Placebo Effects in Human Relationships, A Summary

An authority figure can "spin" a situation to look more violent that it actually is. Confirmation bias can do such a thing. Conformity can also do such a thing. Placebo effects are yet another thing.

Such situations almost always happen unintentionally. All it has to do is for the authority figure to believe that his subordinate is violent, to make them more violent. As said above, this is like a placebo effect, where the "experimenter" is the authority figure and the "subjects" are his subordinates. Because the authority figure believes that he is violent prior to the event, he will interpret his subordinates' actions to be more violent than it actually is.

Such situations are common in situations such as police brutality, controlling parenting, and other hierarchical relationships. The "abuser" almost always don't realize that they are doing something evil. They feel that their behavior is legitimate, given that they think that their subordinates are perceived to be evil.

That's another reason why you take the words of any Wikipedia administrator, forum moderator, or teacher, with only a grain of salt. If they accuse another of "trolling" or "bullying", it's often a mere perceived evil. None of their words may be an accurate representation of the supposed "bully".

Often "bullies" are "evil" only because others falsely accuse them of an alleged wrong. But, ironically, the accusers themselves are also often wrong.

People rationalize. And they also rationalize their friends' behavior. For example, suppose a teacher saw some other teacher yelling and apparently abusing a student. But he won't accuse him as malicious, partially because he thinks adults aren't as mean as children, and partially because he is his friend so he would rationalize his behavior as non-malicious.

Why are people who are abused by authority figures "assumed" bad? Such as the incident in which the police tased a student and the student responded "don't taze me bro."

People hypnotize each other. For example, when they are accused of something, they will apparently believe that the accusation is true.

For example, the victim of the "don't taze me bro" incident actually believed that he did something "wrong", even though at the time of the incident, he didn't believe he did anything wrong.

A "bully" can be a person who stands up for himself, a person who disobeys authority, or a rebel who wants to do things his own way.

I don't believe that "bullies" or "trolls" exist as commonly perceived. Then why do some many people believe that they do exist? It's partially caused from the placebo effect as described above, and then exaggerated through the media. Television shows commonly show that people who often do evil things actually have an evil personality. This is far from reality. It's even undetermined if the "bully's" actions were malicious or negligent, or whether if it's a whole misunderstanding.

I may write a series of posts explaining why so many accused "bullies" weren't bullying at all.

Blame Hierarchy, Not the People

Parents and schoolteachers are domineering to their subordinates. When were in school, our teachers will accuse us of being "disrespectful" for not following their vague rules. They will also accuse us of not following their contradictory rules, directions, and expectations. They will tell us to "shut up" when we tell them to clarify their rules by questioning the reasons behind them.

But we don't know that parents and teachers are like that because we only know the parents' and teacher's side of it. That's because we don't let our children have a fair trial: we just silence them. We just gossip about our children: it's common for teachers to gossip about their students privately. But we don't know that gossiping is ridiculously inaccurate.

All authority figures are potentially domineering to their subordinates. They are judgmental, accusative, arrogant, and controlling to their subordinates. They think that they are "better" to the subordinates only because they can tell them to "shut up", so the subordinates can't show that the authority figures are sometimes wrong. This sets up a structure which makes authority figures self-affirm their superiority over their subordinates, so they feel justified to be presumptuous, controlling, and condescending to their subordinates.

In addition, we have presumptions that children are "selfish", "spoiled" and "manipulative" brats who want to waste their parents' time and money. However, we often don't notice how our actions make our children behave way. Parents and schoolteachers criticize, condemn, punish, and control children as all the time. But they will never think of doing anything like this to their friends.

Why is this? It is because parents and children are in a hierarchical relationship, and hierarchical relationships make the controllers self-justify their superiority over their subordinates, and also make the controllers self-justify the inferiority of their subordinates. This sets up another situation which the authority figures can use their confirmation bias to selectively affirm their subordinates as inferior.

In addition, because most parents and schoolteachers think that children are evil creatures coming out to "get us", they will generalize their conception of their own children to all children. Parents and schoolteachers will treat all children as if they are evil, so that's one reason why some schoolteachers are mean to all children. (Have you ever wondered why the older teachers treat their students more harshly compared to the younger teachers? It's possibly because older teachers are more likely to have children, so they are more likely to think that their children are "evil" just because they appear that way to them. Then they will generalize their conception of their children to their students. Anyway, that's just a hypothesis.)

Cops are also controlling to their subordinates. They are accusative. They are trigger-happy. They can do anything to you if they're angry. But one thing that all cops have in common is that they believe that their actions are "justified." Parents and teachers, too, believe that their controlling behavior is "justified." If they don't feel that their actions are legitimate, then their empathy and remorse will prevent their controlling behavior onto their subordinates.

As authority figures justify their controlling and condescending behavior from their own biases, so will children. When the children grow up and become parents: controlling, domineering, and judgmental. Even the most rebellious teenager might possibly become a controlling parent, because they don't realize that authority positions are self-justifying. If they control their children a little bit, they will then feel justified to control their children even more.

The more rules and expectations a parent makes, the more likely that children won't follow them, because the likelihood that the rules and expectations will contradict one another. Think about how complicated it is to follow all the laws in the United States. It's so complicated that's it's impossible to follow without contradicting one another. The same thing happens to children. The more rules a parent make, the harder and harder it is for the children to follow the rules without contradiction. So the children will appear to disobey some rules because it's contradictory to follow all rules at once.  The parents will blame it on their children for "disobedient" rather than blaming on themselves for making the contradictory rules in the first place.

The parents will respond to their perceived "disobedience" by making even more contradictory rules, expectations, and punishments. This makes the children even harder to follow all the rules consistently. So the parents will respond to that again by making more rules and punishments. This vicious circle continues, so the children will become perceived as "rebellious", when they aren't trying to be rebellious at all!

Costs Should Not Justify Policies

Most people oppose the Iraq war and the War on Drugs because it is ineffective and too expensive. Many politicians, including Ron Paul, argued that war harms the economy because of the higher government spending. They do not have any moral reasons to oppose the war.

Government is funding a microchip implant, called the VeriChip. The VeriChip company holds a patent on the idea, so they lobby the government to mandate everyone to use it, just like the vaccination companies. The chip includes a tracking device that invades their privacy and self-government. Microchip implants have additional advantages, such as detecting the blood cocaine levels and the blood alcohol levels. The ease of detecting an illegal drug would raise effectiveness of the War on Drugs and the significantly ease the costs. Many conservative politicians would support it to fight the Drug war.

Let's suppose a new technology is invented that reduces the costs of war to a fraction. More people would likely to support the Iraq war because of lower costs. Because of the lower costs, conservatives would support it. They have no moral objection.

It is also perfectly logical for minarchists to enforce microchips on everyone to reduce costs of defence forces so government would be voluntarily funded. They install microchips in everyone's mind to reduce aggressive thoughts and thoughts about succeding the government. These kinds of minarchists are totalitarian minarchists, who proposes mind control. This is another proof that minarchism leads to totalitarianism.

Every government intervention should be morally objected, not weighed on an utilitarian basis.

The Virtues of Long-Term Altruism

Many people produces a distinction between egoism and altruism. Examples include Ayn Rand and other rational egoists. They despise altuism as an unproductive act. However, we will show that there is no line between egoism and altruism.

Egoism is selfish behavior, and defined as benefiting the individual. Altruism is helping others. However, some conclude that altruism is also selfish, as people feel good helping others.

How can "feel good" be selfish? It can also be altruistic. According to evolution, altruism is an evolutionary adaptation for group survival. According to evolution, the "good feeling" of doing altruistic behavior is coded in our genes. So, in this context, egoistic behaviors are considered altruistic because they were behaviors that are selected by evolution to benefit the group over the individual.

So egoism and altruism can be synoyms. Neither behavior is egoistic nor altruistic. They are only behaviors.

It is impossible to classify egoistic and altruistic behaviors. Does buying apples from the market considered altruistic? It can, because the action of apples is a process of market competition. People do not buy bad apples. Only beneficial and efficient firms survive. So, in this action, you are behaving altruistically, because are punishing the bad firms buy not buying apples there, and helping the good ones. This process creates benefit for everyone, as you are helping them produce good apples.

So, persistent to Adam Smith's invidible hand, egoism and altruism are interchangeable in the voluntary market. Altruism is when one give gifts to others. The receiver benefits and the giver have a good feeling.

So why do many economists classify "altruistic" behavior bad? It has to do with a different reason. Suppose if one is being polite. He must give flower to a person gives gifts to the person. Suppose a person is helping another person to carry his grocery or educating others when they ask for help. These are altruistic behaviors. These behaviors are considered non-productive to them because the person is forced to do immediate reciprocal altruism instead of delaying the behavior and use his resources to do other things.

So altruism, such as giving to charity, wastes his resources instead of doing something productive, such as investing. Altruism is equivalent to immediate consumption, and egoism is equivalent to long term entrepreneural investment. So egoism is an investment, and benefits everying in the long run. Altruism only benefits in the short run.

Federally-enforced holidays such as Valentines' Day, Mothers' Day, Christimas, etc. are highly altruistic and resource wasting periods. People engage in irrational consumption such as giving gifts. Consumption decreases investment.

This is why economists prefer egoism and not altruism. They encourage investment.

Some think that wealth accumulation is egoistic. But what do they spend their wealth on? They wealth spending may be spent on altruistic or egoistic acts. People earn wealth to spend it "altruistically".

But going back to gene example, no behavior is altuistic and no behavior is egoistic.

This is another criticism of Homo economicus. not just wealth. They are just actions.

An example is open-source software. Coding open-source is neither altruistic nor egoistic. It is just a behavior adapted at evolution. It is the same as commercial software. Commercial developers modify open-source software so they can use it. There is a side-effect of improving the software--everyone else would share it. It is similar to a business that does innovation. Innovation first benefits a business, but a side-effect is created because information is distributed. They are actions that increase their happiness, and they are neither altuistic nor egoistic.

Drug Prohibition Leads to Addiction

Prohibition of drugs actually encourages drug use.

When drugs are prohibited, the supply of drugs goes down, which creates great demand for them. Due to the high demand, the price of drugs are driven up in the prohibited state. Drug dealers thus have the incentive to buy drugs cheaply at non-prohibited states and sell them at a high price in prohibited states. They earn extremely great profit because of the high Profit margin.

Drug addiction is uncontrollable. Once a person is addicted after taking a sample of a drug, the addiction can last forever. It is virtually impossible to become non-addicted.

Rational people would not waste their money to buy drugs and many poor people do that because they are addicted. It confirms that addiction cannot be suppressed.

This creates an incentive for the drug dealers to advertise their drugs to non-drug users. They have an excellent strategy to do that. The drug dealer can first offer free samples to non-addicts. The non-addict, after taking the free sample, become addicted forever with that drug. Thus, the addict would in the future buy drugs from the drug dealer. Despite the initial loss by giving a free sample, the drug dealer would infinitely gain by selling drugs in the future to the addict.

However, there is a problem: the free rider problem. If many drug dealers compete in one single geographical area, then no drug dealer would offer free samples. Offering free samples are too expensive. Thus, the drug dealers would collude and form a single cartel over a geographical area. The drug firms would merge and share profit. Therefore, they would have the incentive to offer free samples to get non-addicts addicted, since all profit or lose the same.

And most importantly, 99% of drug addicts started their addiction when they were children.