yakuza in japan. I wonder how that
| works.
| skhr0680 wrote:
| Gangster-style yakuza rarely bother normal people. It's not
| worth the trouble for either party. There are some
| industries with a lot of yakuza-owned and operated
| companies, but their main goal is to make or lose
| legitimate money, so unless you are aware of some tells
| you'd never know that they are yakuza.
| SongofEarth wrote:
| It's important to note that most Chinese people hardly ever use
| email, the Internet started rather late in China, for most
| Chinese people the Internet means smartphone and WeChat, and
| WeChat often is the only place where business communication
| happens, had they put a WeChat QR code on the business card, the
| result would be much more interesting.
| davetannenbaum wrote:
| It's a fair point, but we've tried to test this issue in a
| number of different ways. Based on the available data, cross
| country differences in email usage doesn't seem to have a
| meaningful impact on our results. See my comment above to
| gyf304.
| pphysch wrote:
| Important cultural difference that the study failed to
| highlight.
|
| You'd probably see a similar <15% success rate if you used a
| WeChat QR code for contact _in the West_. People might scan the
| code, but stop once they realize it 's an unfamiliar platform
| that they don't have an account for.
| dang wrote:
| Discussed at the time:
|
| _Civic honesty around the globe_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20236444 - June 2019 (395
| comments)
| js2 wrote:
| This study is cleverly designed and found non-intuitive results
| (as measured by the study itself). Penultimate paragraph:
|
| > We conducted field experiments in 40 countries to examine
| whether people act more dishonestly when they have a greater
| economic incentive to do so, and we found the opposite to be
| true. Citizens were more likely to return wallets that contained
| relatively larger amounts of money. This finding is robust across
| countries and institutions and holds even when economic
| incentives for dishonesty are substantial. Our results are
| consistent with theoretical models that incorporate altruism and
| self-image concerns, but they also suggest modification in that
| nonpecuniary motivations directly interact with the material
| benefits gained from dishonest behavior. When people stand to
| heavily profit from engaging in dishonest behavior, the desire to
| cheat increases but so do the psychological costs of viewing
| oneself as a thief--and sometimes the latter will dominate the
| former.
| didntcheck wrote:
| Complete armchair analysis but I'd have thought this is
| definitely more about empathy than viewing oneself as a thief?
| I imagine a lot of people would look at a lost $1000 and think
| "I'd be devastated if I lost that!", and therefore put the
| effort into returning it. But I have to admit that if I found a
| wallet that only had $10 in, I wouldn't keep it but I would be
| a lot more lazy about returning it because "I can't really be
| arsed and he's probably not missing it much"
|
| In terms of "viewing oneself as a thief", I feel like I would
| do that even if I kept the $10 wallet, though I guess maybe I
| would feel like _more_ of one the higher the amount is
| davetannenbaum wrote:
| We tested both ideas (altruism and theft aversion) in the
| paper. Short answer is we find evidence for both. For
| somewhat technical reasons, we think the "viewing oneself as
| a thief" component is probably necessary in order to observe
| higher return rates for wallets with money than wallets
| without money. But certainly both elements are at play.
| Dig1t wrote:
| Super weird that Mexico is so different on the money/noMoney
| wallet test.
|
| It's the only country that has its return rate flipped. i.e.
| wallets containing money are LESS likely to be returned than
| wallets not containing money. Basically every single other
| country had it the other way around.
|
| I wonder why that is. Is there a cultural aspect to it?
|
| Also kind of bummed that Japan and Korea are not on the list,
| would have been interesting to compare.
| [deleted]
| IceHegel wrote:
| Interesting that in Mexico and Peru the wallet without money was
| returned more often than the one with money. The gap was larger
| in Mexico.
| noduerme wrote:
| That checks out. Also, your best chance in China is worse than
| your worst chance in India, which argues against the theory
| that this correlates to GDP.
| FredPret wrote:
| I wonder if this is affected by number of pedestrians. If you
| left a wallet a block from me in Canada I'd never see it as I
| drive past it.
| smcin wrote:
| I doubt it, because they didn't leave the wallets in the
| street, but "in the reception area... of five types of societal
| institutions: (i) banks; (ii) theaters, museums, or other
| cultural establishments; (iii) post offices; (iv) hotels; and
| (v) police stations, courts of law, or other public offices."
| FredPret wrote:
| This might get affected by tourists then, so still not
| entirely foolproof.
|
| Almost 100% of my museum, theatre, and hotel time is spent in
| other countries. At least in Canada, I've spent maybe 30
| minutes in a bank / post office in the past couple of years.
| wiseowise wrote:
| [dead]
| wood_spirit wrote:
| I live in one of the very high response rate countries and would
| imagine that the unreturned wallets were just binned, and that
| those containing money are more likely to be returned simply
| because there is obvious benefit to recipient to have it
| returned. When you lose a wallet you cancel your cards etc, even
| change the locks if you loose your keys, so people will reason
| that there is no big point to returning it anyway?
| sandworm101 wrote:
| >> even change the locks if you loose your keys
|
| That phrase has always struck me as particularly American, and
| western American. In many places people talk of "getting the
| locks changed" rather than "changing the locks". It's the
| difference between doing something to the locks rather than
| swapping them out for new ones. I guess that is a reflection of
| the general poor quality of locks used in the US: Buying a new
| lock is cheaper than getting a locksmith to rekey an existing
| lock. And when I was on the east coast I do remember seeing
| more locksmiths (at least their storefronts/trucks) than on the
| on the west.
| CommieBobDole wrote:
| I don't think that's true at all - replacing even cheap locks
| would be much more expensive than having them re-keyed. I'm
| sure replacement happens, say if someone wants to upgrade to
| better locks at the same time or is unaware that locks can be
| re-keyed, but I doubt it's the norm.
|
| I think 'changing the locks' is just the American way of
| saying 'getting the locks re-keyed'. If that phrasing is even
| uniquely American, which I'm not sure of either.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > replacing even cheap locks would be much more expensive
| than having them re-keyed.
|
| Replacing _a_ cheap (or even average household) lock is
| cheaper than the minimum labor charge a locksmith will
| charge to show up, but you still need someone to do the
| labor of replacing it.
|
| Also, if you use certain brands of lock, if you buy one new
| lock of the same brand it comes with a special rekeying
| tool that will allow you to rekey all your matching-brand
| locks to the key that comes with the new lock.
| xyzzyz wrote:
| Replacing Home Depot-style locks in Home Depot-style doors
| is extremely easy, it's only a couple of minutes of work
| using only basic tools. Maybe up to 30 minutes if you're
| doing it for the first time, and forgot where you put your
| screwdriver.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| >> replacing even cheap locks would be much more expensive
| than having them re-keyed.
|
| Getting a skilled tradesperson to your house is going to
| cost $100 at an absolute minimum. Then parts and such. New
| home depo locks will be cheaper.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| It really isn't. I replaced my front door lock last year
| and I think the replacement cost me about $30. I hadn't
| done it before but it was easy to figure out, took about 15
| minutes.
| wood_spirit wrote:
| Here in Sweden everyone uses Yale style locks and it's super
| trivial and cheap to change just the barrel bit inside the
| lock. Everyone can do it themselves in a few minutes and
| there are no locksmiths about.
| 2rsf wrote:
| Not entirely according to my experience, the simple Assa
| Abloys are indeed rather cheap and easy to change. But the
| more secure, thus approved by insurance, can be tricky
| since they contain traps.
|
| There are instruction available on how to change them, but
| even me, and I am not afraid of DIY, called one of the many
| locksmiths around here in Stockholm.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| I live on the west coast of the US. When we say 'change the
| locks' we don't really mean changing out the physical locks
| for new ones. We mean having them re-keyed. It's not very
| expensive, and contrary to your anecdote, there are
| locksmiths _everywhere_ here. A lot of them have no
| storefront, they are entirely mobile (and a fair bit of the
| time, unmarked vans). Storefronts still exist, but much of
| the regular interaction consumers have with keys these days
| is easily handled at the local home improvement stores.
| jsnk wrote:
| I wish they had done this in Japan, Korea and Taiwan as well.
| a5withtrrs wrote:
| Japan especially as they are particularly well known for their
| civic honesty.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| I had a vision of the experimenters being prosecuted for
| wasting police/people's time by causing problems on purpose.
|
| Edit: the above was a joke, but had a grain of truth. The
| authors addressed this specific question in a reply to
| readers' letters:
|
| _We did not exclude Japan from our study because their
| reporting rate was too low (if anything, Japan would have
| scored relatively high among countries in civic honesty).
| Since our focus was on investigating the difference in
| reporting rates between wallets with and without money, our
| decision rule was to exclude countries where individual
| wallets could not be identified. Japan has a unique system
| with lots of small police booths (Koban system) where
| citizens return lost objects. While we found a large number
| of our wallets listed on official lost and found websites, we
| were not able to retrieve these wallets as it would have
| required proof of ownership and identification documents. As
| a result, we were not able to find out the unique email
| addresses or the original locations of the wallets and we
| could not ascertain (among other things) to which
| experimental condition the wallet belonged. As we were
| primarily interested in the difference between experimental
| conditions, we had to exclude Japan from the paper. By
| contrast, we do not have evidence of similar systematic
| behavior from other countries._
| davetannenbaum wrote:
| Actually one of our research assistants was temporarily
| detained (in Kenya, I believe) for suspicious activity. As
| you can imagine, having a bunch of "lost" wallets on hand
| required some explaining.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| Thanks for contributing and sharing that story! I greatly
| enjoyed the paper and will be reading into it in more
| depth later today.
| WaitWaitWha wrote:
| I have lost things, or have forgotten and left minor things at
| various places (e.g., mom & pop food courts, shops) in Taiwan.
| They were insignificant in the scheme of things, and in some
| cases the return was more expensive than the forgotten item.
| Yet, they found ways to get them back to me. (A BIC four color
| pen?!)
|
| This is diametrically opposite what I experienced on the
| mainland.
| nezaj wrote:
| From one of the author's comments re: Japan
| Japan has a unique system with lots of small police booths
| (Koban system) where citizens return lost objects. While we
| found a large number of our wallets listed on official lost and
| found websites, we were not able to retrieve these wallets as
| it would have required proof of ownership and identification
| documents. As a result, we were not able to find out the unique
| email addresses or the original locations of the wallets and we
| could not ascertain (among other things) to which experimental
| condition the wallet belonged. As we were primarily interested
| in the difference between experimental conditions, we had to
| exclude Japan from the paper. By contrast, we do not have
| evidence of similar systematic behavior from other countries.
| anovikov wrote:
| Important thing to consider is that many people may not report
| the wallet and not touch it being afraid of a rather popular scam
| when people who reported the stolen wallet were confronted with a
| claim that it had way more money inside and extorted on that
| amount. That actually happened to people i know in Russia. So in
| a way it may be simply a reflection of some countries being more
| criminal or dangerous so people just "mind their business", not
| that they are particularly dishonest.
| lxe wrote:
| Underrated comment. I think this sentiment alone skews the data
| significantly. The study needs to asses whether the wallet is
| picked up or not. In many places in the world, people won't
| pick up random wallets simply due to fear of getting scammed.
| lolc wrote:
| The wallets were handed over to staff, didn't need picking
| up.
| gyf304 wrote:
| I believe the methodology is flawed.
|
| > The business cards displayed the owner's name and email address
| and we used fictitious but commonplace male names for each
| country.
|
| This is assuming that email is a ubiquitous communication method
| in all countries, which is not true. USA has a very high email
| penetration rate, so does Japan (where all phones use email
| instead of SMS). On the other end of the spectrum, China's email
| penetration rate is less than 40% [1]. Business in China is
| conducted over WeChat and phone calls instead of email. If the
| person receiving the wallet does not have an email account, or
| doesn't even know what email is, I'd imagine the email contact
| rate to be quite low.
|
| [1] https://www.twinova.com/email-dead-long-live-
| wechat/#:~:text....
| davetannenbaum wrote:
| A valid concern, but a couple points:
|
| (1) This issue doesn't affect the treatment effect (the
| difference in return rates for money vs no money), which was
| the main focus of the paper. If email usage is low in a
| particular country, that should affect return rates equally in
| both the money and no money conditions.
|
| (2) We've done a number of robustness checks on the point about
| email usage and have not been able to find evidence that it has
| a meaningful impact on the results. For instance, when looking
| at cross country differences in wallet return rates, the rank
| order correlation between the "raw" data and one that
| statistically adjusts for email penetration rates (based on
| World Bank data) is 0.95.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| xkcd1963 wrote:
| [flagged]
| cochne wrote:
| What is unscientific about the article?
| xkcd1963 wrote:
| [flagged]
| bigbillheck wrote:
| The same could be said for astronomy.
| xkcd1963 wrote:
| Astronomy is not a human science. It is a physical
| science that is concerned with the study of celestial
| objects such as stars, planets, galaxies, and the
| universe as a whole. Astronomers use mathematics,
| physics, and chemistry to explain the nature and motion
| of these objects. Astronomy is also the study of the
| origin, evolution, and composition of the universe, as
| well as the search for extraterrestrial life. Everything
| that falls within the scope of astronomy is based on
| natural phenomena, which means it is impossible to
| conduct experiments in a traditional laboratory setting.
| Astronomy is, therefore, solely based on observation and
| analysis in which the astronomer seeks to explain what is
| happening outside of Earth's atmosphere.
| bigbillheck wrote:
| You can't reproduce a supernova (or at least I can't).
| InCityDreams wrote:
| Perhaps they meant astrology?
| dahart wrote:
| Social sciences are also based on observation and
| analysis. That's the definition of science: observing and
| analyzing to form testable predictions. Science is not
| defined by whether the subject is stars or humans, it is
| defined by the process.
| bogtog wrote:
| They dropped over 17,000 wallets. Why do you think these
| results wouldn't reproduce?
| xkcd1963 wrote:
| There are too many variables involved that could also
| play an influencing role.
| renewiltord wrote:
| If your epistemology does not allow you to have
| posteriors different from priors based on this
| information, it is going to model the world poorly.
| That's okay. It is not a sin to model the world poorly.
|
| But it is a sin to transmit your disease to others
| knowingly. No one is interested in broken epistemology.
| AndrewKemendo wrote:
| It hasn't been reproduced and does not offer any mechanism
| for deterministic prediction of future reproduction.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| The first time any experiment is done it hasn't been
| reproduced. The SI provides detailed information on
| experiment design, you're free to undertake your own
| reproduction effort.
| leonheld wrote:
| >It hasn't been reproduced
|
| What? It has to start somewhere, doesn't it? Also, it
| clearly offers a basis for probabilistic analysis for
| future studies. How is this not science?
| hospitalJail wrote:
| I really wish we'd make a word that distinguishes the
| difference without adding the word 'science' at all.
|
| Saying social 'science', gives the credibility of science.
|
| Heck, I'd really like a scale that can measure the credibility.
| P values are a bandaid.
|
| For instance, chemistry is pretty solid science right? Well, if
| you make polyurethane in a box, the 'same way' each time, you
| are going to have bubbles in seemingly random locations, with
| maybe some correlation. Whatever the case, its not perfectly
| repeatable due to macro scale complexities.
|
| I don't think this would do too much for the scientific
| community, because most are aware. But I do think it would help
| teenagers understand the difference.
|
| I cringe whenever I hear things like "But it was peer reviewed
| and in this fancy journal". Yeah give me replication and I'll
| take a look.
| bshipp wrote:
| Medicine, biology, and even quantum physics could be argued
| to not be science by your standard because they often aren't
| explicitly deterministic. The authors are using the
| scientific method to evaluate population differences. How
| else would one undertake this analysis?
| pmontra wrote:
| News from today, Milan, Italy
|
| "Retired man finds 10k Euros and gives them back to the owner.
| Reward of 500 Euros: 'too much'"
|
| https://milano.corriere.it/notizie/lombardia/23_luglio_07/co...
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