<p>Herandhismom, sorry…I don’t know anything about the quizzes.</p>
<p>"There was a survey done…with 5 choices…and you would be paid for partaking in these 5 choices.</p>
<p>You had to strangle a cat.
You had to eat a 6 inch earthworm.
You had to live on a farm in Kansas for the rest of your life.
You had to have a front tooth pulled.
One of your pink toes had to be cut off.</p>
<p>How much would you have to be paid for each of these occurences? How would you rank these from least to desirable to less desirable?"</p>
<p>The least desirable choice turned out to be living in Kansas.</p>
<p>The second least desirable choice blew my mind.</p>
<p>Eating the earthworm.</p>
<p>People would rather kill a cat, or have a toe cut off…than eat a worm.</p>
<p>I am trying to say that “living on a farm in Kansas” inclusion on the list sets up the paradigm that it should somehow be put on the same scale as other undesirable outcomes.
Well, doesn’t that just play right into the hands of people who label Harvard students elitist? They would rather kill a household pet with their bare hands, have a body part amputated, have a tooth extraction, eat worms than live in America’s heartland.</p>
<p>I didn’t take it as elitist or a slam on Kansas or farm life so much as an unappealing hypothetical lack of fun and excitement. I took the “Living on a farm in Kansas for the rest of your life” choice to be a way of saying live in a remote area with no access to the attractions of a city - no nice restaurants, no theater, no museums, no stores and shopping, no libraries, no art galleries, no colleges and universities, etc FOR THE REST OF YOUR LIFE.</p>
<p>I think people can put up with all sorts of unattractive or even downright miserable choices for a limited period of time, even a long but limited period of time. But being doomed to something for the rest of your life causes people to despair almost immediately. IMO, that sense of despair is what caused that choice to rank lowest.</p>
<p>I confess I don’t know much about living in a K. farm. I think the point is living in a place extremely boring. (so if someone likes farm life, like Almanzo and Laura Ignalls’s Pa, this is not a good example.) Just imagine myself going to a place that I’d live my everyday life absolutely bored to death, I would rather have a toe cut off. ouch for a while, get it taken care of. but then I could still go to cultural events, ed. events, enjoy the surroundings. I don’t think you’re comparing a constant pain to a constant bore. - the pain will be gone, you assume. but the boredom wll not. </p>
<p>Ya today’s K is different, not like Dorathy’s time, people there dreamed of going somewhere over the rainbow. Using K is symbolic.</p>
<p>I don’t know about living on a farm either. I don’t know if I would want to do that. Others wouldn’t want to live in a city.</p>
<p>I find all the choices repugnant except for eating the earthworm. </p>
<p>In 1930’s dollars…</p>
<p>People who were questioned in the survey say they wanted $300,000 to live in Kansas for the rest of their lives. That’s lot of money in 1930 dollars. That might be $10 million in today’s dollars.</p>
<p>People wanted $100,000 to eat one worm. That might be $3 million in today’s dollars.
I don’t get that. I don’t know if I would eat a worm for $50…but a few hundred…</p>
<p>The date of the survey, and the fact that it was NOT Harvard students who answered it, are both important. See *The Grapes of Wrath <a href=“1939”>/i</a>. It’s about the Joads from OK, but the idea is the same. </p>
<p>As for worm-eating being considered worse than killing a cat of having a toe amputated (I gather that the “pink toe” refers to “pinkie”–yeah, again 1930 parlance), I suspect it pits the gross factor against cruelty and against great but short-term pain. Cruelty is what you do to someone else (in this instance another living being). Gross is what you feel. I gather the respondents felt that being grossed out was worse than being cruel to a cat and being marooned in a Dust Bowl farm for the rest of their lives was the nadir.</p>
<p>I think that is a good analysis, Marite. I find it interesting that people would rather be cruel or suffer short term physical pain (and it’s going to hurt… a lot) over being grossed out. Grossed out for a few seconds.</p>
<p>I thought that was interesting, too. It was considered better “to do (bad things) unto others” rather than have “(gross things) done to unto you.” That would apply to living on a Kansas farm for life as well.</p>
<p>By the way, the wikipedia entry on Kant is pretty good.</p>
<p>thanks. I’m surprised so many are first born in that classroom. (that’s why I doubted my understanding of that phrase.) I also never knew there was a speculation to relate the birth order in a family to the work habit. I’m the only child. That makes me liable to be a hard worker? (well I think I am, :)) I used to think I belong to the spoiled brat category.</p>
<p>The two are not mutually exclusive (jk)
There’s been a great deal of research on the importance of birth order in a variety of areas (e.g. conformity vs. rebelliousness and risk-taking). It seems that first-born are academically superior to their younger siblings so they are to be found in greater numbers in top colleges (not just a Harvard class). It does not apply to my own kids, by the way.</p>
<p>But maybe being a first-born isn’t so great. Maybe first-borns get pushed to go to Harvard, and then the parents wake up and say, “Whew, that was so not worth it!”</p>
