You can destroy others’ value intentionally, but only in extreme circumstances where you’re not thinking right or have self-destructive tendencies can you “intentionally” destroy your own value. But then we hardly describe the choices such people make as “intentional”. Eg the self-destructive person doesn’t “intend” to lose their friends by not paying back borrowed money. And those gambling at the casino, despite not thinking right, can’t be said to “intend” to lose all their money, though they “know” the chances they’ll succeed.
To complete your argument, ‘and therefore the action has some deadweight loss associated with it, meaning its destroying value’.
But note that by the same logic, any economic activity destroys value, since you are also not homo economicus when you buy ice cream, and there will likely be smarter things you can do with your money, or better deals. Therefore buying ice cream, or doing anything else destroys value.
But that is absurd, and we clearly don’t have a so broad definition of “destroy value”. So your argument proves too much.
If you are destroying something you own, you would value the destruction of that thing more than any other use you have for that thing and any price you could sell it for on the market, so this creates value in the sense that there is no deadweight loss to the relevant transactions/actions.
1An ice cream today will give you a smile. Tomorrow you will have a higher frame of reference and be disappointed with a lack of sweets. The total joy from ice cream is zero on average.
The studies which are usually cited in support of this effect show nowhere near this level of hedonic treadmill. I suggest you read them (you can probably ask Claude for the recs here).
The Marubo, a 2,000-member tribe in the Brazilian Amazon, recently made headlines: they received Starlink in September 2023. Within 9 months, their youth stopped learning traditional body paint and jewelry making, young men began sharing pornographic videos in group chats (in a culture that frowns on public kissing), leaders observed "more aggressive sexual behavior," and children became addicted to short-form video content. One leader reported: "Everyone is so connected that sometimes they don't even talk to their own family."
Note that the tribe in question is suing the New York Times over that article, and indeed the New York Times issued a retraction (or, well, as close as they can come to a retraction, as the original article never actually claimed any members of the tribe were "addicted to porn" only that some minors watched it).
This obviously doesn't show the original reporting is garbage, but it does seem pretty important to note here.
Of course this is now used as an excuse to revert any recent attempts to improve the article.
From reading the relevant talk-page it is pretty clear those arguing against the changes on these bases aren’t exactly doing so in good faith, and if they did not have this bit of ammunition to use they would use something else, but then with fewer detractors (since clearly nobody else followed or cared about that page).
any shocking or surprising result in your own experiment is 80% likely to be a bug until proven otherwise. your first thought should always be to comb for bugs.
I will add: 80% likely to be a bug, or a result from random-matrix theory.
A post is coming! I will get future posts out earlier in the future, sorry.
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I can think of reasons why some would be wary, and am waried of something which could be called “meme poisoning” myself when I watch moves, but am curious what kind of meme poisoning you have in mind here.