Monthly Archives: April 2009

Comedic Actors Slighted?

By Robin Hanson · April 13, 2009 2:00 pm · Comments (29)

Imagine that actors (and actresses) have two main features:

  •  Looks – we like to watch pretty/handsome actors,
  •  Acting ability - engaging body/face/voice motions for a role.

Now on average comedic roles tend to be filled with less attractive actors.  Since there are more less attractive actors to choose from, a director can be more selective about acting ability when picking an actor for a comedic role.  If so, holding constant the resources devoted to a role, on average actors filling comedic roles should have higher acting abilities. 

But acting awards famously slight comedic roles, preferring actors who fill "dramatic" roles.  Some possible explanations:

  1. Yes, acting awards don't go to the best actors.  What did you expect?
  2. More resources are devoted to dramatic roles, relative to comedic roles.
  3. This two feature model is too simplistic, and a richer model explains it all.

What say ye?

Added 14Apr: Even if one assumes that comedic acting abilities are different abilities from other acting abilities, the argument goes through if comedic abilities are just as widely available among humans as other acting abilities, relative to the number of comedic roles to fill relative to other roles.

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Rational Paranoia

By Robin Hanson · April 13, 2009 9:45 am · Comments (5)

The Post reminds us paranoia can be quite rational:

"People from North Korea are very paranoid," said Kim Heekyung, a clinical psychologist at Hanowan [in South Korea] who supervises group therapy for defectors.  Paranoia, she added, is a rational response to reality in North Korea.

A new U.N. human rights report describes North Korea as a place where ordinary people "live in fear and are pressed to inform on each other. The state practices extensive surveillance of its inhabitants. . . . Authorities have bred a culture of pervasive mistrust."

When defectors arrive at Hanowan, they whisper. They are reluctant to disclose their names or dates of birth. They question the motives of people who want to help them. They say South Koreans look down on them. On field trips from Hanowan to get their first checking accounts, they find bank tellers to be terrifying. …

"Paranoia in North Korea helped people survive, but here in South Korea, it is an obstacle to assimilation," Kim said. "Many defectors are scared to do anything."

Our problem isn't a capacity for paranoia, but is misreading clues about when to invoke that capacity.   We say someone has a mental problem if they are more paranoid than we think makes sense in our society.  But of course personal circumstances will vary, so we should beware of overconfident paternalism in judging when others are excessively paranoid.

Among North Korean defectors the opposite mental problem of insufficient paranoia is probably more common.  Alas we don't see many of those folks for obvious reasons.

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Who Loves Truth Most?

By Robin Hanson · April 11, 2009 4:15 pm · Comments (33)

Who loves cars most?  Most people like cars, but the folks most vocal in their enthusiasm for cars are car sellers; they pay millions for ads gushing about how much their engineers love designing cars, their factory workers love building them, etc.  The next most vocal are probably car collectors, tinkerers, and racers; they'll bend your ear off about their car hobby.  Also vocal are folks visibly concerned that the poor don't have enough cars. 

But if you want to find the folks who most love cars for their main purpose, getting folks around in their daily lives, you'll have to filter out the sellers, hobbyists, and do-gooders to find ordinary people who just love their cars.  For the most part, car companies love to sell cars to make cash, car hobbyists love to use cars to show off their personal abilities, and do-gooders use cars to show off their compassion.  By comparison, those who just love to drive from point A to B don't shout much.

Truth loving is similar.  Most folks say they prefer truth, but the folks most vocal about loving "truth" are usually selling something.  For preachers, demagogues, and salesmen of all sorts, the wilder their story, the more they go on about how they love truth.  The next most vocal in their enthusiasm for truth are those who, like car hobbyists, use public demonstrations of truth-finding to show off personal abilities.  Academics, gamers, poker players, and amateur intellectuals of all sorts are proud of the fact that their efforts reveal truth, and they make sure you notice their proficiencies. And do-gooders earnestly talk about the importance of everyone understanding the truth of the uninsured, the illiterate, etc.

Continue reading "Who Loves Truth Most?" »

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Caplan-Hanson Debate Tuesday

By Robin Hanson · April 10, 2009 11:40 pm · Comments (13)

This Tuesday I’ll debate Bryan Caplan at GMU on “Liberty vs. Efficiency”:

We don’t actually disagree that much; basically we both like debates but couldn’t find anyone else to debate us.  So we looked for something we sorta disagree on, and will at least have fun discussing it.  Hey, I’ll be happy if Bryan changes my mind.

The topic, as I see it, is the relative value/importance for economists of pushing “liberty,” i.e., a policy of minimal government interference, and “efficiency,” a standard policy evaluation metric that attempts to neutrally weigh policy consequences for different people.  The “debate” will be recorded, and I’ll post a link when I can.

Added 12Apr:  Bryan responds here.

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Self-Haters Donate More

By Robin Hanson · April 10, 2009 3:30 pm · Comments (9)

Psychological Science told us "Haters Cheat Less"; now it tells us "Self-Haters Donate More":

We propose a framework suggesting that moral (or immoral) behavior can result from an internal balancing of moral self-worth and the cost inherent in altruistic behavior. In Experiment 1, participants were asked to write a self-relevant story containing words referring to either positive or negative traits. Participants who wrote a story referring to the positive traits donated one fifth as much as those who wrote a story referring to the negative traits. In Experiment 2, we showed that this effect was due specifically to a change in the self-concept. In Experiment 3, we replicated these findings and extended them to cooperative behavior in environmental decision making. We suggest that affirming a moral identity leads people to feel licensed to act immorally. However, when moral identity is threatened, moral behavior is a means to regain some lost self-worth.

So when can it be good to make people feel bad about themselves, so that they will be good to others?

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911 Puzzling

By Robin Hanson · April 9, 2009 7:00 pm · Comments (61)

Someone bent my ear again on 911 conspiracy theories, and I've had jigsaw-puzzle-solving fun digging through the details.  Also, I feel we should consider evidence for even pretty crazy-sounding claims when the evidence offered meets high enough standards.  To his credit physicist Steven Jones has published papers meeting such standards:

I conclude the twin towers probably held big chucks of hitech pyrotechnic materials quite uncommon in office buildings.  And a few hundred pounds of this stuff spread around the pillars of a single floor might well bring down a tower. 

BUT, I am unpersuaded by claims that plane crashes could not have induced the towers falling as they did, the sounds heard, the warnings voiced, etc. (E.g., hear him and him.)  Aside from the above findings, the match between simple theory and observation seems about as close as we should expect, given this complex and unusual situation; it would be crazy not to expect a few anomalies between simple predictions and what we saw.

Continue reading "911 Puzzling" »

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Talk Is Not About Info

By Robin Hanson · April 9, 2009 11:30 am · Comments (9)

Tyler points us to a new J Applied Psych meta-analysis of team info sharing:

Meta-analytic results from 72 independent studies (total groups = 4,795; total N = 17,279) demonstrate the importance of information sharing to team performance, cohesion, decision satisfaction, and knowledge integration. Although moderators were identified, information sharing positively predicted team performance across all levels of moderators.

BUT:

Groups tend to spend most of their time discussing the information shared by members, which is therefore redundant, rather than discussing information known only to one or a minority of members. This is important because those groups that do share unique information tend to make better decisions.  … Ironically, … groups that talked more tended to share less unique information.

Why?  My guess: people know they are respected and liked more by other team members when they say things others already agree with.  Saying something new may help the team, but it puts you at risk.

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Haters Cheat Less

By Robin Hanson · April 8, 2009 11:45 am · Comments (9)

From a recent Psychological Science:

In Experiment 1, our confederate cheated ostentatiously by finishing a task impossibly quickly and leaving the room with the maximum reward. In line with social-norms theory, participants' level of unethical behavior increased when the confederate was an in-group member, but decreased when the confederate was an out-group member.

So folks will cheat less when they believe outsiders cheat more.  When can this justify preaching that other nations, religions, races, genders, etc. are evil or immoral?

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Seek Superstar Slavery

By Robin Hanson · April 8, 2009 6:00 am · Comments (17)

The latest Review of Economic Studies has a great article (ungated here) by Marko Tervio.  I'll summarize.

CEOs, actors, directors, musicians, authors, and athletes make big bucks because:

  1. Desired abilities are rare and lasting.
  2. It is very expensive to try someone new.
  3. Everyone can see which trials worked or not.
  4. Winners are free to demand more money or walk.

Given these conditions, a few proven winners make big bucks, and few new folks get tried.  After all, a new trial who wins will soon demand as much as other winners.  Here winners avoid retirement to keep milking their gravy train, and small biases in weak signals on new guys to try can magnify into great social injustice. 

Condition 4 is crucial.  When long term deals are allowed, more folks are tried, because a few successes can pay for lots of failures.  Folks being tried get paid more, and there are more better winners who retire earlier and are paid less even when free to walk.  Distorted signals about who to try matter less.  Such long term deal gains were realized, for example, in the US movie studio system of the 1920-40s, the old US American baseball club system, and even now via exclusive long-term music album deals.

Over the last century, however, legislatures and courts have consistently moved to limit and prohibit such long term contracts, thereby increasing inequality and decreasing productivity.  France even forbids artists from selling the full value of their paintings.  The key tipping factor here seems to me to be a public displeased by seeing gains by admired musicians, actors, athletes, artists etc. going to less admired others.  The word "slavery" is often invoked. For example, music fans can be outraged to see their favorite musicians shackled to ungenerous album deals. 

So our vast wage inequality of superstar CEOs, artists, athletes, etc. is caused not by a lack of sensible regulation to limit random cruelties of unfettered markets, but by a public preferring its heroes unshackled, even if those heros had preferred otherwise. Now maybe insuring heroes against financial variations imposes a negative externality on wider admiring publics, one large enough to justify preventing long term deals.  But for now count me as skeptical; I'd rather allow CEO and other superhero "slavery," for their good and ours. 

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The what-pisses-you-off heuristic

By Andrew · April 7, 2009 11:30 pm · Comments (29)

This post by Robin, in which he is annoyed that an organization of interior designers has persuaded state legislatures to license their profession (such as it is), and which he is also annoyed that his fellow economists don’t make more of a fuss about such regulations, reminds me of a principle that I heard once (I don’t remember where) that you can really understand someone’s deeper ideology by looking at what pisses him or her off.

As Robin himself notes, the licensing of florists, funeral directors, and interior designers is not a big deal–certainly nothing on the order of the problems caused by overfishing, say, or by various trade and migration restrictions, or even the (arguably) large problems caused by policies such as the mortgage tax deduction which reduce people’s ability to move.

Nonetheless, Robin writes of economists’ disinclination to fight the licensing battle that it “saddens me more than I can say.” I don’t doubt his sincerity. but what’s most interesting to me here is to think about why this bothers him so much.

P.S. I certainly don’t mean this to be a personal criticism of Robin in any way. I certainly have my own things that piss me off for no particular reason, ranging from socks lying around on the floor–they’re not a practical obstacle so why does the messiness bother me so much–to misinterpretations (as I see them) of Bayesian statistics–things that are probably lower on the scale of importance than the net welfare loss caused by economists not fighting the licensing of florists.

There are so many things to be pissed off about, that the choice of what we decide to let bother us can perhaps be revealing.

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