This game is more interesting if the stakes are increased. People are more willing to play as a spoiler if the sums are small. It’s not hard to reject $100 out of $1000. Many people would be willing to give up that amount as a matter of principle. Thus, most offers will be closer to fair for smaller sums.
If the game is to split $1,000,000, and you are offered $100,000 of it, how many of you would reject that? That’s a large sum to forgo in order to make a point. This means the offerer can likely get away with a less even division.
Sorry to quibble, but I consider “501-999” and “take more for yourself” synonymous here. I would have had the same reaction to the latter phrasing, though perhaps phrasing my objection differently.
To be clear, a 550-450 splitter seems to me to be almost in the 500-500 camp, while a 950-50 splitter is more like 999-1 (which was singled out).
I’d offer $500. Going halfsies seems fair to me, and $500 is nothing to sneeze at, even though it is not a life changing sum.
If I knew the deal and I was the offeree, I’d accept whatever was offered. It’s free money to me. I happen to be more fortunate in financial matters than most of my friends, so if they take the larger part of the free money, they probably need it more than I do.
I answered $500 each, but that’s assuming I know the other person. If it’s a total stranger, I’ll eyeball them and pick the smallest number I think they’d accept. Palooka’s $100 sounds about right, generally.
My original thought was something like $600 for me, because even though that’s unfair, a 60/40 split is still good enough that I think the average person would take it. If it were something like $980 for me, I’m certain the person would go, “Fuck you, lady,” and leave it in order to punish me for being such a selfish bitch. Sure it would be a free $20, but it’s worth leaving it in order to stick it to me. That’s how I would react. I’d take $400 if I were the other person. I’d think to myself “Greedy little shit,” I’d take it. I would reject something stupid like $20 just to send the message that the other person is an asshole. There are some people, though, who I think would reject anything short of half in order to punish the other person for being greedy.
So $500 is something I think any reasonable person would agree to. Plus, really, it’s just fair.
Not really. The only totally fair thing is to divide it by the number of people in the world, and share it with everyone. Why are you special?
However, the deal with winning the lottery doesn’t include sharing with anyone (unless they paid a share of the winning ticket), so I wouldn’t share with anyone – except, perhaps, my wife & children if the prize were big enough.
Yeah, but we’re only talking about a thousand bucks. That’s a sum that would be nice to have, but not particularly significant in a life-changing way. It’s a nice gaming laptop, or a mortgage payment/car payment, or a long weekend somewhere nice but not a casino so they don’t comp stuff. It’s not a big deal.
Plus it’s not even close to the same thing. It would be if, say, the lottery board decided to just give you the money without having actually purchased a ticket, but only if you agreed to this bizarre method of administering it. But still, hey R, if I ever win the lottery, I’ll give you half.
Well, it’s not a “particularly significant” sum to you, but it’s four months’ rent for some Americans, and three years’ income to people in some other countries.
I am going to back away slowly now, and pretend this never happened.