Category: Philosophy
David Hume on signaling
Longterm Guy, a long-standing MR reader, sends me this:
A Treatise Of Human Nature, by David Hume, Volume Two
BOOK II OF THE PASSIONS
PART I OF PRIDE AND HUMILITY
SECT. XII OF THE PRIDE AND HUMILITY OF ANIMALSIt is plain, that almost in every species of creatures, but especially of the nobler kind, there are many evident marks of pride and humility. The very port and gait of a swan, or turkey, or peacock show the high idea he has entertained of himself, and his contempt of all others. This is the more remarkable, that in the two last species of animals, the pride always attends the beauty, and is discovered in the male only. The vanity and emulation of nightingales in singing have been commonly remarked; as likewise that of horses in swiftness, of hounds in sagacity and smell, of the bull and cock in strength, and of every other animal in his particular excellency. Add to this, that every species of creatures, which approach so often to man, as to familiarize themselves with him, show an evident pride in his approbation, and are pleased with his praises and caresses, independent of every other consideration. Nor are they the caresses of every one without distinction, which give them this vanity, but those principally of the persons they know and love; in the same manner as that passion is excited in mankind. All these are evident proofs, that pride and humility are not merely human passions, but extend themselves over the whole animal creation.
The second best sentence against narrativity I read today
There are deeply non-Narrative people and there are good ways to live that are deeply non-Narrative.
Here is much more and I thank Eric John Barker for the pointer. You will find similar themes in my The Age of the Infovore, the new title for the paperback version of Create Your Own Economy.
Optimizing Kidney Allocation: LYFT for LIFE
Under the current system, kidneys are allocated to patients primarily based on the time that the patient has been on the waiting list and the quality of the match. If we evaluate these criteria "locally" there's nothing obviously wrong but if we step back and think globally, that is think about what the ultimate goal of the transplant system should be, then the current system is deeply misguided. Suppose that we want the transplant system to maximize total life expectancy or, as it is known in the literature, to maximize the life-years from transplant (LYFT).
The current system does not maximize life expectancy. In the current system, a 60 year old patient can be given a 20 year old kidney–that's a waste because the life expectancy of the kidney is longer than that of the patient; it's like putting a new clutch in a car that is rusting away. If we had 20 year-old kidneys to spare, this wouldn't be a big problem. But we don't have 20-year old kidneys to spare, so we also give 20-year old patients 60-year old kidneys which means the kidney is likely to die early taking the patient along with it. If we want to maximize total life expectancy, younger people should get younger kidneys.
Here is a simple example to illustrate the principle. Suppose that the life expectancy of both patients and kidneys is 75 years of age so everyone dies when they are 75 or when their kidney is 75, whichever comes first. Thus, if we allocate the 20 year old kidney to the 60 year old patient and vice-versa we gain a total of 30 years of life expectancy.
| Kidney Age |
Patient Age | Life Years | |
| 20 | 60 | 15 | |
| 60 | 20 | 15 | |
| 30 years | Total |
But if we allocate the 60 year old kidney to the 60 year old patient and the 20 year old kidney to the 20 year old patient we more than double life expectancy to 70 years in total.
| Kidney Age |
Patient Age | Life Years | |
| 60 | 60 | 15 | |
| 20 | 20 | 55 | |
| 70 years | Total |
It's not just age that matters, it turns out that the longer a patient has been on dialysis the less is their life expectancy after transplant (dialysis stresses the body so the sooner we get someone a transplant the better). Although it may seem unfair, if we want to maximize total life expectancy we are doing the wrong thing by giving more points to patients who have been on the list longer.
An optimized allocation system that took into account these considerations would increase total life
expectancy (modestly but significantly, about 11,500 extra life years) but it wouldn't benefit every individual. Maximizing life expectancy would shift organs away from older people and people who have been on the waiting list a long time towards younger people. As a result, some patients have argued that LYFT is unfair. The Office of Civil Rights is even asking whether LYFT might violate age discrimination laws.
But consider, would the older patients have objected to LYFT when they were younger? If not, shouldn't their objections be discounted? More formally, consider how people would vote behind a veil of ignorance. By definition a LYFT approach maximizes total life expectancy, so without knowing the specifics of who you are or when you might need a transplant it's likely that behind a veil of ignorance just about everyone would favor LYFT. Thus, in my view LYFT is a fair and ethical system.
Here are previous MR posts on kidney transplant policy.
A philosopher dedicated to clear exposition
In 1984, my marriage to Cindy was in serious trouble. I had started once a week therapy with a McLean Hospital based psychiatrist named Lenore Boling, and I used the sessions really just to give voice to my unhappiness with what my relationship with Cindy had become. Despite the unhappiness, I do not think I ever shed a tear in those sessions over the shambles of the marriage. One day, however, I started talking about my work. I tried to explain to Dr. Boling that in all of my writing, whether it was on Kant's First Critique or Hume's Treatise or Das Kapital, my goal always was to plumb the depths of the author's central idea and recast it in a form so simple, so clear, so transparent that I could hold it before my students or my readers and show them its beauty. As I said these words, tears started to well up in me, and I finally had to stop talking because I could not finish. It was the only time in twenty years of psychotherapy that I cried openly in a session. Ever since that day, twenty-five years ago, I have understood that it is this intellectual intuition of the transparent beauty of an idea, not the desire for status or recognition or money, that has throughout my life been the driving force behind my writing and teaching. This is why it makes little difference to me whether reviewers agree with what I say, and it is why I am made somewhat uncomfortable by praise. The intrinsic beauty of the idea is the focus of my concern. It seems that I am, after all, more capable of shedding tears for the central argument of the Deduction of the Pure Concepts of Understanding than I am for a failed marriage or even for a deceased parent. I am not at all sure that is admirable, but it is closer to the truth about myself than I have ever come before.
That's from Robert Paul Wolff, hat tip goes to The Browser.
Wikipedia on A.J. Ayer and Mike Tyson
He taught or lectured several times in the United States, including serving as a visiting professor at Bard College in the fall of 1987. At a party that same year held by fashion designer Fernando Sanchez, Ayer, then 77, confronted Mike Tyson harassing the (then little-known) model Naomi Campbell. When Ayer demanded that Tyson stop, the boxer said: "Do you know who the fuck I am? I'm the heavyweight champion of the world," to which Ayer replied: "And I am the former Wykeham Professor of Logic. We are both pre-eminent in our field. I suggest that we talk about this like rational men." Ayer and Tyson then began to talk, while Naomi Campbell slipped out.
The link is here and the pointer is from Daniel Klein.
Back in Berlin
The President of Germany had to resign over this? On the bright side, it doesn't seem as important as Lena winning the Eurovision contest.
And so I am back in Berlin and for a good bit of time. I've already blogged my 1985 visit to East Berlin with Kroszner, which remains one of my strongest and most influential memories. I also returned the summer after the Wall fell, and spent about two days walking and driving around the Eastern part, more or less pinching myself to see if it was real. The same people who had been afraid to talk to me five years before suddenly were friendly and open. It felt remarkably like West Germany…and yet not. I don't expect to personally witness a comparable liberation in my lifetime and those days too have stuck with me deeply. For a number of reasons, just stepping foot in Germany is for me an emotional experience.
Twenty years later, I experience Berlin as a normal city for the first time. But I just arrived, so we'll have to see.
It is striking how cheap rents are. I have a two-bedroom apartment, fully furnished, short-term, in a neighborhood comparable in quality to Manhattan's Upper East Side and yet it costs less than many a mediocre place in Fairfax.
Ramban, a 12th century Jewish Biblical Commentator
Doni Bloomfield sends me this passage:
Set aside a sum of money that you will give away if you allow yourself to be angered. Be sure that the amount you designate is sufficient to force you to think twice before you lose your temper… (Ramban: A letter for the Ages translated by Avrohom Chaim Feuer Reishit Chochmah, Shaar Ha'anavah Chapter 3)
The link to the source is here.
From the comments, on the inevitability of utilitarian judgments
Mario Rizzo writes:
Tyler, please. You should have taken my course this past semester. Benthamite reasons. Bentham is a total mess. One commentator said that Benthamite utilitarianism is a philosophy that tells you what to do when you have the data that you cannot obtain. This is it in a nutshell.
I very often agree with Mario and even here I think I agree with Mario, though Mario doesn't think he agrees with me.
To be sure, I am not a Benthamite utilitarian, if only because I believe rights should sometimes trump utilitarian recommendations. Furthermore, schema for making interpersonal comparisons involve value judgments, which means the Benthamite calculation is never purely descriptive but rather contains significant elements of other, non-Benthamite moral theories.
That said, Benthamite reasoning is hard to escape. Everyone relies on it when making decisions in everyday life, whether it be voting on a job candidate or buying one car rather than another or putting a bus line on one road rather than another. Even a lot of the arguments for following rules rely on an ultimate Benthamite judgment about good vs. bad consequences.
The fact that one might be wrong in any particular estimation — always the case — doesn't change the need to make a final judgment. "Benthamite" makes it sounds more scientistic than it needs to be, since Bentham had some unusual views, but still an assessment needs to be made.
Mario offers an instructive comment: "Bentham is a total mess." Is this an aesthetic critique, or is the suggestion that following Benthamite maxims won't lead to utility-positive results? If the latter, which is what I suspect, Mario is himself a Benthamite broadly speaking and in that sense we (at least partially) agree.
Maybe you're a preference utilitarian, but when it comes to aggregation, or how you interpret "veil of ignorance" results, you're still going to rely on utilitarian constructs to do a lot of the final work in the theory. If your imaginary people are behind a veil of ignorance, they've got to estimate the cardinal utilities (broadly interpreted) associated with different results. You're just shifting the cardinal comparison to a different place, away from the theorist (supposedly) and into the hands of the veiled ones.
Benthamite reasoning is inescapable, though it is a big mistake to make cardinal utility the only relevant value. We're all pluralists now, but cardinal utility should be a major part of the relevant pluralist bundle.
What makes an economist?
When you read about a shortage of women's restrooms, your first thought is whether there is some way of charging for usage.
As it stands, Congress is preparing a bill to regulate the ratio of men's to women's rooms in federal facilities. I would think the theatre and symphony orchestra is where reform is needed, not at the Treasury Department. Men might benefit too ("husband leaving" and "wife leaving" are often complements) and I wonder why Tiebout competition has not enforced better outcomes.
Slavoj Žižek on Sarah Palin
I don't usually blog this topic, but I was struck by this passage, from Žižek's new Living in the End Times. Maybe it's what you would get if Andrew Sullivan were a Lacanian and a Hegelian:
Earlier generations of women politicians (Golda Meir, Indira Gandhi, Margaret Thatcher, up to a point even Hillary Clinton) were what is usually referred to as "phallic" women: they acted as "iron ladies" who imitated and tried to outdo male authority, to be "more men than men themselves." …Jacques-Alain Miller pointed out how Sarah Palin, on the contrary, proudly displays her femininity and motherhood. She has a "castrating" effect on her male opponents not by way of being more manly than them, but by using the ultimate feminine weapon, the sarcastic put-down of male authority — she knows that male "phallic" authority is a posture, a semblance to be exploited and mocked. Recall how she mocked Obama as a "community organizer," exploiting the fact that there was something sterile in Obama's physical appearance, with his diluted black skin, slender features, and big ears. Here we have "post-feminist" femininity without a complex, uniting the features of mother, prim teacher (glasses, hair in a bun), public person, and, implicitly, sex object, proudly displaying the "first dude" as a phallic toy. The message is that she "has it all" — and that, to add insult to injury, it was a Republican woman who had realized this Left-liberal dream…No wonder that the Palin effect is one of false liberation: drill, baby, drill!
Then comes the zinger:
What this means — in Hegelese — the class struggle encounters itself in its oppositional determination (gegensätzliche Bestimmung), in its distorted/displaced form, as one among many social struggles. And, in exactly the same way, "anti-elitist" populism in architecture is the mode of appearance of its opposite, of class differences.
I thought this contrast was better than any review of the book I could write. The author, by the way, makes a contrarian argument that the Khmer Rouge didn't go "far enough" (too weak a constructive plan), is joking some of the time, believes that capitalism is doomed, and apparently is still a communist though he refuses to tell us why he has a better alternative than communism as we have known it. His book is entertaining, but he ought to just become a social democrat and do mass transit studies for the Aarhus municipal government.
Bob Frank and David Friedman on redistributive taxation and positional goods
Remember Bob Frank's argument that wage compression in private firms implies some (possibly libertarian) case for progressive taxation? Here is Frank's original column. Here is David Friedman's critique. Here is Frank's reply. (Angus, by the way, offers another critique.) So many issues are at stake, here is one of them:
He [Friedman] goes on to suggest that my argument implies that “the rich ought to be in favor of grinding down the poor…” These remarks betray a curiously dark conception of human nature. Being concerned about relative position surely does not imply taking pleasure in the knowledge that others are poor. If it did, middle-income people would spend long hours observing people in poor neighborhoods, thereby to boost their own self-esteem. That they don’t choose to spend their time this way doesn’t mean they don’t care about relative position.
What do people spend their time doing? To the extent I care about relative position, what do I do? I take actions to raise my preoccupation with areas I am good at, which is my version of spending long hours observing people in poor neighborhoods, yet without having to feel I am deliberately slumming, which would lower my self-esteem.
In this sense I think Frank should accept Friedman's attempted reductio. That said, I don't accept Friedman's claim that Frank's theory predicts that "the rich ought to be in favor of grinding down the poor." Subtle self-deception about one's own merits is, at least in today's America, a more effective recipe for generating utility. So I believe in the ubiquity of status-seeking, though I see the process as more positive-sum than Frank does. I can think my area of expertise is really important and you can think the same, without it being zero-sum.
That all said, what exactly is the problem with redistributive taxation? Why can't we, for Benthamite reasons, have two rates of twenty and thirty percent instead of one rate of twenty-five percent? Status-seeking or not?
I read this paragraph as best summarizing Frank's point of view:
High social rank, as noted, has substantial instrumental value, and low social rank entails substantial concrete costs, irrespective of whether people care about rank per se. Forcing a productive person to buy more social rank than he wants is objectionable, but the alternative is to give all of society’s most productive members a valuable asset free of charge. That asset would command a high price in the libertarian’s ideal world in which purely voluntary societies could form and dissolve at will. And since its value is a direct consequence of the substantial costs associated with low social rank, a society without redistributive taxation should strike libertarians as even more objectionable.
Here is David Friedman's final response.
Addendum: David Henderson comments.
John Gray on Michael Oakeshott
John Gray often misfires, but still he is one of the smartest and most knowledgeable generalists around:
…Oakeshott was not without illusions of his own. He was able to disparage ideology because he believed tradition contained all that was needed for politics; he could not conceive of a situation in which a traditional way of doing politics was no longer possible. Yet that has been the situation in which the Conservative Party has found itself over the past generation. The leader and his cabal of modernisers could hardly expect to undo the more radical modernisation Thatcher had unwittingly imposed on the party. As Cameron will discover, one way or another, an ideologically driven Conservatism is here to stay – even if it means the party once again drifting into limbo.
The full review, which covers British politics and the forthcoming election, is here. Here is Gray, trying to dismantle A.C. Grayling's rationalism (hat tip The Browser), worth a read.
On Tolerance
“Tolerance” is a feel-good buzzword in our society, but I fear people have forgotten what it means. Many folks are proud of their “tolerance” for gays, working women, Tibetan monks in cute orange outfits, or blacks sitting at the front of the bus. But what they really mean is that they consider such things to be completely appropriate parts of their society, and are not bothered by them in the slightest. That, however, isn’t “tolerance.”
“Tolerance” is where you tolerate things that actually bother you.
Robin Hanson is correct that few people are truly tolerant but peculiarly for Robin he calls for more true-tolerance anyway. I'm all for more tolerance but Robin's own examples suggests that social change is not much driven by changes in tolerance.
As I suspect Robin would acknowledge, gay rights have not advanced because of more tolerance per se, i.e. they have not advanced because more people are willing to accept behavior that bothers them. Advance has occurred because fewer people are bothered by the behavior. Note, for example, that if the former were the case we would not see more gays and lesbians on television, as we do today.
When we are required to confront things that bother us we sometimes (often?) reduce
cognitive dissonance by changing our preferences so that we are no longer
bothered. Thus libertarians and other true-tolerants may play a role in encouraging the intolerable to come forward, thereby forcing the intolerant to reduce cognitive dissonance by accepting what was formerly intolerable. In this sense, a few more true-tolerants might help to tip society towards acceptance of some variant practices.
But since few people are or ever-will-be truly-tolerant, tolerance by itself probably can't get us very far towards a society of peaceful variation. Instead, we will have to argue that variant practices are normal, not bothersome or a subject of indifference. The route to drug legalization, for example, is to encourage more normal people who "smoke pot and like it" to come out of the closet. Kudos to you, Will Wilkinson! In the case of marijuana, I think this is possible but for many of the present and future variant practices mentioned by Robin, the limitations of tolerance put a big constraint on those that will ever be "tolerated."
Bryan Caplan on adoption
I am now more rather than less puzzled. Bryan writes:
On adoption: I think that adoption is a noble, generous act, and admire those who do it. But I personally don't want to adopt.
I can't disagree with any word in that first sentence, but it leaves me uneasy. Bryan's forthcoming book — Selfish Reasons to Have More Kids — is about…selfish reasons to have kids. (It will, I promise you, be very interesting and make a splash.) So here is my challenge to Bryan: write down the ten most important selfish reasons to have kids and then ask how many of them apply to adopted children. Most of them will. Which isn't to say those are the only reasons to adopt (or have) kids, but they are real nonetheless. So why do the adopting parents seemingly get described as selfless martyrs? It's almost as if the selfishness, without the replication angle, has to be stuffed into a box somewhere. Do all those selfish reasons for having kids require replication as a kind of amplifying mechanism, without with we are left with the slightly underwhelming purely altruistic motives?
I think Bryan understands the selfish reasons for having children differently than I do, though I will defer to his own statement of his view. I put a big stress on how children help you see that a lot of your immediate concerns aren't nearly as important as you might think, and how spending time with children brings you closer to — apologies, super-corny phrases on the way — The Great Circle of Being and The Elemental Life Force. In some (not all) ways, adopted children may be teaching you those lessons more effectively than do biological children. It's an oversimplification to say that "children make you a better person," but they do, or should, improve your ability to psychologically and emotionally integrate that a) you want lots of stuff, b) what you end up getting remains, no matter what, ridiculously small and inconsequential, and c) you can't control your life nearly as much as you think.
I would sooner say that these realizations are gifts which children give to us rather than calling them "selfish reasons" to have children. The concept of selfish requires an understanding of our interest and children, very fundamentally, change our understanding of our interests rather than fulfilling our previous goals. That, however, is a moot point and I do understand why Bryan's title packs the proper punch.
(I might add that the cross-sectional variation — who actually has more kids — suggests that religious reasons persuade people more effectively than do "selfish reasons," noting that the religious reasons may well have a significant selfish component. Bryan portrays himself as an intellectual elitist, but he has an oddly unflattering portrait of the elite. When it comes to the dreamworld of political debate, elites are relatively rational but that is exactly the sphere in which individuals are least decisive over actual outcomes. When it comes to the really big, important decisions, such as how many kids to have, individuals in the elite are highly decisive in steering outcomes yet quite irrational. They underappreciate the joy of kids. On net, it would seem that the rational ones are the poor, the undereducated, and the highly religious, at least according to Bryan's latest book. Bryan is a fascinating mix of an anti-elitist elitist, or should I say an elitist anti-elitist?)
I can see why Bryan is keen to have more children of his own, given his charm, intelligence, enthusiasm, and general good-naturedness; free will or not, those qualities likely are heritable to some degree. I might add that his current children are very appealing.
But I still don't grasp why, within his own framework, he is reluctant to adopt and to adopt for (partially) selfish reasons. If you want "similarity," adopt a boy. You can adopt an older child too.
It's not either/or. What about when the pump runs dry or some other obstacle intervenes? What if it's an adopted kid at the margin or just staying put with what you've got? Why not take the plunge? Is an adopted kid so bad on average as to negate the postulated large selfish returns from children? Which of the selfish reasons to have kids are actually most important? Are the selfish reasons so dependent on framing in terms of the Darwinian urge to replicate?
I await enlightenment from my very dear friend.
Questions that are rarely asked
Was it predatory lending when they gave money to Greece?
Arnold Kling offers related comment.