Category: Philosophy
What kind of doctor should I become?
Hi Professor Cowen,
I am a loyal MR reader and I wondered if you could comment on the following situation:
I am a 3rd year medical student, and for the purposes of this question, let’s assume I have equal interest and ability in the various medical specialties. In order to create the greatest good for the greatest number of people through my work in medicine (i.e., the highest return to society), what specialty should I pursue? I should add that, although I intend to practice in the U.S., I am open to devoting as much of my free time/vacation as possible to pro bono medical activities, and further, that I wish to do the interventions myself (instead, for example, or just making lots of money and then donating the proceeds to some other charitable activity). In attempting to answer this question, I’ve been looking at DALYs and QALYs associated with various medical interventions (e.g., cataract surgery). Am I going about answering this question the right way? Any thoughts?
An interesting corollary would be asking what job, in any field, has the highest return to society. Is there any literature on this?
The fundamental institutional failure to overcome is that many lives “out there” are pretty happy, and very much worth living, but those individuals do not have enough money to afford reasonable doctors. If you are seeking to maximize social welfare, look to step into some of these gaps.
But which gap in particular?
The second binding constraint, in my view, is that most people won’t in fact go through with their plan to do a lot of social good. That means you too. So you wish to seek out a form of do-gooding which is incentive-compatible over the long run, or in other words which is fun for you or rewarding in some other way. This second consideration is likely to prove decisive.
For instance you might decide the fight against dengue (just an example to make a point, not an actual net assessment) is the way to go, based on a narrow cost-benefit analysis. But it is hard as a field worker to really, fully protect yourself against dengue. And getting dengue can be very bad indeed. As you age, the pressures not to go into the field will mount. You might do more good by pledging your efforts to fight a malady which you can help fix without so much direct risk or exposure to yourself, let’s say infant mortality.
You will note a difference here between pledges of individual effort and pledges of money. A money pledger, thinking in game-theoretic Nash terms, will realize that effort pledgers will resist the fight against dengue. That is all the more reason why throwing money at the fight against dengue may bring high returns, namely that at the margin not enough is being done from the side of volunteer and quasi-volunteer labor. (In general this distinction creates a problem with talking up one kind of cause over another, namely that labor and money face differing incentives and should hear different messages of encouragement.)
You will note also that in a second best optimum, field workers will appear to be “consuming too many perks.” At the same time, donated funds should be trying to push field workers out of their comfort zones, at least on the margin.
I would add two final points. First, if you have a reasonable chance of being a research superstar, that may be the path to follow.
Second, if you are not already attached, spent time cultivating social circles (aid work, World Bank, vegetarians, etc.) where you are likely to meet a partner or spouse who will support a similar vision to help the world.
Addendum: David Henderson adds comment.
What should you talk about?
Robin Hanson reports:
If your main reason for talking is to socialize, you’ll want to talk about whatever everyone else is talking about. Like say the missing Malaysia Airlines plane. But if instead your purpose is to gain and spread useful insight, so that we can all understand more about things that matter, you’ll want to look for relatively neglected topics. You’ll seek topics that are important and yet little discussed, where more discussion seems likely to result in progress, and where you and your fellow discussants have a comparative advantage of expertise.
You can use this clue to help infer the conversation motives of the people you talk with, and of yourself. I expect you’ll find that almost everyone mainly cares more about talking to socialize, relative to gaining insight.
I would be curious to hear what other people think of this…
The multiverse is looking more likely
Or so I am told:
…those gravitational wave results point to a particularly prolific and potent kind of “inflation” of the early universe, an exponential expansion of the dimensions of space to many times the size of our own cosmos in the first fraction of a second of the Big Bang, some 13.82 billion years ago.
“In most models, if you have inflation, then you have a multiverse,” said Stanford physicist Andrei Linde. Linde, one of cosmological inflation’s inventors, spoke on Monday at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics event where the BICEP2 astrophysics team unveiled the gravitational wave results.
Essentially, in the models favored by the BICEP2 team’s observations, the process that inflates a universe looks just too potent to happen only once; rather, once a Big Bang starts, the process would happen repeatedly and in multiple ways.
There is more here. How should this change my behavior? Should I feel more or less regret? Take more or fewer risks?
For the pointer I thank Ami Evelyn.
Modeling Vladimir Putin
Here are some options:
1. Putin is a crazy hothead who is not even procedurally rational. Merkel received that impression from one of her phone calls with him.
2. Putin is rational, in the Mises-Robbins sense of instrumental means-ends rationality, namely that he has some reason for what he does. He simply wills evil ends, namely the extension of Russian state power and his own power as well.
3. Putin is fully rational in the procedural sense, namely that he calculates very well and pursues his evil ends effectively. In #2 he is Austrian but in #3 he is neoclassical and Lucasian too. He knows the true structure of the underlying model of global geopolitics.
4. Putin lives in a world where power is so much the calculus — instrumentally, emotionally and otherwise — that traditional means-ends relationships are not easy to define. Power very often is the exercise of means for their own sake and means and ends thus meld and merge. Our rational choice constructs may mislead us and cause us to see pointless irrationality when in fact power is being consumed as both means and end. It is hard for we peons to grasp the emotional resonance that power has for Putin and for some of his Russian cronies. They grew up in the KGB, watched their world collapse, tyrannized to rise to top power, while we sit on pillows and watch ESPN.
Here is a former CIA chief arguing Putin has a zero-sum mentality, though I would not make that my primary framing. Here is Alexander J. Motyl considering whether Putin is rational (Foreign Affairs, possibly gated for you). Here is an interesting and useful discussion of differing White House views of Putin. This account of a several-hour dinner with Putin says he is prideful, resentful of domination, and hardly ever laughs. Here is Eric Posner on Putin’s legal astuteness.
My views are a mix of #2 and #4. He is rational, far from perfect in his decision-making, and has a calculus which we find hard to emotionally internalize. His resentments make him powerful, and give him precommitment technologies, but also blind him to the true Lucasian model of global geopolitics, which suggests among other things that a Eurasian empire for Russia is still a pathetic idea.
Putin is also paranoid, and rationally so. We have surrounded him with NATO. China gets stronger every year. Many other Russians seek to kill him, overthrow him, or put him in prison.
Assumptions about Putin’s rationality will shape prediction. Under #1 you should worry about major wars. With my mix of #2 and #4, I do not expect a massive conflagration, but neither do I think he will stop. I expect he keep the West distracted and seek to turn resource-rich neighbors into vassal states, for the purpose of constructing a power-intensive, emotionally resonant new Russian/Soviet empire, to counter the growing weight of China and to (partially) reverse the fall of the Soviet Union. Even if he does not grok the true model of the global world order, he does know that Europe is weak and the United States has few good cards it is willing to play.
Developing…
Addendum: Whatever your theory of Russians in general may be, watch this one-minute video of a Russian baby conducting and give it a rethink.
Open Borders Day!
Today, March 16, is Open Borders Day, a day to celebrate the right to emigrate and the right to immigrate; to peacefully move from place to place. It is a day worth celebrating everywhere both for what has been done already and for the tremendous gains in human welfare that can but are yet to be achieved. It is also a day to reflect on the moral inconsistency that says “No one can be denied equal employment opportunity because of birthplace, ancestry, culture, linguistic characteristics common to a specific ethnic group, or accent” and yet at the same time places heavily armed guards at the border to capture, imprison, turn back and sometimes kill immigrants.
*Inventing Freedom*
That is the new book by Daniel Hannan and the subtitle is How the English-Speaking Peoples Made the Modern World.
Oh how one can mock those subtitles about the making of the modern world, heh heh! Yet this subtitle has a plausible claim to be…true. Even more shockingly, the subtitle accurately describes the book.
Every time my plane lands in England I shed at least a tear, maybe more, out of realization that I am visiting a birthplace (the birthplace?) of liberty. This is not a joke and during my trips there I never quite snap out of that feeling, though I am also well aware of all the problems those people have foisted upon the world as well.
I found many parts of this book to be superficial, or perhaps well-known. Yet often they were superficial and…true. Here is one excerpt:
To put it another way, the distinction was not between Catholic and Protestant individuals, but between Catholic and Protestant states.
Here is from an Amazon review:
Author Daniel Hannan is a person of English ancestry who was born and raised in Peru then relocated to the United Kingdom as an adult and made a career in politics, including becoming one of the U.K.’s representatives to the European Parliament. His global experience has shown him how unique is our “Anglosphere” heritage of representative democracy, protection of property rights, the sanctity of law, and the inalienable rights of the individual.
This is in some ways an important book, though I do not think it is a book which will satisfy everybody.
For the pointer I thank Daniel Klein.
*The Curmudgeon’s Guide to Getting Ahead*
That is the new forthcoming Charles Murray book and the subtitle is Dos and Don’ts of Right Behavior, Tough Thinking, Clear Writing, and Living a Good Life.
Murray by the way just published a review of Average is Over in the latest Claremont Review of Books which I enjoyed very much. It is not yet on-line but cited here.
For the pointer I thank Alex.
Why blame only the Republicans?
When I blame people for their problems, Democrats and liberals are prone to object at a fundamental level. One fundamental objection rests on determinism: Since everyone is determined to act precisely as he does, it is always false to say, “There were reasonable steps he could have taken to avoid his problem.” Another fundamental objection rests on utilitarianism: We should always do whatever maximizes social utility, even if that means taxing the blameless to subsidize the blameworthy.
Strangely, though, every Democrat and liberal I know routinely blames one category of people for their vicious choices: Republicans…
Personally, I strongly favor blaming Republicans. I think 80% of the blame heaped on Republicans is justified. What mystifies me, however, is the view that Republicans are somehow uniquely blameworthy. If you can blame Republicans for lying about WMDs, why can’t you blame alcoholics for lying to their families about their drinking? If you can blame Republican leaders for supporting bad policies because they don’t feel like searching for another job, why can’t you blame able-bodied people on disability because they don’t feel like searching for another job?
Democrats and liberals who expand their willingness to blame do face a risk: You will occasionally sound like a Republican! But why is that such a big deal? Maybe you’ll lose a few intolerant hard-left friends, but they’re replaceable. By taking a reasonable step – broadening your blame – you can avoid the vices of moral inconsistency and moral nepotism. To do anything less would be… blameworthy.
That is from Bryan Caplan. As Robin Hanson once opined, “politics isn’t about policy.”
My own view is to minimize blame in all directions, but of course Bryan is correct in pointing out this inconsistency. Most people are willing to blame those whom they seek to lower in relative status, though I can’t say I really blame them for that.
Markets in everything
Horse head squirrel feeder. Who could possibly want such a thing? Is that the result of a fixed point theorem? Aren’t fixed costs God’s way of keeping such nasty stuff away from us?:
You have a Creepy Horse Mask, why not the squirrels in your yard? It turns out it’s even funnier on a squirrel. This hanging vinyl 6-1/2″ x 10″ squirrel feeder makes it appear as if any squirrel that eats from it is wearing a Horse Mask. You’ll laugh every morning as you drink your coffee while staring out the window into your backyard. Now, if only the squirrels would do their own version of the Harlem Shake video. Hole on top for hanging with string (not included).
For the pointer I thank John De Palma.
What I worry about
LATimes: A 30,000-year-old giant virus has been revived from the frozen Siberian tundra, sparking concern that increased mining and oil drilling in rapidly warming northern latitudes could disturb dormant microbial life that could one day prove harmful to man.
The original research is here. Have a nice day.
New trend of people naming their kids after guns
Via Kottke, here is Abby Haglage:
In 2002, only 194 babies were named Colt, while in 2012 there were 955. Just 185 babies were given the name Remington in 2002, but by 2012 the number had jumped to 666. Perhaps the most surprising of all, however, is a jump in the name Ruger’s (America’s leading firearm manufacturer) from just 23 in 2002 to 118 in 2012. “This name [Ruger] is more evidence of parents’ increasing interest in naming children after firearms,” Wattenberg writes. “Colt, Remington, and Gauge have all soared, and Gunner is much more common than the traditional name Gunnar.”
Practical gradualism vs. moral absolutism, for immigration and revolution
After reading Alex’s post I was a bit worried I would wake up this morning and find the blog retitled, maybe with a new subtitle too. Just a few quick points:
1. There is a clear utilitarian case against open borders, namely that it will — in some but not all cases — lower the quality of governance and destroy the goose that lays the golden eggs. The world’s poor would end up worse off too. I wonder if Alex will apply his absolutist idea on fully open borders to say Taiwan.
2. Alex’s examples don’t support his case as much as he suggests. The American Revolution compromised drastically on slavery, among other matters. (And does Alex even favor that revolution? Should he? Can you be a moral absolutist on both that revolution and on slavery?) American slavery ended through a brutal war, not through the persuasiveness of moral absolutists per se. The British abolished slavery for off-shore islands, but they were very slow to dismantle colonialism, and would have been slower yet if not for two World Wars and fiscal collapse. Should the British anti-slavery movement have insisted that all oppressive British colonialism be ended at the same time? You may argue this one as you wish, but the point is one of empirics, not that the morally absolutist position is generally better.
3. Gay marriage is like “open borders for Canadians.” I’m for both, but I don’t see many people succeeding with the “let’s privatize marriage” or “let’s allow any consensual marriage” arguments, no matter what their moral or practical merits may be. Gay marriage advocates were wise to stick with the more practical case, again choosing an interior solution. Often the crusades which succeed are those which feel morally absolute to their advocates and which also seem like practically-minded compromises to moderates and the undecided.
4. Large numbers of important changes have come quite gradually, including women’s rights, protection against child abuse, and environmentalism, among others. I don’t for instance think parents should ever hit their children, but trying to make further progress on children’s rights by stressing this principle is probably a big mistake and counterproductive.
5. The strength of tribalist intuitions suggests that the moral arguments for fully open borders will have a tough time succeeding or even gaining basic traction in a world where tribalist sentiments have very often been injected into the level of national politics and where, nationalism, at least in the wealthier countries, is perceived as working pretty well. The EU is by far the biggest pro-immigration step we’ve seen, which is great, but we’re seeing the limits of how far that can be pushed. My original post gave some good evidence that a number of countries — though not the United States — are pretty close to the point of backlash from further immigration. Rather than engaging such evidence, I see many open boarders supporters moving further away from it.
6. In the blogosphere, is moralizing really that which needs to be raised in relative status?
Addendum: Robin Hanson adds comment.
And: Alex responds in the comments:
Some good points but only point number #5 actually addresses my argument. I argued that strong, principled moral arguments are most likely to succeed. Point #5 rests on mood affiliation. I know because having a different mood I read the facts in that point in entirely the opposite way. Namely that it’s amazing that although our moral instincts were built on the tribe we have managed to expand the moral circle far beyond the tribe. Having come so far I see no reason why we can’t continue to expand the moral circle to include all human beings. The open borders of the EU is indeed a triumph. Let’s create the same thing with Canada and then lets join with the EU.
Do not make the mistake (as in point #2) of thinking that the moral argument only succeeds when we make fully moral choices. It also succeeds by pushing people to move in the right direction when other arguments would not do that at all.
The Moral Is the Practical
Tyler concedes the moral high ground to advocates of open borders but argues that the proposal is “doomed to fail and probably also to backfire in destructive ways.” In contrast, I argue that the moral high ground is tactically the best ground from which to launch a revolution. In Entrepreneurial Economics I wrote:
No one goes to the barricades for efficiency. For liberty, equality or fraternity, perhaps, but never for efficiency.
Contra Tyler, the lesson of history is that few things are as effective at launching a revolution as is moral argument. Without the firebrand Thomas “We have it in our power to begin the world over again“ Paine, the American Revolution would probably never have happened. Paine’s Common Sense, the most widely read book of its time, is about as far from Tyler’s synthetic, marginalist argument as one can imagine and it was effective.
When in 1787 Thomas Clarkson founded The Society for the Abolition of the Slave Trade a majority of the world’s people were held in slavery or serfdom and slavery was considered by almost everyone as normal, as it had been considered for thousands of years and across many nations and cultures. Slavery was also immensely profitable and woven into the fabric of the times. Yet within Clarkson’s lifetime slavery would be abolished within the British Empire. Whatever one may say about this revolution one can certainly say that it was not brought about by a “synthetic and marginalist” approach. If instead of abolition, Clarkson had settled on the goal of providing for better living conditions for slaves on the voyage from Africa it seems quite possible that slavery would still be with us today.
In more recent times, civil unions have gone nowhere while equality of marriage has succeeded beyond all expectation. The problem with civil unions, and with the synthetic and marginalist approach more generally, is that even though it offers everyone something that they want, it concedes the moral high ground–perhaps there is something different about gay marriage which makes it ok to treat it differently–and for that reason it attracts few adherents. Moreover, the argument for civil unions doesn’t force the opposition to enunciate the moral arguments for their opposition and when the moral ground of the opposition is weak that is a strategic failure.
The moral argument for open borders is powerful. How can it be moral that through the mere accident of birth some people are imprisoned in countries where their political or geographic institutions prevent them from making a living? Indeed, most moral frameworks (libertarian, utilitarian, egalitarian, and others) strongly favor open borders or find it difficult to justify restrictions on freedom of movement. As a result, people who openly defend closed borders sound evil, even when they are simply defending what most people implicitly accept. When your opponents occupy ground that they cannot–even on their own moral premises–defend then it is time to attack.
Personality by region
As indicated by words on blogs: red is high neurotic, blue is low. Highly speculative of course:
How beautiful is mathematics?
From James Gallagher of the BBC:
Mathematicians were shown “ugly” and “beautiful” equations while in a brain scanner at University College London.
The same emotional brain centres used to appreciate art were being activated by “beautiful” maths.
The researchers suggest there may be a neurobiological basis to beauty.
The likes of Euler’s identity or the Pythagorean identity are rarely mentioned in the same breath as the best of Mozart, Shakespeare and Van Gogh.
The study in the journal Frontiers in Human Neuroscience gave 15 mathematicians 60 formula to rate.
Euler’s Identity is a particular favorite of mine, and indeed:
The more beautiful they rated the formula, the greater the surge in activity detected during the fMRI (functional magnetic resonance imaging) scans.
…To the untrained eye there may not be much beauty in Euler’s identity, but in the study it was the formula of choice for mathematicians.
Oh, and this:
In the study, mathematicians rated Srinivasa Ramanujan’s infinite series and Riemann’s functional equation as the ugliest of the formulae.
For the pointer I thank Joanna Syrda.