tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-379415025729973882024-03-05T20:44:02.199-08:00MeteuphoricKatja Gracehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10817039598064207796noreply@blogger.comBlogger33125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37941502572997388.post-58031338964998460122009-07-23T12:49:00.000-07:002009-07-23T12:51:31.664-07:00This blog is now at <a href="http://meteuphoric.wordpress.com/">http://meteuphoric.wordpress.com/</a>Katja Gracehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10817039598064207796noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37941502572997388.post-1291531403671600212009-07-03T00:18:00.001-07:002009-07-05T23:46:02.028-07:00Who do we care about?Humans exercise compassion regarding:<div><ul><li>family more than anyone</li><li>people they know more than strangers</li><li>geographically close people more than distant people</li><li>Visible people more than not visible people</li><li>culturally similar people more than culturally different people</li><li>few people more than many people (even one person more than two people, in total, if I recall)</li><li>people who can't be helped by others more than people who aren't being helped by others (bystander effect)</li><li>causing and stopping death more than stopping and causing birth</li><li>people who exist already more than potential people</li><li>actions more than inactions</li><li>those suffering more than those without as much pleasure as they could have</li><li>people who will recover health or wealth with our help more than those whose suffering will merely be reduced</li><li>high status people more than low status people</li><li>big animals more than small animals</li><li>women more than men</li><li>children more than adults</li><li>cute things more than ugly things</li><li>the innocent more than the guilty</li></ul><div>Our moral feelings are not concerned for others' wellbeing per se. They are very contingent. What's the pattern? An obvious contender is whether we can be rewarded or punished by the beneficiary of our 'compassion'. Distant, helpless, non-existent and low status people can't easily return the favour or punish. Inaction and shared blame are hard to punish, as everyone is responsible. There are some things that don't fit this, but most can be explained e.g. children are weak, but if they are ours we genetically benefit by caring and if they are not they probably have someone powerful caring about them for that reason. Got a better explanation?</div><div><br /></div><div>I don't decide what to do by guessing the pattern behind my moral emotions and trying to follow it better. If you do, perhaps try to care only for the powerful. If you don't, notice that your moral feelings are probably fooling you into what's tantamount to murder.</div></div>Katja Gracehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10817039598064207796noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37941502572997388.post-45754251604511928102009-06-17T11:09:00.000-07:002009-06-17T11:09:59.905-07:00Morality is subjective preference, but it can be objectively wrong<div>People are often unwilling to think of ethics as their own preferences, rather than demands from something more transcendent. For instance it's normal to claim that one really wants to make one choice, but it's only ethical to make the other. My feelings agree, but my thoughts don't. If I follow something I call ethics, that demonstrates that I want to. It's not a physical law. So what's the difference?</div><div><br /></div><div>Just that. Ethics is a preference for fulfilling preferences attributed to some other source. Popular external sources of values include Gods, nature, other people, transcendent moral truth, group norms, and leaders. If I prefer for your house not to burn down I will turn on the hose. If I think it's moral to stop your house burning down I will turn off the hose if I find out that you want to burn it down to collect insurance money. I care about your values, not the house.</div><div><br /></div><div>One demonstration that having an external source is important for ethics is the fact that invented ethical systems (such as, 'playing video games is virtuous') seem illegitimate and cheaty. Crazy seeming practices can be ordained by religion and culture, but if you decide independently that it's only ethical to eat cereal on Thursdays and most will feel you are missing the point and some marbles. </div><div><div><br /></div><div>While ethics is a matter of choice then, it implies the existence of your preferred outside source of values. This means it can be wrong. The outside source of values might not exist, or might not have values. This is why evidence about evolution can influence whether a person likes gays marrying, despite it being an apparent value judgement.</div><div><br /></div><div>This means moral intuitions aren't as useful as they seem for information about how to be moral. Gut reactions are handy for working out what you like, but if you find that you like serving someone else's purposes there is factual information about whether they exist or care to take into account. We have better ways to deal with facts than our emotional responses in most realms, so why not use the same here?</div><div><br /></div><div>The only things that exist and care that I know of are other people and animals. Gods and transcendent values don't exist, and society as a whole and the environment don't care, as far as I know. So if I want to be ethical, preference utilitarianism (caring about other people's preferences) is my only option. Of course I could prefer not to be ethical at all. And I could prefer to follow what pass for other moral rules; being honest, protesting interference in the environment, keeping my dress long. But if these things benefit only my feeling of righteousness, I must admit they are no different to normal personal preferences. If you want to be ethical, these are probably not what you are looking for any more than 'it's virtuous to play video games' is.</div></div>Katja Gracehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10817039598064207796noreply@blogger.com13tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37941502572997388.post-32049275008337563342009-06-17T03:17:00.000-07:002009-06-17T03:59:35.781-07:00Be your conformist, approval seeking, selfPeople recommend that one another 'be themselves' rather than being influenced by outside expectations and norms. Nobody suggests others should try harder to follow the crowd. They needn't anyway; we seem fairly motivated by impressing others and fitting in. Few seem interested in 'being themselves' in the sense of behaving as they would if nobody was ever watching. The 'individuality' we celebrate usually seems designed for observers. What do people do when there's only themselves to care? Fart louder and leave their dirty cups around. This striving for unadulterated selfhood is not praised. Yes, it seems in most cases you can get more approval if you tailor your actions to getting approval. So why do we so commonly offer this same advice, that we don't follow, and don't approve of any real manifestation of?Katja Gracehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10817039598064207796noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37941502572997388.post-17762672762932529772009-06-14T14:50:00.001-07:002009-06-14T17:00:05.968-07:00Explain explanations for choosing by choiceA popular explanation of <a href="http://www.overcomingbias.com/2009/06/lazy-hurt-less-than-stupid.html/trackback">why it's worse to seem stupid than lazy</a> is that lazy seems like more of a choice, so not permanent. Similarly it seems more admired and desired to have innate artistic talent than to try hard despite being less naturally good. Being unable to stand by and let a tragedy occur ('I had no choice!') is more virtuous than making a calm, reasoned decision to avoid a tragedy.<div><br /></div><div>On the other hand, people usually claim to prefer being liked for their personality over their looks. When asked they also relate it to their choice in the matter; it means more to be liked for something you 'had a say in'. People are also proud of achievements they work hard on and decisions they make, and less proud of winning the lottery and forced moves. </div><div><br /></div><div>The influence of apparent choice on our emotions is opposite in these cases, yet we often use it in the explanation for both. Is percieved level of choice really relevant to anything? If so, why does it explain effects in opposite directions? If not, why do we think of it so soon when questioned on these things?</div>Katja Gracehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10817039598064207796noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37941502572997388.post-1334159171029850352009-04-24T19:33:00.000-07:002009-04-25T17:42:39.714-07:00A puzzleWhat do these things have in common? Nerves, emotions, morality, prices.Katja Gracehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10817039598064207796noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37941502572997388.post-15227173639139847502009-04-07T23:00:00.000-07:002009-04-07T23:44:36.013-07:00Obvious identity fail<a href="http://paulgraham.com/">Paul Graham</a> <a href="http://www.paulgraham.com/identity.html">points out</a> something important: religion and politics are generally unfruitful topics of discussion because people have identities tied to them.<br /><br />An implication:<br /><blockquote><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;">The most intriguing thing about this theory, if it's right, is that it explains not merely which kinds of discussions to avoid, but how to have better ideas. If people can't think clearly about anything that has become part of their identity, then all other things being equal, the best plan is to let as few things into your identity as possible.</span></blockquote><br /><div>This seems obvious. For one thing, if you are loyal to anything that incorporates a particular view of the world rather than to truth per <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0">se</span>, you have to tend away from believing true things. </div><div><br /></div><div><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_1">Ramana</span> <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_2">Kumar</span> says this is not obvious, and (after discussion of this and other topics) that I shouldn't care if things seem obvious, and should just point them out anyway, as they're often not, to him at least (so probably to most). This seems a good idea, except that a microsecond's introspection reveals that I really don't want to say obvious things. Why? Because my identity fondly includes a bit about saying not-obvious things. Bother. </div><div><br /></div><div><span><span>Is it dangerous here? A tiny bit, but I don't seem very compelled to change it. And nor, I doubt, would be many others with more important things. If you identify with being Left or Right more than being correct to begin with, what would make you want to give it up? </span></span></div><div><br /></div><div><span><span><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_3">Ramana</span> suggests that if having an identity is inescapable but the specifics are flexible, then the best plan is perhaps to identify with some small set of things that impels you to kick a large set of other things out of your identity. </span></span></div><div><br /></div><div>What makes people identify with some things and use/believe/be associated with/consider probable/experience others without getting all funny about it anyway?</div><div><br /></div><div>As a side note, I don't fully get the concept. I just notice it happens, including in my head sometimes, and that it seems pretty pertinent to people insisting on being wrong. If you can explain how it works or what it means, I'm curious.</div>Katja Gracehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10817039598064207796noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37941502572997388.post-37121778100252238792009-04-02T06:57:00.000-07:002010-09-27T05:33:08.947-07:00Constrained talk on free speechI went to <a href="http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=76864215189">a public lecture</a> last night on the question<span><span> 'How do we balance freedom of speech and religious sensitivity?'</span></span>. It featured four distinguished academics 'exploring legal, philosophical and cultural perspectives'. I was interested to go because I couldn't think of any reason the 'balance' should be a jot away from free sp<span><span>eech on this one, and I thought if smart people thought it worth discussing, there might be arguments I haven't heard. </span></span><div><span><span><br />The most interesting thing I discovered in the evening was that something pretty mysterious to me is going on. The speakers implicitly assumed there was some middle of the road 'balance', without addressing why there should be at all. So they talked about how to assign literary merit to The Satanic Verses, how globalization might mean that we could offend more people by accident, whether it is consistent with other rights to give rights to groups, what the law can do about it now, etc. That these are the pertinent issues in answering the question wasn't questioned. Jeremy Shearmur looked like he might at one point, but his argument was basically 'I think I'd find Piss Christ pretty offensive if I were a Christian - it's disgusting to me that anyone would make it anyway - and so ignorant of Christianity'. More interesting discussion of the question could be found in any bar (some of it was interesting, it just wasn't about the question). </span></span><div><div><br />What am I missing here? Is it seriously the consensus (in Australia?) that censorship is in order for items especially offensive to religious people? Is there some argument for this I'm missing? What makes the situation special compared to other free speech issues? The offense? Then why not ban other things offensive to some observers? Ugly houses, swearing, public displays of homosexual affection.. The religion? Is there some reason especially unlikely beliefs are to be protected, or just any beliefs that claim their own sacredness? Are these academics afraid of something I don't know about? Is it much more controversial than I thought to support free speech in general? Or is the question just a matter of balancing the political correctness of saying 'yay free speech' and of 'yay religious tolerance'? </div></div></div>Katja Gracehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10817039598064207796noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37941502572997388.post-8504168155199588182009-04-02T02:51:00.000-07:002009-06-17T11:19:37.734-07:00Romance is magicalPeople seem to generally believe they have high romantic standards, and that they aren't strongly influenced by things like looks, status and money. Research says our standards aren't that high, that they drop if the standard available drops for a single evening, and that superficial factors make more of a difference than we think. Our beliefs about what we want are wrong. It's not an obscure topic though; the evidence should be in front of us. How do we avoid noticing? We're pretty good at not noticing things we don't want to - we can probably do it unaided. Here there is a consistent pattern though.<br /><br />Consider the hypothesis that there is approximately one man in the world for me. I meet someone who appears to be him within a month of looking. This is not uncommon, though it has a one in many million chance of happening under my hypothesis, if I look insanely hard. This should make me doubt my hypothesis in favor of one where there are several, or many million men in the world for me. What do I really do? Feel that since something so unlikely (under the usual laws of chance) occurred it must be a sign that we were really meant for each other, that the universe is looking out for us, that fate found us deserving, or whatever. Magic is a nice addition to the theory, as it was what we wanted in the relationship anyway. Romantic magic and there being a Mr Right are complimentary beliefs, so meeting someone nice confirms the idea that there was exactly one perfect man in the world rather than suggesting it's absurd.<br /><br />I can't tell how serious anyone is about this, but ubiquitously when people happen to meet the girl of their dreams on a bus where they were the only English speaking people they put it down to fate, rather than radically lowered expectations. When they marry someone from the same small town they say they were put there for each other. When their partner, chosen on grounds of intellectual qualities, happens to also be rich and handsome their friends remark at how fortune has smiled on them. When people hook up with anyone at all they tell everyone around how unlikely it was that they should both have been at that bus stop on that day, and how since somehow they did they think it's a sign.<br /><br />We see huge evidence against our hypothesis, invoke magic/friendly-chance as an explanation, then see this as confirmation that the original magic-friendly hypothesis was right.<br /><br />Does this occur in other forms of delusion? I think so. We often use the semi-supernatural to explain gaps caused by impaired affective forecasting. As far as I remember we overestimate strength of future emotional responses, tend to think whatever happens was the best outcome, and whatever we own is better than what we could have owned (e.g. you like the children you've got more than potential ones you could have had if you had done it another day). We explain these with 'every cloud has a silver lining', or 'everything happens for a reason', or 'it turns out it was meant to happen – now I've realised how wonderful it is to spend more time at home', 'I was guided to take that option - see how well it turned out!' or as happens often to Mother; 'the universe told me to go into that shop today, and uncannily enough, there was a sale there and I found this absolutely wonderful pair of pants!'.<br /><br />Supernatural explanations aren't just for gaps in our understanding. They are also for gaps between what we want to believe and are forced by proximity to almost notice.Katja Gracehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10817039598064207796noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37941502572997388.post-62824855561776963572009-03-12T05:30:00.000-07:002009-06-14T17:03:33.978-07:00The origins of virtue<span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; font-family:arial;font-size:13px;"><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">I read Matt Ridley's 'The origins of virtue' just now. It was full of engaging anecdotes and irrelevant details, which I don't find that useful for understanding, so I wrote down the interesting points. On the off chance anyone else would like a summary, I publish it here. I recommend reading it properly. Things written in [here] are my comments.</span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><br /></span></p><p style="text-align: center;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">***</span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><br /></span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Prologue</span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">The aim of this book: How did all this cooperation and niceness, especially amongst humans, come about evolutionarily?</span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><br /></span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Chapter 1</span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">There are benefits to cooperation: can do many things at once, [can avoid costs of conflict, can enjoy other prisoners' dilemmas, can be safer in groups]</span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Cooperation occurs on many levels: allegiances, social groups, organisms, cells, organelles, chromosomes, genomes, genes.</span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Selfish genes explain everything.</span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Which means it's possible for humans to be unselfish.</span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">There are ubiquitous conflicts of interest to be controlled in coalitions at every level.</span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><br /></span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">2</span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Relatedness explains most groupishness ( = like selfishness, but pro-group). e.g. ants, naked mole rats.</span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Humans distribute reproduction, so aren't closely related to their societies. They try to suppress nepotism even. So why all the cooperation?</span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Division of labour has huge benefits (trade isn't zero sum)</span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">[cells are cool because they have the same genes, so don't mutiny, but different characters so benefit from division of labour]</span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Division of labor is greater in larger groups, and with better transport.</span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">There is a trade-off between division of labour and benefits of competition.</span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">By specialising at individual level a group can generalise at group level: efficiently exploit many niches.</span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Division of labour between males and females is huge and old.</span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><br /></span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">3</span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Prisoners' dilemmas are ubiquitous.</span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Evolutionarily stable strategies = nash equilibria found by evolution.</span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Tit-for-tat and related strategies are good in iterated prisoners' dilemmas.</span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">This is because they are nice, retaliatory, forgiving, and clear.</span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">If a combination of strategies play against one other repeatedly, increasing in number according to payoffs, the always-defectors thrive as they beat the always-cooperators, then the tit-for-taters take over as the defectors kill each other.</span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Reciprocity is ubiquitous in our society.</span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Hypothesis: it's an evolutionarily stable strategy. It allowed us to benefit from cooperation without being related. This has been a major win for our species.</span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Reciprocity isn't as prevalent between related individuals (in ours and other species).</span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Tit-for-tat can lead to endless revenge :(</span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><br /></span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">4</span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Reciprocity requires remembering many other individuals and their previous behavior. This requires a large brain.</span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Reciprocity requires meeting the same people continually. Which is why people are nastier in big anonymous places.</span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Other strategies beat tit-for-tat once tit-for-tat has removed nastier strategies. Best of these is pavlov, or win-stay/lose-shift, especially with learned probabilities.</span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">In asynchronous games 'firm-but-fair' is better – similar to pavlov, but cooperates [once presumably] after being defected against as a cooperator in the last round.</span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">In larger populations reciprocity should be less beneficial – most interactions are with those you won't see again.</span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Boyd's suggestion: this is the reason for morality behaviour, or punishing those who don't punish defection.</span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Another solution: social ostracism: make choosing who to play with an option.</span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">A strategy available to humans is prediction of cooperativeness in advance. [Why can we do this? Why don't we evolve to not demonstrate our lack of cooperativeness? Because others evolve to show their cooperativeness if they have it? There are behaviours that only make sense if you intend do be cooperative.]</span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><br /></span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">5.</span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">We share food socially a lot, with strangers and friends. Not so much other possessions. Sex is private and coveted.</span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Meat is especially important in shared meals.</span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Hypothesis: meat hunting is where division of labour was first manifested.</span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Monkey males share meat with females to get sex, consequently hunting meat more than would be worth it for such small successes otherwise.</span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Hypothesis: humans do this too (some evidence that promiscuous natives hunt more), and the habit evolved into a sexual division of labour amongst married couples (long term relationships are usual in our species, but not in chimps). Males then benefit from division of labour, and also feeding their children.</span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Hypothesis: sexual division of labour fundamental to our early success as a species – neither hunting or gathering would have done alone, but together with cooking it worked.</span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Hypotheses: food sharing amongst non-relatives could have descended from when males of a tribe were mostly related, or from the more recent division of labour in couples.</span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Chimps share and show reciprocity behaviour, but do not offer food voluntarily [doesn't that suggest that in humans its not a result of marriage related sexual division?]</span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Why do hunter-gatherers share meat more, and share more on trips?</span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Hypotheses: 1. meat is cooperatively caught, so have to share to continue cooperation. 2. High variance in meat catching – sharing gives stable supply.</span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">What stops free-riding then?</span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><br /></span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">6.</span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Mammoth hunting introduced humans to significant public goods. You can't not share a mammoth, especially if others have spear throwers. [mammoth hunting should have started then when it became easier to kill a mammoth than to successfully threaten to kill a tribesman who killed a mammoth]</span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Tolerated theft: the idea that people must share things where they can't use all of them, and to prevent others from taking parts is an effort. That is, TT is what happens once you've caught a public good (e.g. mammoth). Evidence that this isn't what happens in reality; division seems to be controlled. Probably reciprocity of some sort (argument over whether this is in the form of material goods or prestige and sex). Evidence against this too; idle men are allowed to share (if the trade is in sex, they aren't the ones the trading is aimed at, and miss out on the sex trade).</span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Alternative hypothesis: is treated as a public good, but so big that it's possible to sneak the best bits to girls and get sex.<br /></span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Trade across time (e.g. in large game) reduces exposure to fluctuations in meat.</span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Hypothesis: hunter-gatherers are relatively idle because they have to share what they get, so stop getting things after their needs are fulfilled.</span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Hypotheses: when people hoard money they are punished by their neighbours because they are defecting in the reciprocal sharing that usually takes place, yet they have no incentive to share if they have an improbably large windfall – the returned favours won't be as good. Alternatively can be seen as tolerated theft: punishment for not sharing is an attempt to steal from huge good.</span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">When instincts for reciprocity are in place, gifts can be given 'as weapons'. That is, to force future generosity from the recipient.</span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Gift giving is less reciprocal (still prevalent, just not carefully equal) amongst human families than amongst human allies.</span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Gifts can then also signal status; ostentatious generosity demands reciprocity – those who can't lose face. The relative benefit of buying status this way depends on the goods – perishables may as well be grandly wasted. In this case reciprocity is zero sum: no benefits from division of labour, status cycle is zero sum.</span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><br /></span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">7.</span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Humans are better at solving Wason test when it is in terms of noticing cheating than in terms of other social contexts, or abstract terms.</span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Hypothesis: humans have an 'exchange organ' in their brains, which deals with calculating related to social contracts. This is unique amongst animals. Evidence: brain damage victims and patients who fail all other tests of intelligence except these, anthropomorphic attitudes to nature heavily involve exchange, anthropomorphizing of objects heavily involves exchange related social emotions (anger, praise).</span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Moral sentiments appear irrational, but overcome short term personal interests for long term genetic gains.</span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Commitment problem: when at least one side in a game has no credible threat if the other defects, how can cooperation occur? The other can't prove they will commit. e.g. kidnap victim can't prove she won't go to police, so kidnapper must kill her even if both would be better off if he let her go in return for her silence.</span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Various games have bad equilibria for rational players in one off situations, but emotions can change things. e.g. prisoners' dilemma is solved if players have guilt and shame. Where player would be irrational to punish other for defection (punishment costly to implement, loss already occurred), anger produces credible threat (will punish in spite of self).</span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Many emotions serve to alter the rewards of commitment problems, by bringing forward costs and benefits.</span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">For this to work, emotions have to be hard to fake. Shouldn't defectors who are good at faking emotions invade a population of people who can't? No, because in the long run the people who can't find each other and cooperate together. [that's what would happen anyway – you would cooperate the first time, then don't go back if the other defects. Commitment should be a problem largely in one off games – are more emotions shown in those things? In one off games can't have the long run to find people and make good liars pay].</span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Emotions make interests common, which stops prisoners' dilemmas. Interests of genes are not common, so emotions must be shared with other emotional ones.<br /></span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Ultimatum game variations suggest that people are motivated more by reciprocity than by absolute fairness.</span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">People lacking social emotions due to brain damage are paralyzed by indecision as they try to rationally weigh information.</span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">We like and praise altruism much more than we practice it. Others' altruism and our looking altruistic are useful, whereas our own selfishness is. [why aren't people who behave like this invaded by slightly more altruistic ones who don't cooperate with them? Why is the equilibrium at being exactly as selfish as we are? Signaling means that everyone looks more altruistic than they are, so everyone is less altruistic than they would be if others were maximally altruistic?]</span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Hypothesis: economics and evolutionary biology are held in distrust because talking about them doesn't signal belief in altruism etc. Claiming that people or genes are selfish suggests that you are selfish.</span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><br /></span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">8</span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Cooperation began (or is used primarily in monkey society) in competition and aggression.</span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">The same 'tricks' will be discovered by evolution as by thought [if their different aims don't matter], so if we share a behaviour with animals it's not obvious that it's evolved in our case, though often it is.</span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Our ancestors were: social, hierarchical (especially amongst males), more egalitarian and with less rigid hierarchies than monkeys.</span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Differences between primates:</span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Monkey hierarchies rely on physical strength more than chimp ones, which rely on social manipulation.</span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Baboons use cooperation to steal females from higher ranking males, chimps use it to change the social hierarchy.</span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Chimp coalitions are reciprocal, unlike monkeys. </span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Power and sexual success are had by coalitions of weaker individuals in chimps and humans.</span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Bottlenose dolphins (the only species other than us with brain:body ratio bigger than chimps): males have coalitions of 2-3 which they use to kidnap females. All mate with her. These coalitions join to form super-coalitions to steal females from other coalitions. This is reciprocal (on winning, one coalition will leave the female with the other coalition in the super-coalition, in return for the favor next time)</span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Second order alliances seem unique to dolphins and humans.</span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Chimp males stay in a troop while females leave, with monkeys it is the other way around. Could be related to aggressive xenophobia of chimp males. Seems so in human societies: matrilineal societies are less fighty.</span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Chimp groups, rather than individuals, possess territory (rare, but not unique: e.g. wolves). </span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Hypothesis: this is an extension of the coalition building that occurs for gaining power in a group. Alpha males prevent conflict within the group, making it stable, which is good for all as they are safer from other groups if they stick together.</span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Humans pursue status through fighting between groups, whereas chimps only do it within groups [how do you know?]</span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><br /></span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">9</span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Group selection can almost never happen.</span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Large groups cooperating are often being directly selfish (safer in shoal than alone).</span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">50:50 sex ratio is because individual selection stronger than group selection. A group would do better by having far more females, yet a gene to produce males would make you replicate much faster, bringing ratio back.</span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Humans appear to be exception: culturally, not genetically, different groups compete.</span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Conformism would allow group characteristics to persist long enough that there would be group selection before groups dissolved or were invaded by others' ideas.</span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Why would conformism evolve?</span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Hypothesis: we have many niches which require different behaviors. If you move it's beneficial to copy your behavior from your neighbors.</span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Imitation should be more beneficial if there are more people doing it; better to copy something tried by many than the behavior of one other. How did it get started then?</span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Hypothesis: seeing what is popular amongst many gives you information.</span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Hypothesis: keeps groups together. If receptive to indoctrination about altruism we will find ourselves in more successful groups [I don't follow this].</span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Humans don't actually live in groups; they just perceive everything in terms of them.</span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">A persons' fate isn't tied to that of their group. They don't put the group's wellbeing first. They are groupish out of selfishness – it's not group selection.</span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Ritual is universal, but details of it are particular.</span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Hypothesis: Ritual is a means to conformity keeps groups together in conflict, and they survive [How would this begin? Why ritual? Why do they have to be different? Why is conformity necessary to keep groups together? Seems just that we are used to conformity being linked to staying together we assume one leads to the other].</span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Music and religious belief seem to have similarly group grouping properties.</span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Cooperation within groups seems linked to xenophobia outside them [cooperation for safety in conflict is of course. What about cooperation for trade? Has that given us non-xenophobia induced cooperative feelings? Earlier chapters seemed to imply so].</span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><br /></span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">10</span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Weak evidence of trade 200,000 years ago – not clear when it started.</span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Trade between groups is unique to humans.</span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Trade is the glue of alliances between groups; it appears that some trade is just an excuse for this.</span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Trading rules predate governments. Governments nationalize preexisting trading systems. e.g. 11</span><sup><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">th</span></sup><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> C Europe merchant courts [is this a general trend? why is everything in anecdotes? aargh].</span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Speculation isn't beneficial because there is no division of labour [?].</span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><br /></span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">11</span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Natives are not ecologically nice. They do not conserve game. They sent many species extinct.</span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">We tie environmentalism up with other morality [is it pro-social morality, as the book has been about, or purity?].</span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">As with other morality, we are more programmed to preach than to practice.</span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">It doesn't look like people have an instinctive environmental ethic [it's a big prisoners' dilemma – can't we make use of something else in our repertoire?].</span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><br /></span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">12</span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Property rights emerge unaided where it is possible to defend them [if you see a tragedy of the commons coming, best to draw up property rights – no reason you will be the free rider].</span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Nationalization often turns property-divided 'commons' into a free for all, as the govt can't defend it and nobody has reason to protect what they are stealing from.</span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Ordered and successful systems can emerge without design. e.g. Bali subak traditions could have resulted from all copying any neighbour who did better than them.</span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Lab experiment suggests that communication encourages a lot of cooperation in tragedy of commons games (better than ability to fine defectors)</span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">If humans can arrange property rights unaided, why all the extinctions last chapter?</span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Hypothesis: property rights can't be enforced on moving things. Animals that could have property rights asserted on them did have in some cases. e.g. Beavers.</span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Hoarding taboo (as a result of reciprocity instinct) is to blame for environmentalist dislike of privatisation as a solution.</span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Hoarding isn't allowed in primitive tribes, but as soon as more reliable lifestyle allows powerful individuals to do better by hoarding than relying on social insurance, they do. Yet we retain an aversion to it.</span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><br /></span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">13</span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Humans are born wanting to cooperate, discriminate trustworthiness, commit to trustworthiness, gain a reputation, exchange goods and info, and divide labour.</span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">There was morality before the church, trade before the state, exchange before money, social contracts before Hobbes, welfare before rights, culture before Babylon, society before Greece, self interest before Adam Smith and greed before capitalism.</span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Also tendency to xenophobic groups is well inbuilt.</span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">How can we make use of our instincts in designing institutions?</span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Trust is fundamental to cooperative parts of human nature being used.</span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">This has been part of an endless argument about the perfectability of man, famously between Hobbes and Rousseau. Also about how malleable human nature is. [The book goes into detail about the argument over the centuries, but it's an irrelevant story to me].</span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">To say that humans are selfish, especially that their virtue is selfish, is unpopular because saying so encourages it supposedly.</span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Big state doesn't make bargains with the individual, engendering responsibility, reciprocity, duty, pride – it uses authority. How do people respond to authority? </span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Welfare state replaces existing community institutions based on reciprocity and encouraging useful feelings, having built up trust over the years. Centralised replacements like the National Health Service. Mandatory donation → reluctance, resentment. Client feelings changed from gratitude to apathy, anger, drive to exploit the system.</span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">:. Government makes people more selfish, not less.</span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">We must encourage material and social exchange between people, for that is what breeds trust, and trust is what breeds virtue.</span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Our institutions are largely upshots of human nature, not serious attempts to make the best of it.</span></p></span>Katja Gracehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10817039598064207796noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37941502572997388.post-79328604765707535272009-01-04T13:14:00.000-08:002009-01-04T19:06:43.003-08:00Repeated thoughtEliezer Yudkowsky of <a href="http://www.overcomingbias.com/">OB</a> <a href="http://www.overcomingbias.com/2008/12/a-new-day.html">suggests</a> thinking and doing entirely new things for a day: <div></div><blockquote><div>Don't read any book you've read before. Don't read any author you've read before. Don't visit any website you've visited before. Don't play any game you've played before. Don't listen to familiar music that you already know you'll like. If you go on a walk, walk along a new path even if you have to drive to a different part of the city for your walk. Don't go to any restaurant you've been to before, order a dish that you haven't had before. Talk to new people (even if you have to find them in an IRC channel) about something you don't spend much time discussing.</div><div><br /></div><div>And most of all, if you become aware of yourself musing on any thought you've thunk before, then muse on something else. Rehearse no old grievances, replay no old fantasies.</div><div></div></blockquote><div>The comments and its reposting to <a href="http://www.marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2009/01/a-new-day.html#comments">MR</a> suggests that this is popular advice. <br /></div><div><div><br /></div><div>It's interesting that, despite the warm reception, this idea needs pointing out, and trying for one experimental day. </div><div><br /></div><div>Having habits for things like brushing teeth is useful - the more automatic uninteresting or unenjoyable experiences are, the more time and thought can be devoted to other things. Habits for places to go could be argued for - if you love an experience, why change it? </div><div><br /></div><div>But why should we want to repeat thoughts a lot? Seems we say we don't. So, why do we do it? Do we do it? If we can stop when Eliezer suggests it, why don't we notice and stop on our own? Is it that habits are unconscious; a state that doesn't lend itself to noticing things? Has the usefulness of other habits made us so habitual that our thoughts are caught up in it? </div><div><br /></div><div>What can we do about it?</div><div><br /></div><div>As a side note, perhaps the quantity of unconscious habit in a life is related to the way time speeds up as you age.</div></div>Katja Gracehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10817039598064207796noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37941502572997388.post-56172449808781741482008-11-06T17:17:00.000-08:002008-11-06T17:32:32.773-08:00Dying for a donation<div>The most outstanding feature of organ markets is that most people hate the idea. This is a curiosity deserving a second glance. There are organ shortages almost everywhere, with people dying on waiting lists hourly. To sentence them to death based on a cursory throb of disgust is not just uncivilised but murderous.</div><div><br /></div><div>First I should get some technical details out of the way. An organ market can involve buying from living donors, or selling rights to organs after death, or both. Organs needn’t go to the rich preferentially; like any treatment, that depends on the healthcare system. The supply of organs available won’t decrease – if free donations dropped as a result of sales, the price would rise until either enough people sold organs or relatives and friends felt morally obliged to donate them anyway. A regulated market needn’t lead to an increase in stolen Chinese organ imports. It would lower the price here, making smuggling less worthwhile, while stopping Australians going on desperate holidays to seek organs in the under-regulated Third World.</div><div><br /></div><div>That they ‘commodify the human body’ is the main objection to organ markets. They certainly do that, but why is commodification terrible? Well, a commodity is generally an object subordinated to the goal of making money. Treating other humans in that way leads to abominable actions. Slavery and organ theft are examples of human commodification that rightly repulse us. This doesn’t generalise however. The horror in these examples is that people are being made miserable because they don’t want to be sold. This is a completely different scenario to people voluntarily commodifying themselves.</div><div><br /></div><div>After all, if commodifying people is inherently wrong, why allow paid labour? Renting out a portion of your time, mind and body to a company or government is surely commodification in the same vein. Or is selling body parts just too much commodification? It doesn’t seem so to me – you can lose more of your most personal possession, your limited lifespan, working than you would selling a kidney. Regardless of how we personally answer that question, there is no reason for the public to decide where the line on commodification should be drawn rather than the people choosing to be involved.</div><div><br /></div><div>Perhaps anyone who wants to commodify themselves must necessarily be insane and unable to make good choices. To decide that somebody with an alternative idea must not be of sound mind is a big step. The fact that someone disagrees with your opinions, especially ones without arguments behind them, hardly proves they are insane. To all of those who use their gut reaction of disgust to produce policy, Alex Tabarrok asks, “Is it not repugnant that some people are willing to let others die so that their stomachs won’t become queasy at the thought that someone, somewhere is selling a kidney?”</div><div><br /></div><div>But can people in desperate poverty be considered to be making free choices? Many say no. So, is the choice between starving and selling one’s kidney really a choice? Yes; an easy one. One of the options is awful. To forbid organ selling is to take away the better choice. If we choose to provide an even better option to the person that would be great – but it is no solution to the problem of poverty to take away what choices the poor do have absent outside help.</div><div><br /></div><div>A related argument is that even with better choices, poor people will be so desperate as to be irrational. However even if we accept that poor people are irrational, for anyone desperate enough to become irrational, selling an organ is probably a great idea. Given the ubiquitous human aversion to being cut up, poor people are more likely to underestimate the merit of that cash source. Should we intervene there?</div><div><br /></div><div>Another argument regarding poverty is that organ markets are highly unegalitarian; they’re another way to exploit the poor. However, there are two inequalities involved in this market. People have differing amounts of money, and people have differing numbers of functioning organs. Which of these inequalities is worse for those with less? The most pressing egalitarian action would be to redistribute the organs more fairly. By happy coincidence the most effective way to do this is to simultaneously redistribute wealth as well. If poor people sell organs, all the better; the money is redistributed to them as organs are also redistributed to those with least.</div><div><br /></div><div>The alternative to a market is ‘altruism’. If a brother needs an organ to live, how can you refuse? Unlike the disconnected poor person who benefits from an extra option, this family member loses their previous option of keeping both their organs and their family relationships. The latter are effectively held to ransom. This system leaves the patient with the stress of traipsing around making such awkward requests. Instead of loving support, they get to watch the family politics as everyone tries not to be left with the responsibility, everyone hiding their relief when their blood type is incompatible. Often people offer an organ, then ask the transplant team to judge them a poor match. This gets them off the hook, but leaves the ill person in a cruel cycle of hope and despair. It’s analogous to telling cancer patients ‘come for chemo on Tuesday’, then refusing them any every week till they die. If the patient is fortunate enough to find a donor, there is potentially the stifling lifelong obligation to them. People have refused organs over this. The troubling emotional dynamics surrounding ‘donation’ led Thomas. E Starzl, a great transplant surgeon, to stop doing live transplants.</div><div><br /></div><div>My favourite argument against organ markets is ‘it will create a distopic world where an underclass exists to replace body parts of the rich’. This is flawed in a multitude of ways. Most people would be in neither category. It would create as much of a split as ‘people who make donuts’ vs. ‘people who eat donuts’. The exchange of money makes the parties more equal in the transaction than if one is the unfortunate victim of a request they cannot refuse. Individual people can’t be used as organ factories. Number of organs is a hopeless basis for discrimination, due to the effort involved in actually finding out which organs somebody has.</div><div><br /></div><div>‘Altruistic giving’ is more coercive than a market, unnecessarily cruel to the patient, the donor and their family and friends, and leaves thousands to die on waiting lists. Organ markets can save lives without us having to sacrifice morality and should join the ranks of life insurance and money lending; markets we once thought unthinkable.</div><div><br /></div><div>Originally published in <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">Woroni. </span></div>Katja Gracehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10817039598064207796noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37941502572997388.post-67827212072061397142008-10-02T11:00:00.000-07:002008-10-02T11:00:00.332-07:00What's worse than coercion?Desperation is coercive, or so it is said. The analogy between having a gun to your head and starvation at your door is a good one, as far as decision making is concerned.<div><br /></div><div>So why do we always state this just before doing the last thing we would do to someone with a gun to their head? </div><div><br /></div><div>Our reasoning goes: </div><div><ol><li>She's only working for nothing/selling her kidneys/poisoning her water supply because she has no other option.<br /></li><li>Therefore she's effectively being coerced.<br /></li><li>That's terrible. <br /></li><li>We won't allow it. We won't buy her t-shirts or her kidneys.<br /></li><li>Now she can't be coerced. Hoorah!</li></ol></div><div>So we take away the 'not getting shot in the head' option. </div><div><br /></div><div>This would be fine if we also gave another choice. However if we did that that the person would no longer be desperate, and thus no longer 'coerced' anyway (and so there would be no need to interfere). There should never be a need to prevent coercion by taking away choices.</div><div><br /></div><div>In our analogy, there is a difference between preventing coercion by forcing someone to be shot and by giving them a safe exit. </div>Katja Gracehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10817039598064207796noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37941502572997388.post-70959158747237092492008-09-07T05:54:00.000-07:002008-09-07T16:34:19.316-07:00Let's discuss the weather<div>Wondering your opinion, not particularly trying to change it:</div><div><br /></div><div>1. How likely is our avoiding dangerous climate change by getting enough international cooperation to cut global carbon emissions enough in time?<br /></div><div><br /></div><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhinFpu2Y0L4Fo1HhM2BORELXv3n0-4qX8YGkGRwBGoqZH-39WY_iemfB-V9pSrWou3QSODiQJ3OoNhe-mqkoQy9OuhSfj8U9PJXZOhhcdkuF7rOS7HzHiwpeMvpVYiinM9WDUPRYww5A/s200/800px-Cement_works.jpg" style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5243423901517614226" /><div>2. How much of a difference can I make to this?</div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 238); text-decoration: underline;"><br /></span></div><div>3. If the chances in 1. are small, why don't we try something like <a href="http://www.time.com/time/specials/2007/article/0,28804,1720049_1720050_1721653,00.html">geoengineering</a>?</div><div><br /></div><div>4. If 1 and 2 are small and 3 feasible (so the world isn't about to end), why is cutting emissions an important issue to work on? (given the opportunity costs: there are lots of other critical issues)</div>Katja Gracehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10817039598064207796noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37941502572997388.post-49543862274728706572008-08-16T16:22:00.000-07:002008-08-15T23:23:02.808-07:00Is valuing life undervaluing it?People often object to human life having a value placed on it, explicitly or implicitly. (I'm told there are good reasons, apparently to do with dignity, compassion, holism, souls and me being sick and inhuman, but I must admit they seem incoherent to me - if anyone would like to explain in writing I would be grateful). The pressing question then:<br /><br />What alternatives are there to placing a finite value on human life?<br /><br />One could not value human life at all. Ironically, this is what those who try to put a value on it, or assume it has one, are generally suspected of. Any value they give a life can be equated to the value of, say, a really vast number of rolls of toilet paper. Or heaps of SUVs full of McDonalds' hamburgers and books by Ann Coulter. Thus it's not enough; if you can put a value on human life you don't value human life.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgIS2v-yRTI9heep7XSpRrtzTFaMbv2S7msGsT5NwST3vTYK6FXTbdRXeesMQQRGFYyD4ynJjGfmOQ4yjxwIVtPovCentatqdq0_9SGtC9oD3FhrzA7v7-6EfqnQdSkuzqAy25qnIL3bg/s1600-h/Picture+025.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 274px; height: 220px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgIS2v-yRTI9heep7XSpRrtzTFaMbv2S7msGsT5NwST3vTYK6FXTbdRXeesMQQRGFYyD4ynJjGfmOQ4yjxwIVtPovCentatqdq0_9SGtC9oD3FhrzA7v7-6EfqnQdSkuzqAy25qnIL3bg/s320/Picture+025.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5234963473583792402" border="0" /></a>The other alternative looks better: value human life infinitely. There's probably still conflict with your intuitive morality however. If any amount of human life is infinitely valuable, as long as someone is alive the universe can't get any better. Why preserve extra lives?<br /><br />Infinitely valuable human lives should also be protected from anything that might shorten them for lesser aims, such as life. We barter slight risks constantly for the quality of our experience, among other things. Unless you'd like to argue that nachos and car trips are also of infinite value, so can be traded with smidgens of human life, what are you doing out of your protective bubble?<br /><br />Another alternative is just to not think about it. Hold that lives have a high but finite value, but don't use this in naughty calculative attempts to maximise welfare! Maintain that it is abhorrent to do so. Uphold lots of arbitrary rules, like respecting people's dignity and beginning charity at home and having honour and being respectable and doing what your heart tells you. Interestingly, this effectively does make human life worthless; not even worth including in the calculation next to the whims of your personal emotions and the culture at hand.<br /><br /><br />The only way to value human life is to place value on human life.<br /><br />For more on how to feel about this, see <a href="http://www.scribd.com/doc/311935/Tetlock-2003-Thinking-the-unthinkable-sacred-values-and-taboo-cognitions">Philip Tetlock</a>.Katja Gracehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10817039598064207796noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37941502572997388.post-25737206398952486902008-08-15T19:34:00.000-07:002008-08-17T02:48:08.578-07:00Processing peopleSome of my friends think that a random process of deciding who should live or die is more important than the lives of those people, because lives should all be valued equally (and a process can ensure approximately random choice).<br /><br />For example, this would mean it is better to make sure the life rafts are filled by a random selection of women and men and rich and poor and so on, even if that means that half of them drown while you flip the coin.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">If lives should be valued equally, then why is a process of choosing between identically valuable things worth more than even one human life?</span><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhj_nvXWp4eTw476TqA_LxivJFj0vPUEcpqjFpEtE5i_dLGCmy7bvBLepjqr7UA3OcXfyOid5ZEbMUOGFyS3_MZC0cwTr814UZRI4fCBt0RjAVxL25SQwbkZQXum8Jrz68lYKfvwY-EWA/s1600-h/How+Victoria%27s+and+Is%27s+system+works.bmp"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 175px; height: 173px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhj_nvXWp4eTw476TqA_LxivJFj0vPUEcpqjFpEtE5i_dLGCmy7bvBLepjqr7UA3OcXfyOid5ZEbMUOGFyS3_MZC0cwTr814UZRI4fCBt0RjAVxL25SQwbkZQXum8Jrz68lYKfvwY-EWA/s320/How+Victoria%27s+and+Is%27s+system+works.bmp" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5235421053295317570" border="0" /></a>Also, even if <span style="font-style: italic;">you</span> value this process more than another person's life, why shouldn't the person who's life is at stake's opinion on their relative value come into it? That is, if we are attempting to follow any ethical system other than egoism (of course your preference is of absolute importance if you are trying to be purely self interested). Try out the veil of ignorance!<br /><br />For other readers, no this isn't a purely theoretical debate, I'm just not going to tell you what the context is.Katja Gracehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10817039598064207796noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37941502572997388.post-5253112783927641562008-05-21T09:34:00.000-07:002008-05-21T09:52:02.111-07:00Don’t change your mind, just change your brain<span style="color:#990000;"><strong><span style="color:#cc0000;">The best way to dull hearts and win minds is with a scalpel.</span></strong><br /></span><br />Give up your outdated faith in the pen over the sword! With medical training and a sufficiently sharp but manoeuvrable object of your choice, you can change anyone’s mind on the most contentious of moral questions. All you need to make someone utilitarian is a nick to the Ventromedial Pre­frontal Cortex (VMPC), a part of the brain related to emotion.<br /><br />When pondering whether you should kill an innocent child to save twenty strangers, eat your pets when they die, or approve of infertile siblings making love in private if they like, utilitar­ians are the people who say “do whatever, so long as the outcome maximises overall happiness.” Others think outcomes aren’t everything; some actions are just wrong. According to research, people with VMPC damage are far more likely to make utilitar­ian choices.<br /><br />It turns out most people have conflicting urges: to act for the greater good or to obey rules they feel strongly about. This is the result of our brains being composed of interacting parts with different functions. The VMPC processes emotion, so in normal people it’s thought to compete with the parts of the brain that engage in moral rea­soning and see the greatest good for the greatest number as ideal. If the VMPC is damaged, the ra­tional, calculating sections are left unimpeded to dispassionate­ly assess the most compassionate course of action.<br /><br />This presents practical oppor­tunities. We can never bring the world in line with our moral ide­als while we all have conflicting ones. The best way to get us all on the same moral page is to make everyone utilitarian. It is surely easier to sever the touchy feely moral centres of people’s brains than to teach them the value of utilitarianism. Also it will be for the common good; once we are all utilitarian we will act with everyone’s net benefit more in mind. Partial lo­botomies for the moralistic are probably much cheaper than policing all the behaviours such people tend to disapprove of.<br /><br />You may think this still doesn’t make it a good thing. The real beauty is that after the procedure you would be fine with it. If we went the other way, everyone would end up saying 'you shouldn't alter other people's brains, even if it does solve the world's problems. It's naughty and unnatural. Hmph.'<br /><br />Unfortunately, VMPC dam­age also seems to dampen social emotions such as guilt and com­passion. The surgery makes utili­tarian reasoning easier, but so too complete immorality, mean­ing it might not be the answer for everyone just yet.<br /><br />Some think the most impor­tant implications of the research are actually those for moral phi­losophy. The researchers suggest it shows humans are unfit to make utilitarian judgements. You don’t need to be a brain surgeon to figure that out though. Count the number of dollars you spend on unnecessary amusements each year in full knowledge peo­ple starving due to poverty.<br /><br />In the past we could tell moral questions were prompting action in emotional parts of the brain, but it wasn’t clear whether the activity was influencing the deci­sion or just the result of it. If the latter, VMPC damage shouldn’t have changed actions. It does - so while non-utilitarianism is a fine theoretical position, it is seemingly practiced for egoistic reasons.<br /><br />Can this insight into cognition settle the centuries of philosophical debate and show utilitarianism is a bad position? No. Why base your actions on what you feel like doing, dis­counting all other outcomes? All it says about utilitarianism is that it doesn’t come easily to the hu­man mind.<br /><br />This research is just another bit of evidence that moral reasoning is guided by evolution and brain design, not some transcendental truth in the sky. It may still be useful of course, like other skills our mind provides us with, like a capacity to value things, a prefer­ence for being alive, and the abil­ity to tell pleasure from pain.<br /><br />Next time you are in a mor­ally fraught argument, consider what Ghandi said: “Victory at­tained by violence is tantamount to a defeat, for it is momentary’” He’s right; genetic modification would be more long-lasting. Un­til this is available though, why not try something persuasive like a scalpel to the forehead?<br /><br />....<br />Originally published in <em>Woroni</em>Katja Gracehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10817039598064207796noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37941502572997388.post-17080004031000793092008-05-21T09:16:00.000-07:002008-05-23T00:15:28.573-07:00Milk, bread, insert catheter…<strong>Making lists to guide medical procedures saves lives but is unethical, say Americans.</strong><br /><span style="font-size:180%;"><span style="font-size:130%;"></span><span style="font-size:78%;"></span><span style="font-size:78%;"><br /></span></span>What if a way was found to rescue hun­dreds of thousands of the sickest people in the world’s hospitals, at the cost of a sheet of paper each? Michigan would take up the idea, Spain and a couple of US states would be interested, and then it would be banned in the US for being unethical.<br /></span><br />Being in intensive care is dan­gerous. Not only because having all your organs fail or your brain bleed everywhere is unhealthy, but also because the care is, well... intense. To look after a person in intensive care for a day, a hundred and seventy eight pro­cedures have to be done on av­erage. Each procedure involves multiple steps and is performed by a collection of professionals struggling to keep their patients alive as different parts of their body fail. Small chances of in­evitable human error add up, no matter how good the doctors and nurses are, amounting to about two errors per patient each day.<br /><br />Finger pointing and suing doesn’t work to reduce these fig­ures, so what will? You could say human error is inevitable and congratulate doctors and nurses for keeping it as low as they do in a hectic and complex situation. Or, as Peter Pronovost, a critical care specialist at Johns Hopkins Hospital, realised, you could take the same precautions with criti­cally ill patients as you do with shopping or making a cake.<br /><br />He made a list. It was a list for one procedure: putting in a cath­eter, the tube for getting fluids in and out of people. Four per cent of catheters develop infections, which means some eighty thou­sand people per year in the US. Between five and twenty eight percent, depending on circum­stances, subsequently die.<br /><br />The list had five steps. It seemed so simple as to be use­less. Surely people performing cutting edge surgery can remem­ber to wash their hands before they do a routine job? For the first month he just gave his list to nurses and asked them to note how often the doctors missed a step. It turned out they missed at least one in about a third of cases. He then asked the nurses to remind the doctors when they missed a step. The catheter in­fection rate over the next year at Johns Hopkins Hospital dropped from eleven per cent to nothing.<br /><br />Pronovost made more lists and asked doctors and nurses to make their own. These lists proved so effective that the av­erage length of patient stay in intensive care dropped by half in a few weeks. Pronovost trav­elled to other cities to spread his astounding results. People were unenthused. However Michigan agreed to try the idea in 2003 and in eighteen months saved fif­teen hundred lives and two hun­dred million dollars. Since then Rhode Island, New Jersey and Spain have become interested, and there is a new project at the World Health Organization to institute checklists internation­ally.<br /><br />At the end of last year, how­ever, the project ceased in America. The Office for Human Research Protections (OHRP), a bureaucratic appendage charged with overseeing ethics in re­search, decided it was unethical. Their reasoning was that since careful records were being kept of results, it was research, and should have informed consent from every patient. They even judged it ‘potentially dangerous’, as records meant doctors’ poor practice might be exposed. Pro­tecting doctors from having their performance evaluated is appar­ently more ethically weighty than ensuring patients aren’t need­lessly killed.<br /><br />After some argument OHRP repealed their ban this February, a decision made more significant as it allows similar projects in fu­ture. The checklist is still getting nothing like the attention and funds ineffective bits of equip­ment for similar purposes have elicited.<br /><br />Atul Gawande, a surgeon who originally alerted the public to this story through the <em>New York­er</em>, suggests the disinterest might be because we like the idea of gal­lant doctors deftly coping with the complexity and risk the es­teemed job entails. Standardised list checking doesn’t fit into any­one’s ideal of heroism. For what­ever reason, thousands of people can now die of negligence rather than unyielding complexity, for which we have a remedy.<br /><br />....<br />Originally published in <em>Woroni</em>Katja Gracehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10817039598064207796noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37941502572997388.post-59266304753896353382008-04-25T08:39:00.000-07:002008-04-25T21:53:47.406-07:00Criminal retributionThe US houses the highest proportion of its people in prison of any country, as Adam Liptak <a href="http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/04/23/america/23prison.php?page=1">discusses</a> thought provokingly. As expected, this appears to reduce the crime rates.<br /><br />How much suffering should the guilty endure for a given reduction in suffering of the innocent? I think a 1:1 ratio maximum- that is, it doesn't matter who suffers. Suffering should be minimised, even if that means the innocent suffer instead of the guilty. Punishment should only be to prevent greater suffering.<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;">***<br /></div><br />Liptak also draws attention to the relationship between more democratic appointment of judges in the US and harsher punishment, as people demand fierce retribution. I suspect demand for escalating punishment is a result of fear and angry desire for revenge, rather than widespread consideration of mechanism design for minimising harm, or anything mildly reasoned. I don't think society should be allowed to inflict harm on its members arbitrarily like this. Should judge appointment be less democratic then?<br /><br />Perhaps, but this decision can (and should?) only be reached through other democratic decision making. This is the same problem as arises everywhere. The public, through democracy, interferes with people where it has no right to, but the extent to which citizens should be able to interfere with one another through democracy hasn't been agreed, and so must rely on democratic negotiation.Katja Gracehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10817039598064207796noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37941502572997388.post-4169573600109826902008-04-16T22:39:00.000-07:002008-04-18T09:09:31.167-07:00Redistributing fairnessFrom Kwame Anthony Appiah's <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/04/11/AR2008041103325.html">fascinating longer article on fairness in politics</a>, via <a href="http://gregmankiw.blogspot.com/2008/04/fairness-paradox.html#links">Greg Mankiw</a>:<br /><blockquote><p><span style="font-family:arial;">In the 1970s, the Nobel Prize-winning economist Thomas Schelling used to put some questions to his students at Harvard when he wanted to show how people's ethical preferences on public policy can be turned around. Suppose, he said, that you were designing a tax code and wanted to provide a credit -- a rebate, in effect -- for couples with children. (I'm simplifying a bit.) In a progressive tax system such as ours, we try to ease the burden on the less well off, so it might make sense to adjust the child credit accordingly. Would it be fair, do you think, to give poor parents a bigger credit than rich parents? </span><span style="font-family:arial;">Schelling's students were inclined to think so. If the credit was going to vary with income, it seemed fair to award struggling families the bigger tax break. It would certainly be unfair, they agreed, for richer families to get a bigger one. </span></p><p><span style="font-family:arial;">Then Schelling asked his students to think about things in a different way. Instead of giving families with children a credit, you'd impose a surcharge on couples with no children. Now then: Would it be fair to make the childless rich pay a bigger surcharge than the childless poor? Schelling's students thought so. </span></p><p><span style="font-family:arial;">But -- hang on a sec -- a bonus for those who have a child amounts to a penalty for those who don't have one. (Saying that those with children should be taxed less than the childless is another way of saying that the childless should be taxed more than those with children.) So when poor parents receive a smaller credit than rich ones, that is, in effect, the same as the childless poor paying a smaller surcharge than the childless rich. To many, the first deal sounds unfair and the second sounds fair -- but they're the very same tax scheme. </span></p><p><span style="font-family:arial;">That's a little disturbing, isn't it?</span></p></blockquote>Why do people respond this way? There's no real paradox. The above questions seem to have elicited from the subjects a confusion of aims, in combination with a strong conceptually unpolished [IF rich THEN confiscate money] reflex.<br /><br />Assume (very) hypothetically that a bonus or penalty should be applied. If it is as an incentive it should apply to rich and the poor equally, unless there is some reason to incentivise one economic class over the other (e.g. better for rich to procreate to help redistribute wealth, so a greater bonus to them) or unless you think the poor will respond to smaller incentives because it's a larger proportion of their income (in which case give bigger bonus or penalty to rich). That redistribution of wealth is a great idea is no reason for it to be tangled up with this sort of incentive scheme. If a bonus is to be given for the purpose of redistributing wealth to where it is needed (rather than as an incentive, though realising it might be one too), it should go to the poorer presumably.<br /><br />Confusion about the purpose of intervening leads to an overlooked problem with the conclusion that people are being inconsistent. If a greater penalty is applied to the rich, this is not the same as giving the rich with babies a larger bonus. They have a larger bonus relative to what they would otherwise have, but what they would otherwise have has been reduced more than it has for the poor baby owners. Thus it is not better than what the poor procreaters receive. It is a greater incentive, but irrelevant to wealth distribution between the filthily rich and poor. Similarly, giving a big bonus to poor babyholders is not the same as penalising the other poor, except in terms of incentives.<br /><br />The above problem is problematic because where a bonus is paid people either assume it is for wealth redistribution or that wealth redistribution should be included in the incentive by habit. Where there is a penalty, it is assumed it as a disincentive. If it were to be for wealth redistribution, penalising the rich should not be considered as benefiting other rich (relative penalisations within a class are only relevant to incentives).Katja Gracehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10817039598064207796noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37941502572997388.post-33144608974891614312008-03-26T08:33:00.000-07:002008-03-26T09:27:54.331-07:00Why are religious societies more cohesive?<div class="comment-content"><a href="http://www.economist.com/science/displaystory.cfm?story_id=10875666">Reported</a> by the Economist (and <a href="http://www.overcomingbias.com/2008/03/religious-cohes.html#comments">discussed</a> on Overcoming Bias), religion brings social cooperation. Attempts to synthesise secular solidarity out of god-free rituals tend to fail. So why is this?<br /><br />A hypothesis:<br /><p>Social cohesion is a result of citizens sharing a desire to believe something they all have a tiny private inkling might seem less true if they thought about it too much. They subconsciously know belief is easier when ubiquitously reinforced in social surroundings, and also that their beliefs are more enjoyable than the alternative. Thus they have a strong interest in religious behaviour in others and in their own feeling of unshakable commitment to those who practice it. So they encourage it with enthusiastic participation and try to ensconce themselves as much as necessary to feel safe from reality. If we found conclusive evidence of a god, everyone would be safe, and could get back to non-cohesion; it's the possibility that the sky is chockers with nothingness that gives everyone the incentive for solidarity. </p> <p>To test hypothesis, compare cohesion across other groups with beliefs (religious or otherwise) of varying tenuousness and of varying importance to their believers.<br /></p><p></p></div>Katja Gracehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10817039598064207796noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37941502572997388.post-84976491875212129692007-11-09T08:05:00.000-08:002007-11-08T13:09:32.663-08:00Why aren't our property rights over one another more transferable?Why do people get married? If anyone ever proposes to me for a reason other than to surreptitiously steal my belongings or to get more centerlink benefits, I would have to refuse them on the basis that I could not love a man so irrational.<br /><br />~ all married/engaged folks please forgive me and freely assume I'm just rather jealous :) ~<br /><br />What is the purpose of a contract to love someone forever?<br />If you anticipate loving them forever anyway, it would seem to be pointless. I'm told it is romantic nonetheless, but how is it romantic to take a legal precaution that implies some doubt that you will love each other forever?<br />On the off chance that you stop being in love with them, the last thing you want is to be legally bound to stick with them. And a legal obligation to actually <span style="font-style: italic;">love</span> them is pretty laughable. Possibly if they stop loving you you might want them to stick around regardless, but isn't that rather selfish and desperate? Anyway, surely this is hardly the contingency people have in mind when saying their vows.<br /><br />Anyway, now that divorce is allowed the whole thing seems to be completely meaningless, except if understood as a way of betting large swathes of assets on the outcomes of ones emotional attachments, with divorce lawyers and priests playing casino. If this is the kind of gambling that floats your boat it makes perfect sense, but perhaps you could benefit from counselling at some point.<br /><br />I propose a solution for escaping most of the potential damage of weddings while retaining the romance they apparently emanate: short term marriage contracts. At the end of, say, six months (terms such as length should be completely flexible) you renew it, or don't, and act accordingly. If your spouse forgets this anniversary you can give them a year off. The whole ceremony could be the same as before, with a minor alteration to the vows: '...in sickness or in health, to love and to cherish 'til death or May 17 - whichever comes first, do us part'. Plus you can have more parties later on.<br /><br />(On the earlier point, if anyone is ever irrational enough to propose to me, and I usually consider them rational, perhaps I must conclude that they are irrational specifically with regards to me, so therefore may in fact love me. A heuristic for finding selectively crazy guys could be just what one needs. If this occurs then you all have permission to laugh at me lots.)Katja Gracehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10817039598064207796noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37941502572997388.post-47184191242700460842007-11-03T15:13:00.000-07:002007-11-02T21:15:14.852-07:00Corporate ecology<p class="MsoNormal" face="georgia"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]-->Direct competition is resource intensive. Just to compete, species and companies have to invest heaps of energy in long trunks and roots, extra hunting and massive advertising campaigns for instance, instead of expanding or improving production. To avoid these costs they move into niches. Where there are multiple species or companies with very similar habits, one will eventually get an advantage somewhere and use it to get further ahead and outcompete the others. Consequently those that survive employ slightly different tactics and are spread between different habitats and markets. The fast food diverged from the fancy restaurants way back and nestled into more isolated markets. The fast food members have since emphasised their differences through differentiation of colourful plastic toys, varieties of hamburger and corporate identity, to appeal to different prey. <!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: georgia;"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]-->Companies can even evolve according to the prey’s preferences, their appendages growing beautiful but functionless layers of plastic and coloured cardboard, along with scents precisely attuned to attract passing shoppers.<br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size:100%;">A</span><span style="font-size:12;"><span style="font-size:100%;">ll right, the mechanisms are half different (companies at least try to steer their behaviour, though I reckon natural selection comes in there to a great extent too). And the structure of the larger system is perhaps different (unless people are the decomposers, the production chain the trophic levels…yeah, whatev).</span> </span></p>Katja Gracehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10817039598064207796noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37941502572997388.post-36900322198412535942007-11-03T06:08:00.000-07:002007-11-02T12:08:08.615-07:00Drawing lines and tigersThere is a problem that catches the light occasionally, and is pushed off into political correctitude, but one day will have to be met. Humans are all as good as one another. If they are stupid or disabled or anything this doesn't detract from their worth as people. This is fine - I'm not disagreeing. Animals are worth less than humans. Dead humans are worth less than humans. This is also fine, and I'm not disagreeing. However there's an inconsistency.<br /><br />These views can only work as long as the gaps between these things and humans are not filled. Humanity isn't binary. There is, at least potentially, a sliding scale between characteristic humanness and, say, characteristic antness, involving variations in many characteristics. Similarly for living and dead. At what point as you travel away from normal human characteristics do you suddenly draw a line and value a creature/person a little less?<br /><br />In practice as soon as you stop relating to them, but this is hardly the basis for a moral distinction. Wherever you draw a line, it must be admitted that it is arbitrary. So while we might take pride in our fair treatment of all mankind, regardless of their characteristics, we must agree that we could just as legitimately draw the line elsewhere and treat our celebratedly cared for lowest-capability people as animals.<br /><br />Aside from where to draw the line is the question of why to have one. Why does a characteristic (such as intelligence or 'level of consciousness') varying among animals vary their moral worth, while the same characteristic varying among humans doesn't? Their differences are judged using different rules, but not because of relevant inherent differences.<br /><br />This problem hasn't fully emerged with animals yet (perhaps more with dead people, and very little with robots), but that does little to the argument: our ethics are inconsistent.Katja Gracehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10817039598064207796noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37941502572997388.post-88918423686196516412007-11-03T02:43:00.001-07:002007-11-02T12:15:26.987-07:00A way to be more open minded (an experimental thought)(As in actually open minded, not just comfortably sheltered from one's narrow mindedness)<br /><br />A technique I noticed while experimenting with being wrong:<br />1. If you have an opinion on something, find an opposing one<br />2. Feel like you believe it (emotionally, not necessarily mentally - pretend you know it's true and don't think about whether it is). It doesn't matter how averse you are to it - if somebody else can believe it, there are reasons to (not necessarily rational ones). Think of that reason and try out the associated emotions. Feel loyal, caring and understanding toward the idea's followers. The important bit isn't the belief, but its emotional affects - feel something about it.<br />3. Stop.<br /><br />Some justification for this touchy feely emotional garbage? To remove it from the equation.<br />I think the biggest fog over unbiased judgement is emotion. From a side of any battlefield there are fierce positive emotions radiating from your ideals and negative ones flying in from the other side. The <span style="font-style: italic;">correct</span> side is obvious - the one supporting the good feelings! Open mindedness isn't even called for. If it is brought out it is only to declare 'I'm looking at the other side, and they look dangerous!'. But both sides are awash with emotions supporting them and driving them on. If they weren't, there probably wouldn't be an argument. Sound reasons devoid of emotional allure don't pull the crowds. To be open minded it is necessary to neutralise of emotion. But it isn't enough just to acknowledge it - 'well the other side clearly cares about X' - if you actually <span style="font-style: italic;">feel something</span> for the arguments on your side. You have to feel both sides or none. There'll be plenty of non feeling once you're dead, and giving up feelings can be hard, so try for feeling both initially, as outlined above. It'll all fade away quickly and you'll be more open minded.<br /><br />Note: do not necessarily think both sides are correct as a result. Just choose unemotionally, or taking all emotion into account.Katja Gracehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10817039598064207796noreply@blogger.com0