Thank you so much for recognizing the analogy. Because I believe people outside of steemit (and many on the inside) have absolutely no interest in posts about steemit drama, I try really hard not to write about it. Although the story I told is very true, my main point was that things like this "experiment" are failing to factor in human emotion.
You can use logic and math to explain all day long why the experiment is good for someone whose post just went from $1 to $.40 but that won't help how they feel emotionally when they see a flag or see their rewards drop. After all, I am guessing that for many people, the reward matters very little (it's $1!). It was the feeling generated by receiving a bigger vote than usual that was the true reward. It was the feeling that "you like me! you really really like me!" All of the good feelings are taken away by one significant flag.
Now if it was a significant amount for a new user (say they finally broke double digits) then the negativity is doubled. Not only do they suffer the emotional hit, they also suffer the financial one.
Would you tell your mom to sign up for a site that would do that to her?
The same is true of people jumping to conclusions and assuming the worst of others. Maybe someone is not a terrible evil person. Maybe they just have different motivations that lead to different actions. These actions may seem different if you understood the motivations behind them.
In order to practice what I preach, I am not accusing the people who are conducting this "experiment" of being evil or bad. I just think they are missing a big piece of the equation. This experiment can only be explained logically and mathematically (one may argue even those aspects are flawed). There are many situations where purely logical experiments are essential. However, on a social media platform involving humans beings with feelings, it seems like it is a mistake.