Just a small weak counter; because of this I often view people who seek out advice as being of higher status b/c they don’t let the fear of lower their status interfer with making better choices.

This made me laugh out loud. Do we even need to test this? I think it’s been proven empirically if not anecdotally.

At some point you have purely subjective values, e.g. societal happiness. You then have the question of how to achieve them. This might be called a ‘what to’ question (what should I do with my life?) but really it is just ‘how to’ achieve some higher goal. You might decide the best way is to work toward ending third world poverty. This is then ‘what’ you are doing, and there is a new ‘how to’ question. And so on. ‘How to’ is always further from underlying purely subjective value judgements, so is less dependent on subjective input (once you’ve figured out what, how is more practical) and more generalisable (not person/situation specific) because the problem is made more specific (it’s easier to write a general account of how to make a cake than how to enjoy your afternoon, because in the former the value judgements have mostly already been dealt with in deciding that you should make a cake, and the problem is more specific).

While below the top level there shouldn’t be any subjectivity (only uncertainty about whether that is the most effective way to increase worldwide happiness), you must still take into account your own talents and experience and position, so the decision making involves a high input of personal information as well as of values.

2. Also it is more obvious, and thus embarrassing, if you err in a minor purpose; there are specific ways to achieve, say, a cake, so there is an incentive to inform yourself well enough. Larger decisions more closely tied to ultimate goals can be stuffed up endlessly and rationalised. E.g. if you can’t drive a car it’s pretty obvious, but if you decide not to buy a car, who can say it’s a misjudgement?

3. There are plenty of books and other advice givers on what society or the government should do at a higher level. e.g. absolve third world debt, save the whales, have a negative income tax. Why is this? I suspect because people assume they know what society’s higher goals and capabilities are as well as anyone else.

4. Probably ‘what to’ questions are posed as how to questions because they can’t tell you what you should do, but only how to figure out what you should do (as you have to apply it to your own situation and preferences). e.g. ‘how to choose which man’ answers the same question as ‘which man to choose’, but better to be given general instruction than told to choose George.

Sorry if this is inadequately explained – I have to leave.

I think you may have hit upon a (primate aesthetic) social barrier to the adoption of decision markets: Many people seem keyed to award alpha status to those who make decisions using an unerring gut, not to those who consult the best topic experts and resources available to make decisions.

Robin, I didn’t say that the “value component” is bigger with bigger decisions (which may be true), I said that your examples were skewed.

To stick with the example, I may have a friend who knows about the correlations between marriage and happiness (and let’s face it, such people are rare), but this information is almost completely irrelevant if I want to make my mind up about whether I should marry a specific person.

Deciding what to do is far simpler than deciding how to do it. Its also a lot harder for others to offer sound advice on what someone should do vs. how they should do it, since only the later is based off of objective data.

Rationally speaking, more information SHOULD influence your decision. The key point here is determining whether the new information is valid, ie unbiased and true to reality.