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Donating forks to the dining hall

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Re: Donating forks to the dining hall

#101

Post by yard2010 »

cenamus wrote: post #94
wjnc wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don’t tell me “fork” and “four” are related. Did my homework: “Old English forca, force (denoting a farm implement), based on Latin furca ‘pitchfork, forked stick’; reinforced in Middle English by Anglo-Norman French furke (also from Latin furca ).” Four in Latin is quattuor. Scared me there.

However, Latin quattuor and english four are related through the PIE word kʷetwóres, as basically all words for 4 in indoeuropean languages are

In my humble linguistics experience where there's smoke there's fire - many new languages words that sound similar may have and common abstract ancestor in one of the old proto languages

Re: Donating forks to the dining hall

#102

Post by teekert »

roydivision wrote: post #98
teekert wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's tongue in cheek, it's fun, it's a nice experiment, everybody wins. I don't like it how people suggest altruism should always amount to zero (or even negative!) benefit to the person doing all the giving of value. It's not how altruism should work. Are you only a true altruist if you go to help some poor kids in some poor country and hate every second of it? If so, I'm against altruism, it's something for sociopa…

Definition of altruism - "Unselfish concern for the welfare of others; selflessness." To be clear - I'm not at all against doing good things for others and getting recognition for it, there's nothing wrong with that. But that's not altruism.

Yeah I also found that: "Instinctive behavior that is detrimental to the individual but favors the survival or spread of that individual's genes, as by benefiting its relatives."

Doesn't that just sound plain evil?

I mean, I can imagine sacrificing myself for relatives, especially for my kids and I wouldn't consider it detrimental to my own interests. In fact, knowingly letting my kids die while I could have prevented it by giving my own life sounds like entering hell from that point forward... So altruism must be something particularly insidious and obnoxious. Does it really even exist? Seems like it would require a lot of indoctrination and cognitive dissonance.

Re: Donating forks to the dining hall

#103

Post by yard2010 »

marssaxman wrote: post #47

I love this spirit. In the office where I work, the main door locks whenever it closes, so the first person to arrive each morning props the door open for everyone else. Well, a new tenant moved in to one of the other units, and they started taking our doorstop. Morning after morning we had to go find it and retrieve it, for weeks! One day it occurred to me that I didn't have to complain to management, or get mainten…

Imagine how nice it would be the other way around

When management realizes they don't need to complain that the work doesn't get done, they just do the work themselves

Re: Donating forks to the dining hall

#104

Post by michaelt »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #91
eternauta3k wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought the solution to the tragedy of the commons was institutions: we need a 1000-year old socially-enforced tradition of shunning hoarders and assigning dishwasher duty. Your solution sounds easier, though.

In a closed system, you could grow the commons until there's no scarcity anymore, and thus no tragedy either. This stops working once some "entrepreneur" figures your commons is their arbitrage opportunity, and opens the system to the outside world.

> In a closed system, you could grow the commons until there's no scarcity anymore

I don't know what your definition of "closed system" is, but I can assure you the only way the dining hall gets more forks is if they enter the system from outside. Unless it's a dining hall at a fork factory :)

Re: Donating forks to the dining hall

#105

Post by gravescale »

eternauta3k wrote: post #77
ggm wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your idea is good. Marking them in a non-intrusive (to function) way would serve to make it clear this is communal property. But, in essence we don't care, and I also think its not always wonton theft, I know I've shed spoons into the waste bin being uncareful.

I'm not judging, but how exactly does that happen? Does the spoon fall into the trash while you're discarding something and you don't want to pick it up? Or do you throw out a container and miss that it had a spoon inside?

In a common area, drunk people and children sloppily doing a chore they don't want to, I should think. And depending on how grotty users of the space are, people leaving cutlery in dirty piles of crap for others to clear up, and the others don't see the hiding cutlery. The cleaners in my old university accommodation would remove dirty dishes to a box outside called the Stank Tank as it wasn't their job to do student washing up. After a month, it was binned or scavenged and a lot fancier stuff than a teaspoon was in there!

I can't say I've thrown away a spoon knowingly myself, but I have dropped cutlery in the bin once or twice. I haven't ever abandoned it but you can imagine people might if they don't value it. And based on the university, some people would happily lose a £30 pan rather than reach into the Stank Tank, so I can believe it.

Re: Donating forks to the dining hall

#106

Post by uyzstvqs »

cjs_ac wrote: post #97

My first teaching job was at an old, prestigious boys' boarding school in Australia. (When I say old , it was old for Australia.) Every boy, whether a boarder or day-boy, and every staff member received a hot lunch in the dining halls each day. There were two dining halls: most of the boys at in the less ornate one, but the oldest boys and the staff ate in the more formal dining hall. Portraits of all the previous he…

You call it old, but this sounds like quality secondary education far above almost everything available today, at least here across Western Europe, which is 99.9% read book, then do test. The fact that you teached ecology using actual plants and the outside amazes me, even though it shouldn't and should just be the norm.

Re: Donating forks to the dining hall

#107

Post by pjc50 »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #91
eternauta3k wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought the solution to the tragedy of the commons was institutions: we need a 1000-year old socially-enforced tradition of shunning hoarders and assigning dishwasher duty. Your solution sounds easier, though.

In a closed system, you could grow the commons until there's no scarcity anymore, and thus no tragedy either. This stops working once some "entrepreneur" figures your commons is their arbitrage opportunity, and opens the system to the outside world.

Ooh, you could start "forkr.com", a just-in-time peer-to-peer fork leasing service!

Re: Donating forks to the dining hall

#108

Post by probably_wrong »

yareal wrote: post #74
rtpg wrote: post #66

There are so many problems that are solved by ones own money, and people not being jerks about it. I think a lot about how some bus stops will just have chairs that people leave there to offer seating when the city decided not to put any.

This is called mutual aid, and is one of the fundamental underpinnings to anarchist theory. People will help each other, generally, if doing so is not too much of a burden on themselves. Systematizing that behavior into genuine community support for one another would (hypothetically) lead to outcomes of increased wellbeing for all. In your example, the person who left out the chairs isn't worried about being paid bac…

I recognize I'm completely ignorant about this topic so I have to ask: how does the theory fit within the story in the post?

If I understand you correctly, mutual aid theory explains the author buying cheap forks just to do something good. At the same time, in the absence of penalties people will steal forks until barely any remains. So why should one believe that the balance will favor the fork buyers more than the fork stealers?

Re: Donating forks to the dining hall

#109

Post by gravescale »

nomel wrote: post #84
dylan604 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It hasn't worked for banks and all the various ways they've tried to keep pens from walking off, nor gas station bathroom keys. In effort you expend is ultimately wasted, as someone that wants to take will take and someone that is unawares they accidentally disposed of the utensil will not be stopped by any of the attempts. However if it makes you feel good and you enjoy the time spend over a weekend doing it, by all…

No, there are effective methods. One is to attach a giant fake flower into it.

Or make the pen a T-shaped or something. It does write on things but who wants an annoying pen that doesn't fit properly in a drawer and it difficult to do anything other than scribble a signature?

Some people also sloppily spray bikes with pink spray paint because then it's pretty much unsaleable. So all you have to worry about are the vandals who just want to ruin someone's day.

Re: Donating forks to the dining hall

#110

Post by gravescale »

roydivision wrote: post #98
teekert wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's tongue in cheek, it's fun, it's a nice experiment, everybody wins. I don't like it how people suggest altruism should always amount to zero (or even negative!) benefit to the person doing all the giving of value. It's not how altruism should work. Are you only a true altruist if you go to help some poor kids in some poor country and hate every second of it? If so, I'm against altruism, it's something for sociopa…

Definition of altruism - "Unselfish concern for the welfare of others; selflessness." To be clear - I'm not at all against doing good things for others and getting recognition for it, there's nothing wrong with that. But that's not altruism.

At the very least altruism brings some kind of positive feeling, be it personal happiness to see others benefit or some feeling of social or even religious duty fulfilled, even if completely privately and never mentioned to another living soul. I don't think any altruism can be said to be utterly without some kind of benefit to the altruist.
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