Against Intuition II
Against Intuition
Larry Temkin, the noted philosopher, was trying to convince Robin Hanson and I that some moral values should not be traded. He posed the following question:
Suppose that you had a million children and you could give each of them a better life but only if one of them had a very, very terrible life. Would you do it?
"Of course," I answered. "You would be crazy not to," said Robin. I could tell by the look on Larry’s face that this was not the answer that he had expected. "But, but," he stammered, "almost all philosophers would tell you that that is wrong." "So much the worse for almost all philosophers," I replied.
My response to Tyler’s post on animal welfare is similar. Tyler wants to find a theory that both rationalizes and is consistent with our intuitions. But that is a fool’s game. Our intuitions are inconsistent. Our moral intuitions are heuristics produced by blind evolution operating in a world totally different than our own. Why would we expect them to be consistent? Our intuitions provide no more guidance to sound ethics than our tastes provide guidance to sound nutrition. (Which is to say, they are not without function but don’t expect to be healthy on a yummy diet of sugar and fat.)
The reason to think deeply about ethical matters is the same reason we should think deeply about nutrition – so that we can overcome our intuitions. Tyler argues that we don’t have a good approach to animal welfare only because he is not willing to give up on intuition.
Tyler asks (I paraphrase) ‘Would you kill your good friend for the lives of a million cats? What about a billion cats?’ He answers, No, but says "Yet I still wish to count cats for something positive."
My answer is not only Yes it is that we do this routinely today. The introduction of "your good friend" (or "children" in Larry’s example) engages our primitive intuitions and feelings and that is why Tyler’s answer goes awry. But consider, last year Americans spent more than 34 billion dollars on their pets. That money could have saved human lives had it gone to starving Africans.
Similarly, contra Larry, we do make tradeoffs concerning our children and more generally we accept that some people, such as coal miners, risk a much worse life, i.e. death, in order to benefit everyone else just a little bit.
The dilemmas that Larry and Tyler raise tell us that our intuitions,
taken as a package, are not rationally derivable from a handful of
premises. But that is no reason to abandon reason instead we should
happily accept that some of intuitions lead us astray.
A sound mind and a sound body both require that we abandon our gut instincts.
The Evolution of Gambling on the Mississippi
Radio Interview
I will be on 94.9 KUOW in the Seattle area this morning talking about crime, deterrence and prisons.
Critical Decline?
In perusing back issues of econ journals I’ve always enjoyed the critical commentary sections. Today, however, commentary is less frequent. Writing in the latest issue of Econ Journal Watch, Coelho, De Worken-Elly III, and MCClure present some hard data on the decline. The Quarterly Journal of Economics, for example, used to prints lots of short commentary pieces but now hardly prints any.
The authors decry the decline but don’t explain it.
One explanation is that the opportunity cost of space at the top journals has increased. One hundred years ago the top journals were (more or less) the AER, JPE, and QJE, all among the top journals today. One hundred years ago the journals published about the same amount of material as they do today. Yet the number of economists today is many times that of one hundred years ago. Since more articles are competing for the same number of printed pages it follows that on the intensive margin average article quality will increase and on the extensive margin types of articles with lower value will decline. Since comments are on average of less value than original contributions it’s not surprising that they have declined over time.
At the same time as commentary has declined in the top journals, the total number of journals has increased so it’s not obvious that total commentary has declined. Indeed, don’t we now have EJW?
Robin Hanson to Guest Blog
Tyler is in Australia and I am in Mississippi lecturing to judges and eating fried strawberries (yes it’s true, Southerners do like to fry everything!) so we are delighted this week to be joined by our colleague Robin Hanson. Like Robin, many economists started out in physics but how many continue to publish papers in quantum physics while creating innovative ideas in economics like terrorism futures and improved markets for health care?
I like to say that half of Robin’s ideas are brilliant and the other half are crazy. I’m just not sure which half is which! See if you can figure it out. 🙂
WiFi
I’m in Gulfport, MS blogging wirelessly from the airport. Dulles and Atlanta don’t have free WiFi but a lot of the smaller airports do and it’s great. According to Nicholas Kristof, the largest WiFi hotspot in the world is in Eastern Oregon where some 600 miles are covered.
Driving along the road here, I used my laptop to get
e-mail and download video – and you can do that while cruising at 70
miles per hour, mile after mile after mile, at a transmission speed
several times as fast as a T-1 line. (Note: it’s preferable to do this
with someone else driving.)
Cool! Now if only they could solve the problem of long-life batt
Machu Picchu: Thoughts and Recommendations
Machu Picchu illustrates the real estate adage, location, location, location. Everywhere you look you are assaulted by beauty. For the mathematicians, MP sits on a saddlepoint so if you look North (I’m not sure of the directions but you will get the idea) you see one mountain, turning South you see another, on the East is a sheer cliff falling onto a river, on the West another cliff falling down onto the tiny town of Agua Calientes. Even further out on the East and West horizons are snow-capped peaks. And then there are the ruins themselves, majestic and mysterious. The picture to the right, taken from Putucusi (see below) gives some idea of the location but no picture can take your breath away like the real thing (or perhaps that was just the altitude!). Click to expand.
Adding to the magic is the fact that getting to MP is still relatively difficult. The most common route is by train from Cusco. It’s only 68 km but takes over 3 hours because the train must go backwards and forwards along trackbacks to make it up some of the steep terrain. The ride is not boring, however, as it takes you through mountain ranges alongside a raging river. As you get further and further into the Andes you begin to understand why MP was not formally discovered until 1911. At Agua Calientes you board a bus which takes you on a one-lane dirt road up the mountain. There are no guard rails on the road and the bus drivers periodically have to slam on the brakes as they meet one of their fellows coming in the opposite direction – one of them then has to back up to let the other pass. True, trains and buses are not the stuff of Indiana Jones but neither is this like negotiating the traffic of Rome in order to see the colliseum, there is a definite sense of exploration.
The ruins are a tourist site, of course, but the poverty of Peru means there are few guard rails, plaques or tour guides pushing you on (you can hire a local guide if you want). Again, to me at least, the experience was more like exploring ruins than visiting ruins.
Recommendations
My most important recommendation is to stay the night in Agua Calientes. Most people come in from Cusco for the day – what this means is that they don’t arrive at the site until about 10:30 and they leave by 2:30 to catch the 3:30 train back to Cusco. Outside of these times there are surprisingly few tourists. If you stay the night you won’t have MP to yourself but in the morning or late afternoon you will be able to explore at leisure and take pictures of the site sans tourists.
On the morning of my second day, I climbed the mountain opposite MP, Putucusi, and had the whole mountain to myself on the climb and the summit. Only on the way down in the afternoon did I meet others.
I recommend climbing both Huayna Picchu and Putucusi (but not on the same day!). 
Huayna Picchu is the mountain in all the photos directly connected to MP. Climbing it is not technically difficult but it can be arduous as the air is thin. When I reached the top huffing and puffing, I was shocked to find an ancient Incan laughing at me. At the top is a fort! After doing the climb yourself your appreciation of the work and engineering that went into building at the top of a mountain is increased immeasurably. Also the ruins at the top are dangerous! No guard rails, guides, or people telling you where to go or what to do. Very cool – see picture to the right – off the equilibrium path and you are a goner.
Putucusi is more difficult to climb, there are long sections where you are climbing nearly vertical ladders but reaching the top is worth it.
New Blog: Private Development
Tim Harford, who recently guest blogged on Marginal Revolution, is now blogging regularly at a new project of the World Bank, The private sector development blog. The blog also features Pablo Halkyard who was "born in Brazil …raised in the Himalayas, grew up in Washington, studied in Lima, has a British passport,
though claims to be Chilean." An ideal pair to write on development!
Here is a post from Tim.
[Regarding] Nancy Birdsall, Dani Rodrik and Arvind Subramanian’s piece from July/August Foreign Affairs (now syndicated to the New York Times).
It does sprawl a bit but there are more useful ideas in there than in a
bookshelf full of the worthy stuff we development types produce. For
instance:For
every leader who demands a bribe, there is usually a multinational
company or a Western official offering to pay it. For every pile of
illicit wealth, there is usually a European or American financial
institution providing a safe haven for the spoils.So:
…categorize
certain regimes as corrupt or "odious." Companies that deal with such
regimes would risk losing their claims to repayment if later on a
lawful government decided to default on the debt passed down by its
unlawful predecessor.Also:
Even
small relaxations of work-visa restrictions generate large income gains
for workers from poor countries (as well as for the world economy).
What is especially appealing is that the gains in income go directly to
the workers, rather than through imperfect distribution channels (as
with trade in goods) or through governments (as with aid).
Tips to avoid being mugged
I am back from Lima, my last stop in Peru, but these were on my mind while I was there:
- Stride with confidence and purpose, even if you are utterly lost.
- Carry a glass bottle, a coke bottle is best (it must be non-alcoholic). Occasionally, take a drink as you stride towards your "destination." The bottle makes a handy weapon but, unless it comes to the worst, I do not advise that you use it (just give them your money). The muggers, however, don’t know that. Deterrence is your best defense.
- If you are lost or in trouble then ask someone for help. But if some Joe on the street asks if you need help say, "no thanks," and continue to follow rule 1. The selection effect makes all the difference.
- Do not walk in unknown areas, especially at night.
In my experience rule 4 works the best but it too has its opportunity cost.
Why Horses are Better than Llamas
Brad DeLong has had several excellent posts recently on Jared Diamond’s Guns, Germs, Steel (see here and here). Here is my thousand words from Lima’s National Museum of Archaeology, Anthropology and History.
What I believe this shows is how an Incan/Andean would ride a Llama, the peculiar postion being necessary because Llamas are not very strong and this is the best way to spread one’s weight across the Llama’s back. The caption did read "Llama usado como transporte" but I could not find any other information.
DÃÂa de los Muertos
I bolted upright in my bed and screamed. I’d had a nightmare. I suspect this had something to do with the fact that earlier in the day I´d seen 25,000 dead people.
I was visiting Lima´s Church of San Francisco. 
Underneath the church is a graveyard of catacombs. As you can see, it looks like the killing fields of Cambodia. Deep "wells" contains thousands of skulls and femurs (most of the other bones and flesh have dissolved in the lime that was added to prevent disease.) I snuck away from the tour group and found another well in which the skulls had been hung on the wall in a spiral of death. Apparently archaeologists in the 1950s arranged the bones, the bodies were originally tossed in more or less randomly.
During parts of the tour you could reach out and touch the bones (I did not). I am not religious but opening the graveyard in this way seems to me to be at the very least disrespectful and perhaps sacrilegious. I can hear my friend Bryan Caplan laughing at me, "but they are dead!" But even if I were to accept this argument I am shocked that the Franciscans allow this sort of thing.
By the way, ex-President Alberto Fujimori is rumored to have escaped through these catacombs which originally extended beneath all the main buildings surrounding the central plaza of Lima (not all have been uncovered and some have been blocked off for reasons of security).
You know you are a nerd when…
you look at an amazing vista of mountain peaks, crags, and valleys and you say to yourself "Wow, that looks just like fractal geometry!"
Pizarro slept here
Last night I stayed in the Hotel Libertador whose main claim to fame is that it is built on Incan foundations and parts of the building date to the 16th century when it was occupied for a time by Pizarro. The claim is plausible as he certainly pillaged the temple next door.
The other contender for Cusco´s finest hotel is the more expensive Hotel Monasterio where you can get what I call a "Michael Jackson" room, a sealed room which is flooded with oxygen to help combat altitude sickness.
The Hotel Los Andes where I stayed most of the time was excellent.
Heard on the train
The kidnappers in Colombia are so advanced they check your credit report and other information to compute the optimal ransom. Tyler wrote earlier on the economics of Mexican kidnapping.
Thanks to Christina for the tip.