Category: Philosophy

T.: I love you.

N.: Which number is that?

And I believe he doesn’t like what he sees:

Who wouldn’t want to see Tyler Cowen publicly debate Robin Hanson?
Well, aside from the masses? I think they’d both be willing, if they
could only pinpoint a good topic. A while back they had an extended
blog dialogue (see here, here, and here); can you extract a resolution from it?

Personally, the bottom line of Tyler’s latest post
reminds me of a debate topic that someone suggested after a recent
seminar: "Few major changes in the policies of modern democracies are
desirable." Depending on when you ask him, Tyler might deny that he
believes this, but in his heart, he does. And no matter when you ask
Robin, he’ll be ready to argue the contrary.

Other topic suggestions?  If Tyler and Robin wind up using your novel suggestion, lunch is on me.

Here is the link.

No, this question applies not at the beginning of the relationship, but after a few years or more.  Sure, you love the person but this is economics and we think at the margin.  Why did you say "I love you" right now rather than two minutes ago?  I can think of a few reasons:

1. Anxiousness and a desire to reassure oneself in the face of self-doubt.

2. Irritation at the other person, leading to #1.

3. Desire to manipulate the other person by first making him or her feel compliant and secure.

4. Being overcome by suddenly stronger feelings of love, perhaps because of a Proustian reminder.

5. The simple feeling that too long has passed since having said "I love you," presumably combined with the belief that the words are uttered rarely enough to still have potency.  You need to signal you are keeping track of such things.

6. The sex was either very good or very bad, see #1 and #4.

7. One has work or chores to do, and is hoping to create a distraction of some kind.

8. To announce that a conversation is over.

Natasha asks whether in a marriage one hears "I love you" more or fewer times than is optimal.  We both think "fewer" is usually the answer, although given the low cost of generating the message, and the possibility of reaping gains from trade, it is not entirely clear why this equilibrium persists.

A group of Swiss businessmen will hear first Pascal Lamy on economic globalization and then me on cultural globalization.  I must keep in mind the fundamental principles of speaking to the Swiss.  Unlike virtually all American audiences, the listeners do not expect to be entertained.  Efforts to entertain will insult some of them.  I need not reach my main point until the end of the talk.  Taxonomy for its own sake is not detested, but PowerPoint is viewed with suspicion.

Ethnic food here is improving rapidly, but a simple daal with bread and rice can cost $20; the lovely scenery isn’t the only reason immigrants wish to get in. 

Why I write.

That’s the new book by Cass Sunstein, and yes it works through how choice theory should approach disasters and irreversible events.  It is the most accessible presentation of this material to date and it is recommended to anyone who follows issues of global warming, pandemics, asteroid impacts, and the like. 

The concluding chapter opens with the old quotation:

"If you make a plan, God laughs.  If you make two plans, God smiles."

When it comes to this book, the worst case scenario is that you are out $24.95, you despair at mankind’s ability to actually address these problems, and you come away enlightened.  I would have wished for more material on public choice issues — how good a job can governments do with these problems? — but the more salient point is just how much Sunstein does cover.

This fascinating article raises the question of whether charity is worthwhile and how charity — "imposing" the desires of the rich on social priorities and wealth redistribution — fits a theory of social justice.  In particular, why should the charity of the wealthy receive such significant tax breaks or even be seen as morally legitimate?  Henry Farrell adds much more.

I am a fan of the tax break for American philanthropy for several reasons:

1. Organized religion is the biggest beneficiary.  Religious organizations help poor people, help shape a unique and vital American ethos, and encourage people to have more children.  The demographic effects alone probably makes this self-financing. ($40 billion in foregone revenue is one estimate.)

2. The arts receive about five percent of U.S. charitable donations.  I am more than willing to stomach this degree of anti-egalitarianism in the non-profit subsidy, and yes we do get more beauty for it.  Furthermore the alternative of more direct government arts funding would not work out well in the relatively Puritan United States, even if you think it has worked well in Europe.

3. Philanthropy for higher education is a major reason for American strength.  Note that American higher education a) benefits the entire world, and b) is a major reason why we are richer than Western Europe (wasn’t there a recent NBER paper on measuring this effect?)  The tax break is a politically acceptable way to subsidize elite intellectual activities — which benefit virtually everyone — yet without having government control those activities.

4. Allowing and encouraging people to give away their money causes them to work harder.  Demonstration effects spread the power of this subsidy by creating social networks which favor philanthropy.

5. The general proliferation of non-profit institutions makes America a much more innovative and diverse place, intellectually and otherwise.

6. Relying so much on private philanthropy chips away at the dangerous attitude that there are clearly defined social priorities to which everyone must pay the same heed.

But do read the NYT article and Henry’s post for very different perspectives.

I thank a loyal MR reader for the NYT pointer.

First, your model of the individual is very likely based on you.

You’ll find lots of contrarianism (for libertarians, that is, and note we should always be polite to contrarians) here and here.  I also enjoyed this bit:

This is the other thing I don’t get about small government types. You
protest so vociferously that government takes choices away from you.
But a whole lot of choices are BORING. If I never once think about car
bumper safety standards for 25mph crashes, I will never miss it. I do
not want to carefully match my car safety standards to my most likely
driving patterns and save two grand in the process. I would not enjoy
that process. (Perhaps you would, and you would rather have the money.)
I’ve never been a comparison shopper or a meticulous consumer. Maybe my
model of the individual is too biased by my experience. But I don’t
want to figure out how much coliform bacteria I can tolerate on my
spinach, given my health…

…*I can hear you already: "But you are FORCING me to take that deal
too.". Yes. But right now our system FORCES me to comparison shop.
Either way, someone gets FORCED to do something, and I don’t see a
justice interest on one side or the other. Absent a justice interest,
we might as well just go with the system that creates the most utility
overall.

iPhone early adopters.  (I’m one of them, though a virtuous one.)  You may have heard, they just cut the price on iPhones.  Get this:

“I just felt so used as a consumer,” he said. “They hyped up the iPhone for six months and built up our expectations, and then they grabbed our extra $200 and ran.”

Here is another guy:

“I feel totally screwed,” wrote one iPhone owner on the Unofficial Apple Weblog site. “My love affair with Apple is officially over.”

It is you people, you who resent Coase (1972), you people who induce wage and price stickiness and widen the Okun gap.  You people, who don’t know what it means to sit back and enjoy your consumer surplus.  You beasts! 

And to think you are all carrying around these wonderful icons of modernity in your pockets…

AAARRRGGGHH!

(I thank a loyal MR reader for the pointer.  Please note this post was published from my iPhone.)

When we look at ourselves in the mirror, in any given session we
tend to anchor on the time slice image that makes us look our best.
That, we decide, is the "real" us.

Photographs, however, are a random sample of the various
arrangements of light, angle, and facial expression that we can be
found in. The median photograph of you is probably the best
approximation of your physical attractiveness. But that wars with your
self image, which is anchored on other, better combinations.

You’re also biased by the fact that no one ever tells you you’re
ugly. It’s not merely that people inflate what they tell you (they
almost certainly do); it’s also that people who think you’re ugly tend
to drop out of the sample. They may not cultivate an acquaintance with
you, and those that do will probably not spontaneously let you know
that they find you kind of repulsive.

You’re stuck in a web of congitive biases and a positive feedback loop.  It’s a wonder anyone does get married.

Here is the link.  This next part made me feel much, much better, though I can’t quite agree:

…the best gauge of how attractive you are; how attractive are the
hottest people who want to go out with you? They’re probably only
slightly more attractive than you are.

The final deflation then comes:

If you’re married, of course, this is not useful.

Robin writes:

It is interesting that doomsday argument proponents seem to challenge our usual way of doing inference, by preferring an extended state space where we explicitly model the idea that "I could have been you." However, if we try to do this in a physics-oriented way, avoiding describing states directly in abstract features of interest to humans but not the universe, we get seem to get the same chance of doom as if we hadn’t extended states at all. Humanity may in fact face doom soon, and we have many reasons to be concerned about this. But I do not think the doomsday argument is one of them.

Here is the full argument.  This piece is not new, but I believe most of you do not know it.  Here is a previous MR post on the Doomsday Argument, also not supportive.

The bottom line: You still have to save for your retirement.

Arnold Kling summarizes Robin’s argument:

If you have a cause, then other people probably disagree with you (if nothing else, they don’t think your cause is as important as you do). When other people disagree with you, they are usually more right than you think they are. So you could be wrong. Before you go and attach yourself to this cause, shouldn’t you try to reduce the chances that you are wrong? Ergo, shouldn’t you work on trying to overcome bias? Therefore, shouldn’t overcoming bias be your number one cause?

Here is Robin’s very similar statement.  I believe these views are tautologically true and they simply boil down to saying that any complaint can be expressed as a concern about error of some kind or another.  I cannot disagree with this view, for if I do, I am accusing Robin of being too biased toward eliminating bias, thus reaffirming that bias is in fact the real problem.

I find it more useful to draw an analogy with statistics.  Biased estimators are one problem but not the only problem.  There is also insufficient data, lazy researchers, inefficient estimators, and so on.  Then I don’t see why we should be justified in holding a strong preference for overcoming bias, relative to other ends.

When I think of a blog that tries to eliminate or reduce bias, say by considering a wide variety of views and methods, I think of Dan Drezner or Matt Yglesias.  I view Robin’s blog as exemplifying bias, and indeed showing that bias can be very useful, especially if embedded in a broader discovery process with checks and balances.  (I would describe Robin’s blog as one of the dozen "must reads" out there.)  Robin’s blog is one very select group of very smart people, pushing one unpopular, specialized, but very interesting and analytically powerful research method as far as it can go.

If I were allowed to retitle Robin’s blog (and I am not), I would call it "Reaping the Fruits of Bias."

I’ve been to India twice and both times I have been received with the utmost hospitality and enthusiasm.  I loved the food, the music, the diversity, and the more-than-occasional chaos.  Most of all I loved how the people engaged me so directly, and how every moment was so full of human drama and stories. 

Since India has given me so much, I wish to make a merit-based gift to India in return. 

My new book Discover Your Inner Economist: Use Incentives to Fall in Love, Survive Your Next Meeting, and Motivate Your Dentist offers a chapter on how to help other people.  In the book I suggest several principles:

1. Cash is often the best form of aid.

2. Give to those who are not expecting it, and,

3. Don’t require the recipients to do anything costly to get the money.

I would like to live by these principles, and I am asking you to help me.

If you want to try a new form of charity, keep reading here, because I am about to send money to people in India, to people who are not expecting it and who will not be asked to do much of anything to get it.

You are about to tell me the names of people I should send money to.  I will then send money.

Simple. 

Here is the plan in more detail:

1. The recipient must live in India and receive the money in India.  I just need enough information to send the money via Western Union.

2. Send your email to [email protected].
Only emails to this address will be considered.  The email must contain
the legal name (as documented on ID papers) of a person who will
receive the money, his or her state in India, and the city of his or
her local Western Union branch.  You can be the person yourself, or you
can send the information on behalf of someone you know.

3. With your email, send a one sentence proposal of how the money will help India.  I am keen to send much of the money to poor people, either directly or indirectly, but of course India is not just about poor people.  Proposals of all kinds are eligible, including using the funds to help expand your steel factory, and yes using the money to open a new call center.  But you must not give the money to beggars. 

4. Only one email per person is allowed.

5. By the end of the week I will send $1000 to India, via Western Union.  One person will receive $500, the other recipients will get $100 a piece; I will email the wire numbers to each approved person.

6. Recipients of the money will execute their plans for helping India.

7. If/when Discover Your Inner Economist is published in India, further names will receive transfers.  I will send at least the net, post-tax value of my Indian advance.  (If the sale of foreign rights is a multi-country deal, I’ll apportion it by relative sizes of book markets for this kind of title.)

I’ve thought long and hard about how to keep the funds away from scammers, and here is the best I can do: All responders are eligible, but the selection algorithm will favor early entrants.  In other words, MR readers (and their friends) with connections to India have the best chance to read this post early, respond, and thus receive a transfer. 

So I would like to ask you a favor, especially if you are Indian or have connections with India.  Please make your nomination as promptly as you possibly can.  (It is also OK to forward this link to people you trust for their nominations; please do.)  This will ensure worthy entries toward the beginning of the email directory.  I believe that MR readers and their friends will put the money to good use and I am asking you to help me in this manner.

One final request.  I am asking my readers — yes that’s you — to also make merit-based donations to India.

You may have noticed that Alex and I have stopped asking for MR donations; we are happy to be prospering.  Would you instead consider sending some money to India?  I already have had several people pledge money off-line.  Remember our MR motto?: "Small steps toward a much better world."

Making your gift is simple.  Just email me at [email protected] and ask for names and emails of recipients.  You also can specify whether you want your money to go to the poor or to an Indian business.  You then send the money yourself and email the recipient the Western Union number of your transfer.  You can even send the money on-line.

No, you do not get a tax deduction but your money goes right to the source, with zero overhead and waste.  Have you ever believed that remittances do more good than bureaucratic foreign aid?  I know I have.  I believe we should be experimenting more with zero-overhead giving (see pp.192-6 in my book), and I am asking you to be in on the ground floor of that experiment.

I know that MR has some very wealthy and very generous readers who even make seven-figure donations.  If you are one of these people, would you consider a larger gift of $10,000 or more?  You can distribute the money to as many or as few names as you like.  Just let me know your plan, and how many email addresses I should forward, and the rest is up to you.  I will keep your identity anonymous unless otherwise instructed.  (If you are a potential recipient of money, but want money only from me and don’t want your email forwarded to others, just let me know in the email itself.)

Addendum: In the comments section, please offer your ideas to others for how to use or give away the money.  You can do this whether or not you have a connection to India.