I watched a documentary on people like this such gems included;

A man who worked for a pharmaceutical company lived in his van because it's closer to work and saves money, seriously not even a big van its tiny as hell and barely has room to sleep in it. He showers for free at the gym that's included in his company or some crap, seriously messed up.

Another was a woman and older man who shared bath water and only bathed once a week, after they were done they used the water in the bath to flush the toilet. She also accidentally dropped toilet paper in the toilet (full roll) and hung it up in individual strips in her conservatory until they were dry.

If anyone's interested I could probably track it down.

Are the guests expected to bring gifts for a wedding like that?

that's assuming your partner will choose A or B with the same likelihood. which typically is not the case in these types of questions.

I think you're reading it wrong.

Suppose your partner writes an A. You write an A, you get an F. You write a B, you get an F.

Now suppose your partner writes a B. You write a B, you get a B. You write an A, you get an A.

So it's best to write A as long as you think there is some positive (even an extremely small) probability your partner will write B.

Sorry to hear that

yes his reasoning is horrible, but if everyone in the class knows what you put then I wouldnt want to be the guy that put A and caused someone else to fail. I think the value in avoiding that is greater than the difference between an A and a B.

I dont believe that this alone was a significant exam grade though. Maybe for 5, 4, or 0 bonus points or something, but a teacher that would fail a student for something like this is not going to be a teacher for long and theres no way the grade would stand if you went to the dean.

Yes, agreed on both parts. I could just imagine what would happen if it were any significant (or even insignificant) chunk of a students' grade. Bonus, ok, but if it's part of the 'base' grade, well...

rationalizing is a powerful force

-arbitrarily isolate a fabricated 'estimate' of the cost of the soda, neglecting the costs of the storefront, advertising, utilities, machine maintenance, etc
-cite the (nebulous) value of your 'business relationship' with them. theft and symbiotic relationship contradict one another

people often elect not to tip bartenders for opening a bottle of beer or other service people for some act that they reduce to the exact time of the interaction between server/servee. to stifle their own sense of guilt, they frequently rationalize aloud - i am not assigning this logic to them. it's very convenient to forget that the bartender spends an entire shift available to serve you and hours before and after stocking the fridge and ice bins, washing glasses, cutting fruit and so on, since the specific thing you wanted was a sliver of time.

unfortunately for these customers and for you, that which you seek to isolate does not exist in an economic vacuum.

Stealing soda is clearly unethical, not tipping is not unethical. A douche move perhaps, but being a douche isn't unethical. People can rationalize why they aren't a douche I guess.

/end slight tip sidebar

Also remember, this thread is discussing about being cheap or stingy, going to great lengths or utter insanity to save a few pennies. A person not wanting to spend many thousands of dollars on their wedding is not cheap or stingy. Weddings are one area people are total fish when it comes to money management. While asking people to brown bag it is a bit much in the other direction, striving to keep your wedding from costing 10K+ is smart.

QFMFT. i don't think i could have come up with a better explanation myself.

It's common for people to undervalue what they feel that a service given to them is worth. Yet those same people, were they to give even a menial service, feel entitled to a greater reward than that job seems to deserve.

Stealing is committing a crime, not being stingy. People who think they're not stealing when they take soda from a fountain without paying for it are delusional. It doesn't matter how much it costs. I bet you ******s wouldn't think of stealing a can of soda, or a coat from a department store, would you? It's the same thing.

I think it's cheap. $2 for half an hour work is below my going rate. In this particular instance I'd rather get no money than $2. At least if I got nothing I could imagine the lady was grateful.

$2 is really weird. How old was she?

It makes perfect sense. They are risk averse. Losing money hurts more than gaining an equivalent amount helps. Their utility curves are much different from yours.

I once had a friend go back to the counter at Taco Bell because they charged him for a large water ($.25) instead of a small ($.10) to get the difference back.

i guess it would have been better to not give anything at all.. i can see how it is an insult.. but on the same token i really truly would not expect anything... not the same but similar... when i was working a lady had left an envelope with 2k on the front counter unbeknown to anyone the next customer came in and grrr took it... i remember seeing him with the envelope but didnt think anything of it...

anyway lady comes in frantic saying its her rent money and her husband will kill her blah blah blah.. i felt terrible for her... so i go into the cameras and find out who took the envelope then from pure memory went back 6 months to find the customers contract and it took about 3 hours of my time finally finding the guys name and number... so i call him and have to talk him into bringing it in saying the woman will be evicted if not returned and gave him outs as if he didnt know i basically said man u probably just picked it up thinking it was yours without thinking about it... i do the same thing sometimes... he was like yeah and my wife banks there... haha so i gave the guy outs.. he returns it and the lady thanked me wanted to give me a hundo but i refused and the next day she brought me lunch... which made me feel special.

Just feel good that you did the right thing man..

and probably fat too... i can understand a fat guy not wanting to stand up an extra 2 minutes pumping more gas... not silly man i perfectly understand. its tough on the knees being so round. but its funny cause we will stand on line at dunkin donuts for 1 hour and 45 minutes to get some more fat tho mirite?

this is a very good example of poor ethics and classless upbringing.

This is the correct conclusion if you look at the payoffs of each pair of choices. If you give an A five points and an F zero points, then picking A averages 2.5 and picking a B averages 2. It's interesting though that if you look at the total grade of both players in each situation, only (A,B),(B,A),(A,A) all are 5 while (B,B) is 6.

So in a vacuum, A is the correct strategy. The implications though of doing this are that at least one person must fail when you pick A. Given an environment where these situations would come up more than once, picking B would become a necessity for both.

Psychologically I feel like it's natural for more people to want to pick B. When benefiting x amount causes someone else to lose not just that amount, but a large multiple of it, I think the idea of how both people are affected comes into play more.

Yes, I know (and agree, I think...) with all this. There's a lot of stuff on repeated games and behavioral economics that talks about this sort of stuff. I was assuming a one-off sort of situation, since I don't think this comes up too often, and I was replying to someone mis-analyzing the one-off type situation (at least I think that's what they were talking about) from a selfish point of view.

The point I was making is that the amounts aren't equivalent, or even close. Also, it's not restricted to limiting gains, they spend money on stupid stuff. Granted, the specific examples I gave didn't really make this latter point.

I know you were, just wanted to expand on the idea.

If anyone is interested in game theory, Yale has an awesome online lecture series of an actual course.

http://academicearth.org/courses/game-theory

Please do post a link if you find it.

Seriously how are you not banned yet

What a douche.

You're the kind of guy who finds about 30 "causes" per year to take a moral stand on, then can't understand why nobody likes him.

Is it cheap if I order a medium soda, fill it up at the self serve and drink 1/3 of it while waiting for my to go sandwich, then top off my soda before I leave?

I do this all the time and always just figured that's the deal if they give you the self serve. Am I an ass?

am i not allowed to say i am fat? cause its true and im not ashamed..i dont care i will tell the whole world im lazy and will pay extra money for a guy to pump my gass for me but i will wait in line at dunkin donuts for an hour to get some good sweet donuts and coffee... why should i be banned because im fat? you have something against fat people? dont you know we are the best finger ****ers in the world... i could do some serious damage with my index finger.... once i almost killed a girl.. well i mean since she had a vagina i guess that makes her a girl.. but yes agreed the beard kind of threw me for a loop. and after getting some strong index finger action i was too pooped to get my but hole banged back.. pooped haha get it no pun intended seriously. hey im a giver not a taker... i get pleasure in giving bearded girls finger bangs of their life and please dont culling me for it.