Category: Uncategorized
Sentences to ponder
There is an alternative to pain as an incentive mechanism: dispensing with incentives altogether and just programming the organism with instructions to follow. And if the organism doesn’t already have “feelings” as a part of its infrastructure then the instructions are the only alternative. The big question for theories of pain and pleasure as an incentive mechanism is why mother nature as Principal bothers with incentives at all.
*On What Matters, vol. I*, review of Derek Parfit
Derek Parfit is one of my favorite philosophers, and favorite writers at that, so for many years I have been looking forward to his next book, which is now out. The main argument is that rule consequentialism, properly understood Kantianism, and contractualism all can be understood as a broadly consistent moral theory, all climbing up the same mountain from different sides.
The text is recognizably Parfit, but I am not convinced by its major arguments, and I also believe the Parfitian method — any reader of him will understand this reference — does not succeed in all of the new areas under consideration.
The philosophical patron saints of the book are Kant and Sidgwick, and I would suggest also Bloomsbury. Parfit is an extreme rationalist and he thinks (hopes?) we can find, and agree upon, the right answers to moral questions. (At the same time he deeply fears that we cannot, and he is a philosophic conservative as Keynes was.) What’s missing is Hume, not the Hume of is-ought worries but the Hume who came to terms with the tensions between the arguments of philosophy and the experience of everyday human life.
My favorite features of the Parfit book include the early comparison of Kant and Sidgwick and the general concern with the frequency and intensity of moral disagreement.
Parfit at great length discusses optimific principles, namely which specifications of rule consequentialism and Kantian obligations can succeed, given strategic behavior, collective action problems, non-linearities, and other tricks of the trade. The Kantian might feel that the turf is already making too many concessions to the consequentialists, but my concern differs. I am frustrated with this very long and very central part of the book, which cries out for formalization or at the very least citations to formalized game theory.
If you’re analyzing a claim such as — “It is wrong to act in some way unless everyone could rationally will it to be true that everyone believes such acts to be morally permitted” (p.20) — words cannot bring you very far, and I write this as a not-very-mathematically-formal economist.
Parfit is operating in the territory of solution concepts and game-theoretic equilibrium refinements, but with nary a nod in their direction. By the end of his lengthy and indeed exhausting discussions, I do not feel I am up to where game theory was in 1990.
I read the standard game-theoretic results as implying that ethics is a far more indeterminate enterprise than Parfit might like to see. Any particular specification of rule consequentialism tends to require increasingly baroque refinements to cover all the different possible kinds of situations. At the end we’re not left with much in the way of a rule at all, other than a general injunction to tell people to do something good and then to rejigger the rule itself, or complicate it with more contingencies, to cover the required ground.
To pose a simple example: “maximize your marginal impact” won’t as an injunction address a lot of environmental problems. “Maximize your average impact” fails in cases where you are truly decisive. What might other more complex rules be, and what are the expectations those rules are making about the behavior of others, what you infer from their behavior, what they infer from your inference, and so on. The path out of these boxes takes us very far away from a rules concept that say Sidgwick might have found intuitive.
Hume has been locked out of the room and he is not allowed to re-enter in the form of Parfit having a dialogue with Cho and Kreps.
Now maybe, just maybe, that game-theoretic messiness does not have to be fatal for rule-consequentialism. Still, I propose a rewrite. Cut or severely limit the hundreds of pages on this topic, start with what game theory already is showing, describe that mess in philosophic, conceptual terms, and then consider whether that mess is compatible with the analogous messes found in Kantianism and contractualism, Maybe it can be shown that they are (broadly) the same mess. Nonetheless, such a collection of messes may be surrounding the same mountain but they will not scale it and Parfit would have to gaze once again into the abyss of, what is to him, ethical nihilism. (Cut back to David Hume for a different attitude. Perhaps Parfit’s very strong philosophic and personal desire to succeed and solve the whole problem draws him from the path that will get us up the mountain some small degree.)
For these reasons I see the biggest and most central part of the book as a failure, possibly wrong but more worryingly “not even wrong” and simply missing the questions defined by where the frontier — choice theory and not just philosophic ethics — has been for some time.
On other points, the criticisms of subjective and desire-based theories are good, but I view Parfit’s conclusions as already having been established.
The talk of Kantian dignity, and of “treating people as a mere means” I do not think can be well-defined. I kept on wanting to see the Marginal Revolution (the real one, the 1871 one) inform this discussion.
I very much agree with Parfit’s argument that no one — not even evil people — should deserve to suffer. I also agree with Parfit’s notion of the irreducibly normative.
Until the material on consequentialism is nailed, I don’t think the integration with contractualism can work.
I would describe the Parfitian method as “the postulation of bold, minimalist claims, explored by the use of brilliant hypotheticals and counterexamples.” In Reasons and Persons the Parfitian method works because the potential for philosophic vagueness is limited by the vividness of the counterfactual (or real world) examples. Most readers of that book are still thinking about split brains, the Repugnant Conclusion, and Future Tuesday Indifference, among numerous other examples. You could question whether all of the terms were pinned down rigorously, but you still knew that the thought experiment was making you rethink some of your priors. In the subject areas of On What Matters the semantics are too slack, too open to multiple interpretation, and too many of the central concepts cry out for formalization. There are not compelling new metaphors and examples to pin down the discourse. Parfit’s greatest strength is as an imaginer, often outside of traditional philosophic dimensions, and yet here he is so concerned with justifying his disagreements with his peers and colleagues. Their ghosts and comments and discourses are shackling him, and if you visit the best pages of Reasons and Persons you will see they hardly mention the names of other philosophers at all, much less current philosophers.
I do not wish to put you off Parfit. He is a philosopher of major importance and, non-trivially, one of the most philosophical philosophers, perhaps ever. He lives, thinks, feels, breathes, and exudes philosophy in a way which is, in and of itself, a major contribution to human thought and being. Reading him is an unforgettable and illuminating experience. His best arguments have great real world import.
It is stunning to read the last three pages of the preface, which list everybody who gave him comments. It’s a long list, but I’m not sure it was the right list to have chosen.
Addendum: Here is Peter Singer’s review. Here is a review from Constantine Sandis.
Would temporary capital controls for Greece work?
Has anyone written a good blog post about this topic?
If you allow redemption of accounts into currency, the currency can be mailed, carried across borders, sent by PayPal against credit cards, sent by Western Union, or many other options. It would be hard to shut them all down at once. The Greek government could try. Carrying currency across the border would be the hardest one to stop, although it might not be the most important external channel for getting funds out of the country. They could search people at the border, much as the U.S. government now searches us for liquids before a plane flight.
A second scenario freezes bank accounts and doesn’t worry too much about currency leakage. Instead it stops people from adding to their currency holdings, or at least tries to. The Greek economy then has to do without currency withdrawals for some time, until the new drachma currency is ready.
Which is the more feasible option? Is either at all an option? Am I overlooking an alternative? Without some kind of capital controls, a move away from the euro simply drains the country of its euros.
Assorted links
1. David Glasner is now blogging monetary economics.
2. Seattle Times review of TGS.
3. Good account of dramatically falling migration from Mexico, and rising living standards in Mexico. It’s gone from about 500,000 illegal Mexican migrants a year to 100,000 a year.
4. Where does the revenue from the iPod go? Full paper here.
5. When giant wombats walked the earth, and Angus doesn’t want the deal.
Assorted links
1. Will Iceland move to prescription-only tobacco?
2. Books which are coming out soon.
3. What does it cost to make a typical hit song?
4. Who is the most followed person on Google+?
5. New hypothesis about why global temperature was falling for a while (not good news). More detail here.
6. What times of the day are criminals at work? 9-5 it seems.
Assorted links
1. Vote winners for best conservative books.
2. Suicide bomber markets in everything.
3. Prince Twins Seven-Seven passes away.
4. People’s reasons for not having children.
5. Anthony Painter reviews TGS.
6. The largest holders of Greek debt.
7. Read the “Tree of Life” dialogue or better yet watch the Leo Kottke video. Here is my favorite Malick review so far; oddly I find New World to be his masterpiece.
Assorted links
1. QE: the bottom line, by James Hamilton.
2. e, explained! (hat tip Alex)
3. Accountability.
Berlin markets in everything
Camping vacations may summon nostalgic appeal for many consumers, but the logistics of making them happen can be overwhelming. That’s why we’ve seen a company that orchestrates backyard camping events, for example, and it’s also presumably the thinking behind Berlin’s newly opened Hüttenpalast hotel, which offers caravan-style camping in the safety and predictability of an indoor setting.
Launched earlier this month, the Hüttenpalast hotel offers consumers a way to “walk in flip-flops with your towel, even in winter, to the beautiful new showers,” as the company puts it. Set in a former Berlin factory, the hotel includes what it calls an “indoor garden” featuring an assortment of old caravan campers and wooden huts. Consumers can reserve either of these for a taste of retro happiness — pricing starts at EUR 40 per night — with separate facilities for men and women. Alternatively, if they’re less interested in “roughing it,” they can opt for one of the hotel’s six traditional rooms complete with luxury en-suite bathrooms. Either way, an attached cafe offers breakfast, coffee and homemade cakes, while the lunch menu focuses on regional and seasonal products.
The link is here and for the pointer I thank Michael Rosenwald. For a European hotel, much less one with a theme, that’s pretty cheap.
Assorted links
1. Betting odds for the literature Nobel Prize. Cormac McCarthy is favored.
2. Fast Company review of TGS.
3. Rybka, world chess champion from 2007 to 2010, stripped of title and asked to return prize money. This is also an implicit argument for a looser patents policy.
4. More serious evidence of structural unemployment.
5. Iowa just put up its new electronic political markets, make them deep and liquid!
Assorted links
1. The economics of the NBA lockout.
2. Do migrants improve their hometowns through remittances?
3. Yet where are the bond market vigilantes? Few people invoke this concept consistently. Explaining such apparent tensions is exactly why every columnist should have a blog.
5. Left-wingers love graduate school, conservatives do not as much (pdf).
What I’ve been reading
1. Andrew Mango, Ataturk: The Biography of the Founder of Modern Turkey. A pleasurable read and full of information. For me it was most useful as a foreign policy history of Turkey, more than a biography of Ataturk himself. One implication is that Turkey won’t be making too many more concessions on the global stage, or for that matter with the Kurds.
2. Virginia Woolf, On Being Ill. This is insanely good, and I can’t believe I had never read it before. It’s super short, but a thrilling reading experience at every word. It’s in the “jaw hits floor” category.
3. Thomas P. Hughes, Networks of Power: Electrification in Western Society, 1880-1930. The best history of electrical infrastructure which I have found. It is very good on explaining the difficulties in organizing an entire economy around electricity and why it took so long. It is also fascinating on why the English lagged behind the Germans and Americans in the transition to electricity, in large part because of local interest group politics. It sheds light on the “mystery” of British decline. A long, nerdy book, with unintelligible Cooper Union-like diagrams, I loved it. It’s one of mankind’s most stirring stories.
4. Owen Hatherley, A Guide to the New Ruins of Great Britain. I didn’t enjoy this book, so I didn’t read much of it, but I thought it was splendid in conception. It requires some working knowledge of British urban landscapes and I, for one, have never been to Sheffield. It’s a smartly written conceptual survey of the empty buildings that have come to populate British cities and I am sorry that I wasn’t up to it.
Larry Summers on Quora
He is always worth reading, read him here. He just answered a question about comparing America to Japan. Larry also asked a question:
To fly within the United States you have to take your shoes off at security. To fly to the USA you don’t. How can both policies be rational?
For the pointer I thank Chris F. Masse.
Assorted links
1. China web search of the day.
2. The Israeli boycott of cottage cheese.
3. North Korea to close its universities.
4. Where the gay families are.
5. Extended interview with Banerjee and Duflo.
6. Jeff Sachs recommends five books, I expected only one of the picks.
7. Yes.
Assorted links
The wisdom of Scott Sumner
…there is no hard and fast distinction between cyclical and structural unemployment. For instance, if structural unemployment in American has risen closer to European levels, it may be partly due to the decision to extend unemployment insurance from 26 weeks to 99 weeks, and to increase the minimum wage by over 40% right before the recession. Does that mean that demand stimulus cannot lower unemployment? No, because the maximum length of unemployment insurance is itself an endogenous variable. If stimulus were to sharply boost aggregate demand it is quite likely that Congress would return the UI limit to 26 weeks, as it has during previous recoveries. For similar reasons, the real minimum wage would decline with more rapid growth in demand. Aggregate supply and demand are hopelessly entangled, a problem that many economists haven’t fully recognised.
Read the whole thing. I would add a few points. First, structural and cyclical hypotheses interact in another way, namely that the degree of nominal stickiness for unemployed workers will depend on structural factors. Second, the partially structural nature of unemployment is becoming increasingly clear with time; wages are not sticky forever and we are not at risk of a downward deflationary spiral from a round of wage-cutting among the unemployed. Third, the unemployment itself is becoming increasingly structural, even if you think it was mostly cyclical in the first place. Not working is bad for people. Fourth, structural unemployment does change the appropriate mix of monetary and fiscal policies, although the net effect is indeterminate in theory. Monetary policy should be expansionary, but structural forces behind unemployment can make traditional fiscal policy either more or less effective (it is more important to target disaffected workers, but also harder to do so) and you can think of that as the frontier policy question of the day.
Here is Scott’s bleg. Could Scott be blogging again? The consumer surplus from the internet just went up.