Monthly Archives: November 2009

What Status RQ?

By Robin Hanson · November 12, 2009 11:40 am · Comments (43)

The problem with IQ tests is that while they are effective at assessing our deliberative skills, which involve reason and the use of working memory, they are unable to assess our inclination to use them when the situation demands. … “Some people who are intellectually able do not bother to engage very much in analytical thinking and are inclined to rely on their intuitions.” …

A study published last year … found there was no correlation between intelligence and a person’s ability to avoid some common traps of intuitive-thinking. … A survey of members of Mensa (the High IQ Society) in Canada in the mid-1980s found that 44 per cent of them believed in astrology, 51 per cent believed in biorhythms and 56 per cent believed in aliens. … A study of 360 Pittsburgh residents … found that, regardless of differences in intelligence, those who displayed better rational-thinking skills suffered significantly fewer negative events in their lives, such as being in serious credit card debt, having an unplanned pregnancy or being suspended from school. … [Another study] found a similar association among adolescents. Those who scored higher on a test of decision-making competence drank less, took fewer drugs and engaged in less risky behaviour overall. …

A potent criticism … is the lack of a proven test of rational thinking skills that could be used alongside IQ tests. … Stanovich maintains that while developing a universal “rationality-quotient (RQ) test” would require a multimillion-dollar research programme, there is no technical or conceptual reason why it could not be done. … However: unlike with IQ, it would be relatively easy to train people to do well on RQ tests. “They measure the extent to which people are inclined to use what capacity they have,” says Evans. “You could train people to ignore intuition and engage reasoning for the sake of the test, even if this was not their normal inclination.”

More here.  Several million dollars spent trying to develop an RQ test seems money well spent to me.  But even though I’d more want to know someone’s RQ than their IQ, I wonder how much others care.  After all, we admire tall and muscular folks, even if they have little inclination or opportunity to reach high things others cannot, or open jars others cannot.  And we mostly choose academics who show impressive abilities, mostly ignoring how much they contribute to intellectual progress.

How much do potential mates, employers, etc. actually care about your willingness to use your intelligence to discern truth?   Yes, sometimes the truth can help your team win, but at other times speaking inconvenient truths helps your team lose.

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Tear Down This Wall

By Robin Hanson · November 11, 2009 4:15 pm · Comments (56)

At this twenty year anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, let us reaffirm its key principle: we accept adult choice of law, at least if bundled with choice of nation.  North Korea still keeps locals from leaving, and until very recently the U.S. reserved the right to tax ex-citizens for up to ten years. But for the rest of the world, if someone picks up and leaves a nation and then solemnly swears allegiance to a new nation, we don’t see much need for regulatory oversight to determine if this new contract is “valid”.

I bring this up because teaching law & econ has reminded me of just how ossified and inefficient is our standard legal system, and Bryan Caplan recently guest lectured in my class on the vast potential of private law to improve efficiency.  The idea is to let people contract around standard law, privately choosing new legal rules and processes.  Local agreements between nations is what protects us now when we navigate the anarchy between nations, and the greater efficiency of private legal regimes of credit card firms, insurance companies, and social networks like Facebook greatly improve our lives. The idea is to extend such approaches to a wider range of legal issues.

The greatest barrier to wider use of private law today is the reluctance of government courts to enforce contracts specifying private law.  For example, a few years back a woman signed an employment contract with Halliburton saying disputes would be settled by a certain arbitration agency. When she claimed she was then raped in Iraq, we saw outrage: Continue reading "Tear Down This Wall" »

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Combo Prediction Markets Talk

By Robin Hanson · November 11, 2009 11:15 am · Comments (2)

I talked Friday at prediction parkets summit, on “Combinatorial Prediction Markets.”  Here are slides and audio.

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Caplan on Exposure Therapy

By Robin Hanson · November 11, 2009 11:10 am · Comments (13)

The idea is to get people to “face their fears.” … “Exposure therapy… involves deliberate and planned exposure to a feared stimulus, or representation of the stimulus, until the intensity of the person’s distress recedes.” … The Handbook [of Exposure Therapies] also reviews clinical evidence on exposure therapy vs. other talk therapies vs. drugs vs. nothing vs. combinations of the above.  …  In almost every case, they conclude that exposure therapy plus X is no better than – and other worse than – exposure therapy alone.  The zero or negative marginal benefit of drugs is awfully Hansonian:

With respect to short-run efficacy, a number of studies suggest that [some drugs] may enhance the effects of exposure-based CBT [cognitive-behavioral therapy].  However, an approximately equal number of clinical trials provide no support for this conclusion, and a meta-analysis of this literature indicates that combined treatment is no more effective than CBT alone. … On the other hand, clinical trials have consistently failed to support an advantage of combined treatment when long-term outcomes are considered.  In fact, the two largest and most well-designed trials of combined treatments provide unambiguous evidence that pharmacotherapy… interferes with the durability of exposure-based CBT.

More here.  Yes, exposure therapy probably does make people feel less stressed about particular fears.  But you can’t know if this is a good thing until you know how stressed people should feel on particular fears.  For fears that are over-blown, exposure therapy seems good, but for under-blown fears, it seems bad.

For example, exposing people to the real deaths of others may well make folks less stressed about, and accepting of, their own future death.  If you think people are not accepting enough of their death, you approve, but if you, like me, wish folks would more “rage against the dying of the light,” you disapprove.

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Are Women Picky?

By Robin Hanson · November 9, 2009 10:00 pm · Comments (36)

In almost all speed-dating events, women sit in stationary positions and men rotate to talk with each of them. When Finkel and Eastwick set up a dating event like that, the standard result bore out — women were more selective.  But when they reversed the roles and had women rotate, that was no longer the case. Suddenly, the men became more selective and the women less so.

So it seems women are pickier because our institutions make them pickier.  If speed dating was organized to instead make men pickier, I’m guessing men would like it more, but women would soon just not show up to such events.  So yes there is a sense in which women are pickier, but it is more in wanting institutions that make them picky, rather that in being pickier given neutral institutions.

More tidbits from the same source:

In a 2005 study, they looked at whether the characteristics singles say they want in a partner match what they actually pursue. On paper, women reported a greater desire for earning potential and status; men were more interested in physical attractiveness. In person at speed-dating events, that discrepancy went away — “women want really good-looking men every bit as much as men want really good-looking women,” Finkel says. And financial prospects were no less important to men than women.

… Another of Finkel and Eastwick’s studies found that when it comes to platonic relationships, if a person tends to like everyone, that goodwill is more likely to be reciprocated. But in romantic relationships, that wasn’t the case. If a single guy digs all the women in the room, Finkel explains, “the women don’t like him back.”  The turn-on, he continues, comes when a person feels “uniquely desired.”

In the far view of what we want, men want looks while women want money, but in the near view, men and women want pretty much the same thing.  Is this far view of what we want more what we want others to think we want, or is something else going on?

Added:  As Andy suggests, these seem explainable by far view looking more to long term relations, while near view looks to short term relations.  In far view women want to be pickier, and want men with money, even if they aren’t naturally inclined in these directions in near view.

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Democracy Failings

By Robin Hanson · November 9, 2009 9:30 pm · Comments (9)

Data on 786 elections in 155 countries from 1974 to 2004 … [finds] that fraud may have affected the results in 41 percent of them. Perhaps that shouldn’t be surprising, since incumbent politicians who cheat to get reelected stay in office 2.5 times longer than they would have playing it fair and square. …

Above $2,700 per capita, democracies are less prone to violence than are autocracies. But most political violence happens in countries where income is far below that threshold; there, democracy is associated with a greater risk of bloodshed. … Although the risk of violence falls in the year before an election, it rises in the year after. … Election misconduct tends to be concentrated in countries that have low per capita incomes, small populations, rich natural resources and a lack of institutional checks and balances. Eastern Europe didn’t fit this picture. … Most of the countries in sub-Saharan Africa, however, have all the characteristics that undermine elections, giving them a mere 3 percent chance of an honest vote … Afghanistan is not exceptional; in fact, electoral misconduct there was almost inevitable. …

Populist pressure does cause policies to deteriorate somewhat in the year before an election. … But governments that face frequent elections have significantly better economic policies when they are averaged over the political cycle, and governments that become subject to elections improve their policies. … [However] elections in which there is misconduct have, at best, no effect on economic policy because governments are off the hook of accountability. … One of the main ways incumbents steal elections is through patronage financed by looting the public purse.

More here.  Why again do we focus so much on “bringing democracy” to poor nations?

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Beware Inward Apologetics

By Robin Hanson · November 8, 2009 10:50 pm · Comments (27)

Beware oft-rehearsed but rarely-performed arguments on why-our-group-is-right:

Recently I came across a quotation that expressed, with wonderful clarity, something that I kind of half-knew but had not articulated so well to myself.  The historian John P. Meier …:

Despite the theoretical purpose of addressing and confuting one’s adversaries outside, most religious apologetics and polemics are directed inward.  Their real function is to give a sense of assurance and reinforcement to the group producing the polemics.  Most apologetics and polemics are thus an attempt to shore up group solidarity and conviction within a community that feels insecure and under attack.  The a priori conviction of such polemics is simple and unshakeable: “We are right and they are wrong, and now we will think up some reasons to prove that they are wrong.”

… What I am curious about is why this would be an effective means of building group solidarity.  Does the essential irrationality of the arguments have a function in building group solidarity?  Or do group alliances matter only when the subject—politics, religion, scholarship—is so difficult that clear conclusions are impossible to establish?

That is Brian Malley; hat tip to Stan Tsirulnikov.

We can signal loyalty to a group by showing our confidence in its beliefs.  And our ability to offer many reasonable arguments for its beliefs suggests such confidence.  But sometimes we can show even stronger loyalty by showing a willingness to embrace unreasonable arguments for our group’s beliefs.  Someone who supports a group because he thinks it has reasonable supporting arguments might well desert that group should he find better arguments against it.  Someone willing to embrace unreasonable arguments for his group shows a willingness to continue supporting them no matter which way the argument winds blow.

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Pretty Pols Win

By Robin Hanson · November 8, 2009 8:00 am · Comments (14)

More evidence suggesting Politics Isn’t About Policy:

Beautiful candidates are indeed more likely to be elected, with a one standard deviation increase in beauty associated with a 1 ½– 2 percentage point increase in voteshare. Our results are robust to several specification checks: adding party fixed effects, dropping well-known politicians, using non-Australian beauty raters, omitting candidates of non-Anglo appearance, controlling for age, and analyzing the ‘beauty gap’ between candidates running in the same electorate. The marginal effect of beauty is larger for male candidates than for female candidates. … Consistent with the theory that returns to beauty reflect discrimination, we find suggestive evidence that beauty matters more in electorates with a higher share of apathetic voters.

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Pride Is About Status

By Robin Hanson · November 5, 2009 7:40 pm · Comments (18)

We used 3 different … [ways] to test whether the nonverbal expression of pride sends a functional, automatically perceived signal about a social group member’s increased social status.  Results suggest that the pride expression strongly signals high status, and this association cannot be accounted for by positive valence or artifacts of the expression such as expanded size due to outstretched arms. …

The pride expression is a fairly specific signal of high status. … [It] sends a message that is distinct from that of happiness,…  [and] also appears to be distinct from any message sent by anger. … The current results demonstrate that high-status perceptions of the pride expression are unelaborated and automatic. … Previous research has shown that status cues differ for males and females, and that pride recognition rates vary slightly depending on the gender and ethnicity of the individuals who show these expressions. …

The present research suggests that the pride expression functions as a unique signal of high status, and is consistent with the suggestion that pride evolved to serve this purpose. … Pride is spontaneously displayed following status-increasing events (i.e., achievement) even by the congenitally blind, who are unlikely to have learned the expression from cultural models. … The pride expression is reliably recognized in isolated nonliterate cultures.

More here.  Think of the things you do that you tend to feel proud of, and you’ll probably resist the idea that you do these things to raise your status.   In general, remembering the above result will probably make you feel awkward when you feel proud, since we tend to be prudish about admitting we seek status.

Added 11p: When people say “I’m not proud of it but …” they usually mean they don’t respect it.  People almost never respect features in themselves that lower their status, and they think features they respect should gain people status.

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FDA Blunders

By Robin Hanson · November 5, 2009 6:00 am · Comments (21)

Popping into the office on a recent Saturday, I overheard Alex Tabarrok practicing a talk, with fascinating details on FDA history.   From FDAReview.org:

Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, the FDA brought hundreds of court actions against nutrition manufacturers for making health-related claims for their products. Under threat of law, food manufacturers were even prevented from labeling the fat, cholesterol, or other nutritional content of their food! (Later such labeling was allowed, and with the Nutrition Labeling and Education Act of 1990 nutrition labeling became mandatory.)

The FDA actively prosecuted vitamin retailers that sold vitamins and other supplements in conjunction with books or pamphlets that extolled their use. … The FDA justified such practices, which many considered to be a violation of the First Amendment, under the theory that literature that was sold near a product was thereby converted into a product label. …

In 1973, the FDA published regulations … High-potency vitamins, by which the FDA meant vitamins sold in dosages as little as twice the federal recommended daily allowance (RDA) … were effectively made illegal by this ruling because they could not be sold without FDA approval, and the FDA would not approve supplements that it considered to be unnecessary. Vitamin manufacturers and consumers fought back, and in response Congress passed the Proxmire Vitamin Mineral Amendment of 1976. …

It is worth pointing out explicitly, although it will come as no surprise to anyone who follows today’s health news, that numerous scientific studies have since validated many of the health claims for vitamins and minerals that the FDA had earlier suppressed. The FDA suppression of information concerning vitamin E and heart attacks, for example, may rank alongside its suppression of information concerning aspirin as one of the most deadly regulations of the post–World War II era. …

In 1992, the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommended that women of childbearing age take folic acid supplements. Studies showed that taking folic acid reduced risks of babies suffering neural-tube birth defects such as anencephaly and spina bifida. The FDA immediately announced, however, that it would prosecute any food or vitamin manufacturer that placed the CDC recommendation in its advertising or product labeling.  The public did not learn of the importance of folic acid until Congress passed the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act of 1994, … Within only a few years of its ban on publicizing the CDC recommendation, the FDA made a complete turnabout. Since 1998, the agency has required manufacturers to fortify a variety of grain products with folic acid—that which is not prohibited is mandatory!

You might think these examples show that the system works – if the FDA screws up, Congress will jump in to fix things.  But if Congress hadn’t made these changes, when would you have heard of these mistakes?

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