Michael Lewis and the parable of the lucky man taking the extra cookie (2017)

I wonder why people are having such a hard time taking this study at face value, given the plain description from the researcher. I'm not saying this is a universal effect, but several comments are doubting that it ever happened.

I think you're misunderstanding the comment about nobody taking the last cookie. He's setting up the situation. Every group left one cookie (at first), and then usually the leader to that cookie.

An example of polite behavior, starring Ronald Reagan: https://www.salon.com/2003/11/24/korda

[From the Salon article]:

Korda's eye for detail really shines a couple of hundred pages later, when he and several other editors have joined Ronald Reagan in Los Angeles, near the end of the president's second term, to work on Reagan's memoirs. A plate of bad, overchunked chocolate cookies has been served. Only one remains, and Reagan's good manners dictate that he offer it around before taking it himself:

[Here the Salon article quotes from Korda's own memoirs]:

One of his aides took the plate from his hand and passed it on. The aides, I noticed, knew better than to reach for the last cookie. [S&S editor] Chuck Adams passed the plate on to me, and I passed it on to [writer Robert] Lindsey, the last man in the circle. I caught a glimpse of the president's face. His eyes were hopeful and bright, his whole expression that of somebody who has done the right thing and seen it pay off. He was already reaching for the plate when Lindsey, who had been bent over a copy of the manuscript, oblivious of the small drama taking place at the table, absentmindedly grabbed the cookie and bit into it without even looking up.

Reagan's face crumpled, his expression that of a man who has just staked the farm on one card and lost.

My father has a favorite story from his childhood. His best friend was over eating, and they were having porkchops which was a big deal in my father's house at the time.

There was one extra after everyone had their first, and my grandfather asked aloud if anyone wanted the last, with his fork already poised over the porkchop.

My father's best friend said "Yeah, thanks Mr. XYZ!" and snatched it out from under my grandfather's fork.

Not really contrary to your point, of course. It's a favorite story of my father's specifically because his friend broke the implicit code of "does anyone want this."

This is a very western outlook. I recall reading that on the ISS, the American astronauts considered the Russian cosmonauts to be rude because they would pick out whatever food they wanted. Maybe apocryphal, and maybe not, but I - Russian, and born and raised there for ten years - have zero qualms about asking to take the last of something.

In mine, an elder would ask someone to finish it up and he would appoint someone to eat it, if he refuses, then to the next

I think you are British, that's the polite form in the UK where I come from. In the USA if you try this it's pretty common for people to say yes they would like it. Different culture!

You can also ask if anyone would like to split the last one.

I have said yes, lets split it.

sure - choosing the right extracurricular activities if they don't cost too much, are available in Minnesota and can fit in between your 2 jobs.

Sure - choosing good majors is important, if your parents can afford your school.

Sure, hanging out with the right people is important. Too bad they don't live in Minnesota, and too bad you don't have access to them.

I think we agree that there is everyday value to recognizing and rewarding good choices on an individual level. But if we're talking about how society is structured, and you think that people who make poor choices deserve a systemically-accepted low quality of life, then we disagree.

If someone makes poor choices, they aren't employable, etc. I'm fine with that. But if the reason they make those choices comes down to lack of education, poor parenting, or just a crappy draw from the genetic lottery, I don't think a society that blames people for that is a healthy society in the long term.

It's an individual vs. societal perspective, or maybe daily vs. long term issue. It might feel like cognitive dissonance, but your behavior to individuals can be different from the policies for which you advocate.

Your point reminds me of this article:

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/08/opinion/sunday/what-the-r...

I agree. Someone making $240,000 per year makes consumer choices every hour that half or more of Americans cannot fathom. And likewise, someone making $25k/year is making completely different choices. From what I understand, a large portion of both considers themselves middle class.

"Middle Class" is the taxonomic equivalent to silly putty. It can be stretched any which way. We need it to be so to deal with the vast inequalities of our society.

"If you pull in $400,000 a year you aren't middle class, you're rich."

This is from the character Gordon Gecko, in the 1987 movie "Wall Street":

"Wake up, will ya, pal? If you're not inside, you're outside, okay? And I'm not talking a $400,000 a year working Wall Street stiff flying first class and being comfortable, I'm talking about liquid. Rich enough to have your own jet. Rich enough not to waste time. Fifty, a hundred million dollars, buddy. A player, or nothing. Now, you had what it took to get into my office; the real question is whether you got what it takes to stay."

https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Wall_Street_(1987_film)

Wealthy people live on capital. That is a traditional definition of what it means to be wealthy. If you have to work, at all, then you are not wealthy.

> If you pull in $400,000 a year you aren't middle class, you're rich. Accept it.

In the simplest form, in a basically capitalist economy, if you live off the proceeds of selling labor to capitalists, you are working class; if you live off a balanced mix of labor and capital income, or by applying your own labor to your own capital, you are middle class; if you live by renting other people's labor to apply to your capital, you are in the capitalist class.

Just as in a feudal economy, no amount of income will, by itself, move one from the merchant class to the nobility (though it might help buy influence which might be used to effect such a transition), no amount of income on its own will move you out of the working class in a capitalist economy, though investing that income in productive capital might.

$200k yearly, consistently, for N years, managed well, is almost certainly rich. 200k yearly without any further context doesn't say as much. Yearly income, by itself, may be here today and gone tomorrow (or next year).

Calling someone rich is just like calling someone an alcoholic. It's defined by the person that [makes $1 more/has one more drink] than me.

>I didn't have an upper middle class background.

Then you're an exception. If you came from a poor and uneducated background then congratulations on the climb but pretending that your story is an example of the average experience of the doctorate just isn't true ("The other students I met had similar stories and backgrounds"), even if those going through phd programs don't all have wealthy families, they commonly have family members who have done same thing which is a privilege all in it's own, one you can't even buy.

>I had none. I used none.

>I built it. I poured blood, sweat, and tears into it. No one helped elevate me above others.

You'll forgive me but everyone has had help.

>Only people who don't really know, who haven't experienced this first hand, who haven't interacted with the people actually going through this, could call this "privilege". The rest of us call it hard work, nose to the grind stone, luck, and the intelligence to capitalize on this luck, by recognizing a path to take advantage of this.

Oh boy here we go. Yeah like I said getting a medical degree is hard work, nose to the grindstone, luck and intelligence, all this stuff. Why is it that wealthy kids are vastly over-represented though? There's obviously additional components - the ability to get your kids into a good highschool, parents who have the time to devote a lot of attention to their kids, parents who have gotten a graduate degree themselves and so can better guide someone through it. There's all sorts of other privileges too, being interested in the right things, maybe even at the right time is a great example. Privileges are all around us. Maybe you really are a Horatio Alger story jumped off the page, if so recognize that you're the vast minority.

You lucked out going to school in the 90’s for one thing when it was a lot more affordable. You lucked out being born in the US. You lucked out getting a big brain.

I lucked out too but I realize it.

I read New Scientist and sometimes psychology research is mentioned there and given credence.

How on earth is: "lips smacking, mouth open, drool at the corners of their mouths" science? By that I mean, it is not the sort of thing I would expect to see in a paper unless there were photographs of the effect as evidence.

Does this raise any questions for you about the objectivity of the study author?

I also spent about 10 minutes reading the relevant section of that review. Agree with your assessment. The measure is 'number of cookies eaten' broken down by whether or not the person was a randomly chosen leader and their gender. For men, the number of cookies eaten was about the same for leaders and non-leaders. For women, leaders ate about 1.35 cookies on average and non-leaders about 0.8 cookies. I don't much care for significance testing, but it would be nice to know the number of participants and the variance in the measure. The researcher characterizes this as 'in almost every instance' the leader ate the extra cookie to some publications, and as 2/3rds of the time the leader ate the extra cookie to NPR.

"From that, here's the actual paper."

I included the paper, the precise link, in my OP.