A Youtube personality had his wallet stolen, so he decided to turn his bad fortune into an experiment to find the most honest cities and the least honest cities. He used 200 wallets and actually did a great job at controlling the experiment for possible bias.
He then reveals his findings, finds out the most dishonest city and then summarizes the experiment with the Pollyanna view that “everyone is beautiful and honest,” glossing over the city that came in dead last.
While the experiment had really good controls for bias, he doesn’t, saying he was “really rooting” for the city that came in last “to do better.”
Why?
What would that motivation be? And when the experiment yielded some harsh realities about the city he was rooting for, why didn’t he have the guts to “go there” with his analysis?
Most people, but especially those who feel they are more open in their (fuckit, they’re liberal sjw’s), find getting slapped in the face with the Cold, Dead Carp of Reality very uncomfortable.
1. He is standing on a set that looks like a fake workshop. It looks like what somebody like him would think a workshop looks like. He does not look or sound like the type to have one, sorry. It maybe shouldn’t but that taints the whole thing for me.
2. He really wants me to put even odds on putting a lost wallet in a mailbox for it to get returned? Mail gets buried in backyards, burned in many cities of just stolen by USPS workers.
Atlanta sock off
Soy boy.
And then he plugs Neil Degrass Tyson.
Why not try dropping them in south central LA, Harlem,S. Philly, Kansas City, southside Chicago, or any number of other heavily getto’d areas around this country and test your philosophy?
@ATL, yep, that’s what hit me right off, nobody who works in a workshop has one that looks like that.
Fake from start to end.
You really had to experiment?
Empirical evidence would have shown the same without all the expense and time.
You just couldn’t admit, people like you suck.
Studies show, studies reflect the beliefs of those doing the studies.
If You drop Your Wallet in San Fran You’re supposed to kick it
into the next County so Youse can pick it up witout’ getting
Sodomized…..
I found a wallet at a phone booth once.
Since the cop shop was on my way, I dropped it off.
Cop seemed really surprised.
Always wondered if the cash in the wallet also made it back to the owner.
Funny, I read a similar article a couple of days ago about climate skeptics vs. global warmists (was it here?): https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2018/may/7/climate-skeptics-more-eco-friendly-global-warming-/
The last time I lost my wallet, it was at a community carnival. It had all of about $8 in it. I was more upset at needing to cancel cards, go to the DMV, etc.
I thought for sure it was gone. I started the process of recovering cards and identification. Then I got a call from the county sheriff a day or two later. The sheriff’s office said they were concerned about returning my pilot credentials. I thought for sure the wallet had been stripped, however, when I arrived it was completely intact including the $8!
He’d have given more informative information if he would have researched in which cities around the country have the most wallets stolen. That’s info the country could use instead.
I have a friend who does commercial fishing in Newport Oregon, twice he left his wallet on top of his truck, once with 8k and once 6k in it. He was sure no one would return it the first time, nobody would do that? But his wife insisted they pray about it. It was returned. Then the second time he was a little more agreeable to praying about it, got it back then too.
I think most people at this site would return lost money or wallet like that, most conservatives would.
“A clean bench is the sign of a sick mind”
He’s annoyingly girlish on camera, with all the boy-raised-by-single-Mom mannerisms, overanimated inflections, wagging bobble head, and frenetic hand gestures.
Pretty flawed “experiment”.
I don’t really believe this kid organized all those volunteer strangers, who carried out his elaborate instructions faithfully, and I don’t believe strangers calling the number in his wallet actually answered 8 (!) invasive personal questions about their religion, income, etc.
Even assuming any of his claims are real, there’s nothing of value in the wallets to tempt anyone to keep them. Six bucks USD, plus some worthless Filipino pesos? There’s no credit cards, no actual ID anyone could use. All fake.
It’s pretty easy to feel virtuous when you find a shabby wallet with only $6 and a phone number to call.
If he’d put in some Platinum Visa cards, or $300 in twenties, that’s more of a temptation.
Saw a poll of Millenials not long ago asking whether they would return, or keep, a brand new iPhone. The majority said they would keep it, even though the owner’s info was readily visible. Their various rationalizations for keeping it were interesting; from “he can afford this, he can afford to replace it” to “the Universe wants me to have this”.
One time in Nairobi I saw a homeless Kenyan street person (the “alleyway people”) make an enormous effort to find the owner of a lost wallet with the equivalent of $20. That took more honesty and moral character, in his circumstances, than for any First Worlder to turn in $100,000 in unmarked bills.
When I lived in Oakland, CA while in college, one literally couldn’t turn ones back on a decent unlocked bicycle for more than 3 seconds without risking some crackhead scumbag jumping on it an riding away. I remember having a routine where I always kept one hand on my bike or leaned against it while I was locking it up, and if I wasn’t riding it, it was locked up with a long thick cable through the frame and both tires. I’d have to take the seat with me because some asshole would steal that too. If you dropped anything of value, it was gone. No one gave a shit either. Berkeley, CA was just as bad.
On the other hand, 20 years later, when I was living in West Des Moines, IA, I once lost my license & credit card on a bike ride and didn’t even know it until some 12 year old boys (white… natch) knocked on my door and told me they found them on the local bike path. Offered them each $20 for their troubles and they refused… Iowa.
I left my wallet in a Ralph’s shopping cart in the parking lot in the Culver city area of CA in the late 90s and when I realized it and retraced my steps they had it at the store. However, I once had my wallet stolen out of my purse in a locked office in Beverly Hills. So my co-workers were less honest.
Oh, dang, you’re not going to tell me the city? You’re going to make me watch the video? Shucks.
I was at one of the DC airports and left my wallet in the ladies room. I didn’t realize I had left it and was quite a ways down the concourse, when the cleaning lady came running after me to return it. I was so stunned, I kinda stood there for a few seconds, then thought I should offer her a reward. I looked all around, and she was nowhere to be found. I wanted to cry.
Mid-80s I was just out of college and found a wallet in Westwood. Tracked down the owner, who was a punk rock ‘star’ I hadn’t heard of, and returned it. I think there was $5 in the wallet but a larger amount wouldn’t have changed anything.
Found a wallet with $165 bucks in it last year, belonged to a college student. Told my troops about it and told them that is was going to be returned to it’s owner. Could we use that extra cash? Sure that will fill up the tank quite a few times. BUT…
Ya see I have to LOOK at my troops in the eye at the end of each day/battle.
I gave it to a friend that worked in admin at the young college to seek him out and give back.
Turns out? My friend told me he was an ungrateful (c)uck.
Still doesn’t change what I would do when/if there is a next time…
The only wallet I ever found (in a shithouse – full of money) belonged to a co-worker. I was sorely disappointed that I couldn’t steal the money, but I didn’t – it seemed, I don’t know … somehow … immoral (since I knew the guy).
Anyway, he got his wallet back and I got to feel all “superior” for 15 seconds or so.
izlamo delenda est …
One problem I noted with his experiment is that there is no way to interview the people who kept the wallet. For example 40% of those who returned the wallet were “not religious” and 60% were religious (he calls it a draw). But I am more curious about those who kept it.
And by the way, at least here locally, I would NEVER drop a found wallet in a mailbox. Our local post office has theives on staff; wallet would likely never get to it’s owner.
Won’t bother watching the video but did he divide dem-run and repub-run cities evenly? Suburban vs. Urban? High income vs. low income? White vs non-white? In other words, was this a real test or one that confirmed his political biases?
@Rufus T Firefly May 11, 2018 at 10:39 am
Yeah, that’s a girly-boy. A product of one of America’s outstanding institutions of higher learning, no doubt.
His method is flawed by having a phone number in the wallets. That made it easy for people to return it. Without it, the number of wallets returned would be low and quite possibly zero. He stacked the deck to favor wallet return, and in fact could not have done the experiment without it, which makes the whole thing bogus from the get-go.
The hope for Detroit to have done better is bizarre. Similarly, he manages to bash rich people by claiming they are no more honest that poor people. If that’s a hypothesis he tested, i.e., rich and poor are no different in honesty, he did not clearly state that as a test.
I wonder how many people have phone numbers in their wallets. I don’t.
His sample seems to have been non-randomly selected, and not big enough. That makes it less than a good representative of the total population of towns and cities. There are between 20,000 and 30,000 towns and cities in the US.
At the end, he seems to be promoting audio books, and cites one he is currently listening to, by Neil De Grasse Tyson. That’s enough for me to completely ignore his entire “experiment”.
On second thought, it looks like he used stratified sampling, grouping by size and then choosing some big cities and some small ones, but within those stratifications, it may not have been random, and his sample size is way too small IMO. Granted, increasing the sample would have taken more resources to accomplish.