Harming others for "being fair"

Tamarind wrote an interesting post about 5 minutes vs principles. I would not address pointless arguments over "what to do with racists" (/ignore) or "is the 1000 DPS guy is ungeared or just a lazy idiot?" (I am in full blue gear doing 2.2K unbuffed).

But his final "problem" cries for goblinish reply. He refused to rez someone because "he was lazy not running in". He was kicked of course and was outraged over it.

Before someone gets me wrong I'm not protecting AFK-ink during group play or not accepting res because of AFK. The "everyone runs in" is often a policy used to prevent people going AFK and causing 5 extra mins lost until everyone accepts rez. I'm talking about the thing literally: people don't run in but do something else (maybe analyzing the wipe cause, maybe doing something AFK but getting back in time).

If I'm the only rez-capable, I have to run anyway. Others are running or not does not make my run shorter or less annoying. However social people have the belief that making others suffer just to be fair is good, even if no one wins. If I get influenza, let's infect everyone else too!

I gladly rez them. It's better for me if they chilled a little, maybe discussed who messed it up, than make them run, be more annoyed and mess it up again. This is another example when being "fair" cause nothing but harm without any gain to anyone.

This ape-subroutine is called "Inequity aversion", and it's literally an ape-subroutine as it is observed among monkeys. The typical test of it is the following: there are two test persons (actually it's enough if the second is the test person, the first can be researcher in disguise). The researcher put money to the table and the first guy splits it among himself and the second. The second person cannot affect the split but can reject the deal. This case the researcher takes all the money back. Most experiments show that people use to reject "unfair" splits (typically below 25%). Let's think again: they reject the gift of the researcher just to prevent the first person from getting a larger gift.

Like all ape-subroutines, it was useful once upon a time. People (and apes) lived in small groups, in both cooperation and competition with each other. Inequity aversion is obviously good in a 1v1 situation, imagine that in a PvP duel you get a small buff and your opponent a big one. You are definitely better off without the buffs.

However as the group size increases, the inequity aversion becomes more and more harmful. I mean if you are in a free for all PvP with X and Y and you reject a change that would give X 3 units of power and you 1, you gained 2 relative power to X and -1 relative power to Y. If there are n competitors, you gain 2 relative power to X and -1*(n-1) relative power "to the others".

We are in a near-infinite sized group. Inequity aversion absolutely make you no good. You can start getting rid of it by rezzing people in instances. Or, by not screwing up on glyph monopolists if you are not a camper yourself. I have one in my server. He buys out some glyphs and relists at 40G. I could easily destroy his business by listing 100 glyphs for 12-13G. But why? He buys out my 6-8 glyphs for market price (18-20g). He get better gains than me, but I still get parts from his work. If I'd destroy his monopoly, the prices would be 8-10G.

Always look at your gain, and don't envy the greater gain of others! As long as you get more than the average of the group, the deal is fine!

Sunk cost fallacy

Today's analysis is about another psychological bias (ape-subroutine) that can make your profits go away.

You made some investment on something. This investment cannot be unmade. For example you leveled inscription after reading it somewhere that it's a money-printing factory. You spent 2000G in herbs, books and opportunity cost of your time.

Now you found that the idea is maybe not so good and you must make a decision to proceed or not. For example you found that there is an AH camper who undercuts you as soon as you log out. Your original plan was to sell a few "hot" glyphs for every class around 30G, buying out cheaper ones if necessary. You obviously can't do that with the camper around. You can go deep undercutter, juggling with 2000 glyphs, listing them around 4G and getting 2G profit on 400 sold in every 2 days. Or you can just abandon the idea and level some other profession.

The rational decision would be made between the following two options:

• I go deep undercutter accepting the lower profit/week
  
• I level another profession for 2000G
  

However the loss-aversive ape-subroutines make the victims to actually compare the following options:

• I go deep undercutter accepting the lower profit/week
  
• I level another profession for 2000G and lose the 2000G invested into inscription
  

Actually the money invested into inscription is already lost. Your situation is equal to the guy's who just bought an account on e-bay and found that the character has inscription. The fact that the first case you spent 2000G on inscription and in the second case you got it in the package with the gear you wanted to buy is irrelevant. Or should be.

Social people tend to not like obvious losses. By dropping inscription, you openly accept that it was a waste. If you keep doing a sub-optimal thing (working with lot of glpyhs for low G/week), you don't have to face with the loss. This is why it's hard to get rid of the 1c campers. It takes couple of weeks until they suffered enough to accept "defeat".

So social people keep throwing good money after bad, suffering high losses in invisible opportunity cost, rather writing down a one-time visible loss. You can use it against them, by dragging them into an investment with lies. After they are inside, they won't back off.

The same way, whenever you are about to make a decision, write down on a piece of paper all future costs and benefits. Without hard data, the ape-subroutines in your head add the already sunk costs to one of the options, forcing you to choose that one.

Leveling inscription

Inscription is the main goldmaking factory of most AH-players. It's extremely versatile, supporting practically all playstyles. It can be fire and forget sure 2K+/hour-semi-AFK tool of those who play little and you can squeeze 20K+/week if you play monopolist or 1c undercutter and camp the AH 24/7.

However everyone needs to start somewhere. Leveling inscription can be quite annoying. You have to craft glyphs or scrolls from inks made of low-level herbs. Good luck finding "Fadeleaf, Goldthorn, Khadgar's Whisker, or Wintersbite"! They run for 3-5G if there are any at all. If you passed that, the "Firebloom, Purple Lotus, Arthas' Tears, Sungrass, Blindweed, Ghost Mushroom, or Gromsblood" patch will surely finish you!

This happened with one of the members of the Undergeared guild, which is beyond 100 accounts by the way, and have more and more people close to lvl 80 and the blue raids. Since I forgot how was it to level, I helped him for free, but there is definitely a business opportunity here.

The trick is that the Northrend herbs are much cheaper than the mentioned and always available on the AH. And we have our beloved Jessica to get low level inks. Too bad that her wares are unavailable for low level scribes as they cannot create ink of the sea.

Here I came: as a high level scribe, I could easily get inks for the guildy, and he managed to pull his slvl 200 inscription to 350 in less then an hour, for minimal investment.

You can get to slvl 75 with recipes using peacebloom, silverleaf and earthroot which are usually available for coppers. You can mill Northrend herbs at slvl 350 making your own inks. You have to craft 275 low-level items, needing about 300-330 ink of the sea (due to 2-ink recipes and yellow recipes not giving skillup). Since sea is below 2G in material cost (+1G for your milling time), inscription is the cheapest-to-level profession if you have access to sea ink.

So for leveling people: check inks on the AH, but have no hopes. If there are any, they are shamelessly overpriced, targeted to guys who buy 1 ink to spam trade to find crafter. To have 300-330 inks, you'd better buy 64 stacks of simple Northrend herbs and spam trade "LF scribe to mill my herbs and make inks (64 stacks). Paying 100G for your work". With the inks in your bag you go to Jessica and buy your own.

If you are a high level scribe, you can list full stack of seas for 60G/stack. A leveling scribe will gladly buy them.

Oh, and don't forget to check the prices of glyphs before milling. Better get a few skillpoints using a green recipe that sells for 8G than using an orange, 2-inks recipe crafting 80s glyphs.

Walk away!

I promised some seriously wicked advice for today so here it comes! The post could not be created if William wouldn't send me a scientific study written by professor Brent T. White.

"Underwater loan" is something that has more to pay (without interest) than the loaned item worth. Typically it's housing. For example you bought a home for $400K, paid 50K cash and 40K loan capital. You have to pay $310K+interests more until the loan is over. However, due to the collapse of the housing market, a similar home is sold for $200K in your neighborhood. That make you $110K underwater. If you would pay the bank (310K) and sell your home (for 200K), you would have -110K.

Being underwater is not rare. In June 2009, more than 32% of all mortgaged properties in the U.S. were underwater. In some cities it's much higher. For example in Miami 70%!!! of the mortgages are underwater. Well, you might think "poor fellows", but they have an option!

Walking away aka "strategic default", meaning that the homeowner recognize that he's better off losing the "310K" home and buy or rent a similar home for 200K. The benefit is exactly 110K, and you can most easily see it if you assume that the guy has 200K. He can fully buy a new home, however if he stay in his old and give the 200K to the bank, the home will still have 110K loan.

The consequences of walking away vary by contract and country. In some cases the bank can take further values from you or pursue deficiency judgment. If you offered another home as security for the loan, they can take that too. However in most cases the bank can't take anything else than the underwater home and you suffer no other consequence than a ruined credit report. However it's only yours, your girlfriend or parents can still get a loan (with their good credit) and you can live there.

However most people don't walk away from their loans. According to the study, the defaults and foreclosures are not related to underwater ratio (if the city has 2x more underwater loans, it doesn't have 2x more defaults). The defaults are related to unemployment mostly, meaning that the people default only when they have no money and not when it would be a smart move.

Why? The article give several reasons. The most obvious is being bad at math. To calculate the exact profit of walking away one has to handle several factors like taxes, the expected increase or decrease of the value of the home (if the other option is renting), the costs of the worse credit report, the legal costs and chance of legal consequences later and such. However this could be circumvented by visiting a financial advisor and a lawyer.

The first social explanation is "denial of failure". The homeowner refuses to accept that he made a huge mistake by buying the home for $400K. He refuses to notice that the real value of his home (the price he could sell it) is $200K. He hopes that the overall price fall of homes somehow does not apply to his "special snowflake" home. The home being his also adds emotional value, making him believe that it's somehow more valuable than a very similar home. They may also irrationally believe that home prices will return to their old value. (However even if it's true, he'd be better off abandoning the 310K home, buying a 200K since it will also worth 400K soon). In short, the homeowner finds it emotionally impossible to even acknowledge the fact that he is underwater.

The second reason is "morality". A referenced study (read the linked article for references, I'm lazy to link them all) says that 80% of homeowners consider it immoral to strategically default and morality of the owner is the strongest factor to predict if he will default when underwater or not. Only 17% said that they would default an 50%!! underwater loan. On the other hand if they had a friend who already defaulted or the government give help to the poor who are facing defaults their moral commitment to pay vanishes.

The third reason is "shame and guilt". The people are very much unlikely to default if other people will consider them immoral or irresponsible. The main reason people afraid of foreclosures is embarrassment and humiliation. Those who suffered foreclosures are very ashamed of themselves, considering themselves complete failures. On the other hand those who have high credit rate take pride on it. They believe that this will bring them respect and honor in the society, therefore they don't want to lose it. They believe that by defaulting they will lose part of their "human worth".

The forth reason is "fear", mostly from the above. Since he has not experienced foreclosure, he imagines it to be much-much worse than it actually is. He fears of the "terrible" consequences of having a bad credit report or a bad name in the neighborhood (despite he will obviously not live there anymore). The reason for that is that socials believe that "immorality will be punished somehow", so if they strategically default (which is "immoral") they will be punished, mostly by the devastating effect of "ruined credit". The most obvious evidence for this fallacy is geographical pattern of defaults. If someone defaults, his neighbors will follow him, after seeing that it's not so bad. It leads to completely abandoned neighborhoods and completely intact ones, despite they are similar financially. This is the reason why governments give help to struggling homeowners. They save those who can't pay to prevent others from not wanting to pay.

The article quotes several governmental and media sources, including the US president who expressed their respect to those who keep paying and their contempt to those "speculators" (by Henry Paulson) who choose to default to get away from an underwater loan. The officials make huge effort to create social norms to prevent strategic defaults. These messages are mixtures of lies about the horrors of foreclosures and social pressure-nonsense (about responsibility, moral and "we belong to one group we must all make effort"). All these concerted media efforts are done for one purpose: to make the "little guys" bear all the damage of the real-estate balloon.

It was a balloon without doubt and everyone in the industry knew it. The normal price of a home is around 15 times higher than its annual rent. On the peak of home prices it was way above 20. The bankers knew it won't last. That's why they did not keep the mortgages for themselves but packed into non-transparent investments and sold them. These are the "poisoned papers". Note that the above mentioned "morals" and "values" do not apply to them. They don't have to take any responsibility for participating in the stupid buy, nor they have to act according to "we belong to one group we must all make effort".

Summary:

• Your loan might be underwater. Consult a financial advisor to determine the current value of your purchase (mostly home, but car markets also crashed).
• If you are underwater, you might better off walking away. Consult a lawyer about legal consequences in your country/state.
• If you are better off, do it!
• They will try to stop you by social nonsense, ranting about "responsibility" and "moral obligations". Give them a finger!

Of course if you walk away from 100K underwater loan, you not only save yourself 100K, you cause 100K damage to someone else. If it bothers you, you are a social, but even in this case you have no reason to worry! Who gets the damage? The bankers who:

• lured lot of uninformed customers into bad loans
• supported and advertised obviously bad purchases
• sold the bad equities to other uninformed people in poisoned papers
• "convinced" the politicians to bail them out on the cost of the taxpayers
• paid themselves bonuses after all this.

Do you really think that you have any moral obligations towards these people? May Sara's kind word echo in your ears when you make your call: "Let hatred and rage guide your blow!"

Mean guys of the week

This is the new Sunday column. From now on, the morons will be on Saturdays, exactly the 8 best, not more.

On Sundays you can see the 8 best "being mean with moron" posts. To have these post, I need you to send screenshots where you are (or other groupmember is) mean with M&S.

Rules:

• The target must do some group content with others (thereby forcing them to boost him). HC, raid or BG. If he is soloing as a 0/71/0 holy nova priest, it's his $15.
  
• The target must be lvl 80 or must have heirloom items, proving that he is not new to the game. Every hunter did melee before lvl10.
• The target must do something stupid or useless, not carrying his weight. If he purposefully does something you don't like (for example some achievement in a BG), it doesn't qualify. Nor if he is good enough for the content, for example a new lvl 80 in enchanted-gemmed quest rewards doing 1500DPS in an old HC, even if he is below the tank. It's not him being bad, it's the tank being overgeared and Blizzard being lazy rewarding i245 players going to to i200 places instead of making i245 places.
  
• You (or some other groupmember) must confront the target calling him out on his non-performance.
• You (or the other groupmember) must do it in a civilized, error-focused manner, so "you suck cock n00b lol" doesn't fly.
• He must not accept your advice or promise to fix his mistakes. If he does, he might be ignorant, but not a moron.
• The more primitive he is, the better, but you must not sink to his level. So profanities, racism or mentioning his relatives on your side are forbidden.
• Evidence must be provided in form of screenshot and armory link of the moron. The names of possible witnesses (the other guys in the group) must not be blanked out.
• You can also not be anonymous, must not blank your name out either.
• If you get him kicked from the group or make him ignore you, it greatly increase the chance that your picture get into the top 8 therefore to the blog.
  

Morons of the week 2

CPI of Warsong-US got the old trick: empty threats from a moron. However I don't get why he sent free arrows to the moron:

Another busy arrow monopolist, with a fitting guildname (by Repaxan):

One would think that price fixing primordial saronite is bad idea after Blizzard announced increased droprate. But hey, it's a free world, one can voice his opinion (by Thedeuce)!


Do you know why bank alts are guildless? Because dirty tricks ruined their reputations so no decent group would take them! Or maybe because they are bank alts (by Vernichtung, US-Gorganash)

It was a long time when I saw something like that. I thought that at least the MMO-champion article removed them. But they are here (by Nicholas):

Morons of the week

Another holiday, another extra morons of the week. However this weekend is the last when there are so many morons of the week. From next week, there will be only one "morons" post, on Saturday, with the best 6 moron. On Sundays there will be a new fun column!

This forum topic belongs here on its own as it's definitely written by a moron. But the real funny is one of the commenters signature: "Support bacteria! They are the only culture some people have."

I received 45 e-mails with people buying arrows/bullets or complaining about "being scammed". Please don't send these, everyone already doing it and can see the same on his own screen! Also don't send "dumb engineer undercuts 100 stack with 1000". You may still send "dumb monopolist buys up 10*100 for 10*8G to relist it for 1*15" or really good moron complains. If he simply writes "u shit fuk u scamed me" is boring!

Ingenious move from Anti. If people buy 100 arrows for the price of 1000, why not selling them single herbs for the price of a stack?

The lamest M&S letter. Ever. I hope David shown it to a GM too:

Metalladin of Emerald Dream US is lucky as Doti was nice enough to educate him and the whole audience of /trade about the proper way of undercutting:

Topaz,Genjuros-EU seems to be on a quest to beat the record of "highest profit on selling easily available vendor stuff". And as bonus, he sold it all to the same genius!

Kaaterina-Twilight's Hammer found a pretty strange moron. He seems to get the idea of selling ice cold milk. But he got it all wrong. Why?
- Listing milk: 1 sec
- Returning mail: 1 sec
- Waiting after a page: 30 secs/50 = 0.6 sec.
Alltogether: 2.6 secs. The vendor price is 20c, so the profit is 20c/2.6 secs = 2.77 G/hour. Even if he list and receives semi-AFK spending only 0.5 sec/milk, he has 14.4G/hour. As Kaaterina adequately put, "one can get more gold by killing kobolds in Elwynn Forest for Linen Cloth"

Forthewin of Spinebreake-EU can still sell the new vendor pets. I can't imagine how can anyone be so stupid to fall for this trick:

The moron who buys his own arrows to fix the price is an evergreen (by Lepeck):
If the healer have more HP than the tank, that's a problem. If he also does't have shield and has int/spi head, that's a moron. If the DPS has less AP than the tank, that's another one. If someone like Reszka of Azuremyst EU meet both in a HC, that's bad luck, but great fun for the readers of this column.