Monthly Archives: April 2010

Women Want Heavy Men

By Robin Hanson · April 11, 2010 2:20 pm · Comments (28)

Men typically avoid tall women, while women have a preference for tall men. Men have a strong distaste for women with a large BMI [Body Mass Index], while women tend to prefer heavier men.

Huh?  That last phrase got my attention.  This is from a model in the latest AER predicting who responses at an online dating sight.  It controls for:  age, height, education, income and their differences in the couple, and also divorce, kids, looks, race, and religion.  And its not just that women dislike light men, the benefit of weight continued all the way up the scale; they found no significant effect of BMI squared, and only weak effects of its difference.  No wonder men are much less eager to diet!

Interestingly, folks with kids are far more eager for a match, and income preferences were quite linear – no diminishing returns!  More: Continue reading "Women Want Heavy Men" »

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Intuiting Too Much

By Robin Hanson · April 11, 2010 10:35 am · Comments (13)

We need principles by which to choose what degree of paternalism is appropriate in what context. … Any analysis based on the idea that folks can be irrationally deaf to advice is an intellectual sham if it doesn’t consider similar deafness by organization decision makers.

That was me. This is Bryan:

[In] debate, Robin kept replying, “If Group A wants to paternalistically stop Group B from doing X, why should we trust the judgments of the A’s instead of the B’s?”  Then Balan would reply something like, “Do you deny that using cocaine is a dumb thing to do?,” … This is a meta excess.  I oppose paternalism, but I’ll still grant that smart paternalists consider “similar deafness by organization decision makers.”  They don’t do it at the level Robin wants.  But for any specific thing they want to ban, smart paternalists at least briefly consider whether it’s worth banning. … If you ask, “Should we let Group A stop Group B from doing X if the A’s think this is for B’s own good,” no one answers with a blanket Yes.  Actual paternalists will only answer after they know some details abut A, B, and X.  I don’t blame them.

Let me illustrate:

“Cocaine users seem to hurt themselves; we must stop them!”
“But they don’t think so; have you considered you might be wrong?”
“Hmm, I don’t feel wrong, so I must not be wrong.  There, considered.”

Bryan trusts his intuition.  A lot. If Bryan’s intuition told him people on net hurt themselves greatly with cocaine, and that it was morally right to prevent such hurt, then Bryan would favor cocaine paternalism.  Same if he had explicit reasons, and his intuition said his reasons were solid.  As long as his intuition was strong, it wouldn’t bother him that others disagreed.  He might be curious to hear their reasons, but the mere fact that they had unknown reasons wouldn’t bother him much.  Nor would their having strong opposing intuitions; in a conflict between his intuitions and theirs, he knows to trust his.  Why?  Because his intuition says so.

Faith simplifies much.  With faith, what need principles?  Only those lacking faith in their divinely reliable intuition need to wonder what those who disagree with them might know that they do not, and seek principles to help avoid the bias of too easily assuming they are right and others wrong.

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Homo Hypocritus Signals

By Robin Hanson · April 10, 2010 9:15 am · Comments (39)

Food isn’t about Nutrition
Clothes aren’t about Comfort
Bedrooms aren’t about Sleep
Marriage isn’t about Romance
Talk isn’t about Info
Laughter isn’t about Jokes
Charity isn’t about Helping
Church isn’t about God
Art isn’t about Insight
Medicine isn’t about Health
Consulting isn’t about Advice
School isn’t about Learning
Research isn’t about Progress
Politics isn’t about Policy

“X is not about Y,” … mean[s] that while Y is the function commonly said to drive most X behavior, in fact some other function Z drives X … more. … Many are well aware of this but say we are better off pretending X is about Y.

I’ve argued that much of our behavior is poorly explained by the reasons we give, and better explained as ways to signal abilities, loyalties, etc.  But if so, why do we act so astoundingly ignorant?  Why don’t we know about, and explicitly acknowledge, these functions?  Yes, it can look bad to brag, or to be consciously strategic about loyalties, and some observers may be usefully fooled by our idealistic stories.  But are these really enough to explain our incredible ignorance?

Man the sly rule bender offers a more satisfying explanation: we evolved to overtly and consciously embrace social norms against bragging, dominance, and sub-band coalitions, while covertly and subconsciously signaling our abilities, and loyalties:

Consistent enforcement of [egalitarian forager] norms seems to drastically reduce the payoff to expensive coalition-politics-savvy brains.  If you can’t collude to grab the food or the women, and everyone is treated fairly based on their contributions, why bother to be so clever? …  [But] in a messy real world, social norms expressed in language typically have many iffy boundary cases and ambiguities. … [So] big brain gains come five ways:

Unnormed – coalition politics on acts uncovered by norms.
Skirt – keep actions near but not over edge of violating norms.
Cover – politics of observers on if to report an act to others.
Frame – lawyer-like arguing on if acts violate social norms.
Conspire – form coalitions on how to publicly interpet iffy acts.

… Foragers … sincerely believe they usually just do their job and “tell it like it is,” and then unconsciously try to act, selectively report and frame acts, and support interpretation coalitions, to their advantage. … Both complex broad incest rules and allowing sorcery complaints greatly increase the scope for gains to large rule-bending brains, and suggest that we tend to prefer to allow such scope.

It looks bad to brag and to be consciously strategic about loyalties not just because those can in general look bad, but because they violate strong forager norms.  We signal covertly and unconsciously because our ancestors were strongly punished for overt and conscious signals.

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Mating Idealism

By Robin Hanson · April 9, 2010 8:10 am · Comments (21)

Who is the most idealistic about mating?  It seems to me it is children, post-menopausal women, and young male “nerds”, i.e., with especially weak current mating prospects. These folks talk as if they hold themselves and others to the highest standards of ideal love, while happening to speak when they have an especially low chance of fertile sex.

Coincidence?  I think not. Remember, sex is near; love is far.  In Far Thoughts Fit Ideals, I said:

We tend more to say we will act in accord with our verbally expressed and proudly embraced abstract ideals, e.g., individualism, collectivism, universalism, environmentalism, when we are put into the mental mode that was designed more for talking relative to doing – the far mode.  In contrast, when we are in our usual near mode … we tend to ignore those abstract ideals, … practically achieving our usual ends.
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Too Much Debate

By Robin Hanson · April 8, 2010 9:35 pm · Comments (15)

Imagine someone argued:

Stock car races are a huge waste of resources.  To find out which car models are faster, we can just have experts keep track of the speed of the cars they drive past, and write up their observations.  Then we’ll have them debate each other.  Sure some biases might slip in, but we shouldn’t pretend we can escape bias; stock car races can have biases too.  For example, there might be a pebble on one side of the track that isn’t on the other side, or the sun might get in one driver’s eye for a moment but not in another’s.

Or imagine:

Big formal elections are a huge waste of resources.  To find out which candidate is more popular, we can just have experts survey different groups at different times, and write up their observations.  Then we’ll have them debate each other.  Sure some biases might slip in, but we shouldn’t pretend we can escape bias; elections can have biases too.  After all, rain on election day, or certain news the day before, might discourage some kinds of voters but not others.

To me, Austin Frakt on medical experiments talks similarly.  Him: Continue reading "Too Much Debate" »

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Paternalism Is Hard

By Robin Hanson · April 8, 2010 2:30 pm · Comments (8)

I’ve posted many times on paternalism (e.g., here and here), so was hopeful when I saw that the latest Cato Unbound is on paternalism.  Alas it is mostly heat, not light.  Glen Whitman warns of slippery slopes, crude politicians, and biased question framing, and asks how behavioralists choose among inconsistent consumer preferences.  Richard Thaler responds that there is no slope and that paternalism is sometimes inevitable.  Bryan Caplan complains that Thaler and company only ever work to increase paternalism:

Why do Sunstein and Thaler use their meme to make extra paternalism a little less objectionable, instead of making existing paternalism a lot less objectionable?

Arnold Kling agrees, as does Scott Sumner:

The real test of libertarian paternalism will come when we see how often it is advocated as a way of softening hard paternalism.

As far as I’m concerned, all of these authors avoid the core hard problem.  Yes paternalism can be a matter of degree, but even so we need principles by which to choose what degree of paternalism is appropriate in what context.  Just repeating “More” and “Less” quickly gets tiresome.  Such principles need to explicitly take into account the fact that organizations can give folks advice instead of limiting their choices.  And any analysis based on the idea that folks can be irrationally deaf to advice is an intellectual sham if it doesn’t consider similar deafness by organization decision makers. (And vice versa.)

Added 9Apr: David Henderson shows Thaler and company have argued for reduced paternalism.

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Me On Al Jazeera

By Robin Hanson · April 7, 2010 8:25 pm · Comments (4)

Thursday at 12:30p EST I’ll appear live on the Riz Khan show of Al Jazeera.  I’ll discuss prediction markets, together with John Delaney of InTrade.  We are supposed to talk for over twenty minutes, though we’ll still probably just cover basics.

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Left-Right Isn’t About Markets

By Robin Hanson · April 7, 2010 9:00 am · Comments (15)

Matt Yglesias:

In the spectrum debate, a commons is considered a “left-wing” position, while property rights are considered “right-wing.” In contrast, in the carbon debate you find right-wingers advocating a “carbon commons” while left-wingers advocate a property-like regime called cap and trade.

… To borrow an idea from Robin Hanson, I think it’s useful to think about political conflict in terms of valorized figures. On the right, you see a lot of valorization of businessmen. On the left, you see a lot of valorization of pushy activists who want to do something businessmen don’t like. Formally, the right is committed to ideas about free markets and the left is committed to ideas about economic equality. But in practice, political conflict much more commonly breaks down around “some stuff some businessmen want to do” vs “some stuff businessmen hate” rather than anything about markets or property rights per se. Consequently, on the left people sometimes fall into the trap of being patsies for rent-seeking mom & pop operators when poor people would benefit more from competition from a corporate bohemoth.

Yup; political ideology, like most ideology, is a lot more about who should get respect than it is about abstract principles of governance.

Added 10a: Pushy activists and businessmen emphasize different features in desirable associates.  Pushy activists seek shared values, passionately and articulately expressed.  Businessmen seek practical competence, and a respect for [contract] law and hierarchy.  So does my push for a focus on robot respect for law flag me as politically right?

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Overconfidence Looks Good

By Robin Hanson · April 6, 2010 6:35 pm · Comments (4)

Overconfidence is a Social Signaling Bias:

We test three different theories about observed relative overconfidence. The first theory notes that simple statistical comparisons are compatible with a Bayesian model of updating from a common prior and truthful statements. … Data on 1,016 individuals’ relative ability judgments about two cognitive tests rejects the Bayesian model. The second theory suggests that self-image concerns asymmetrically affect the choice to get new information about one’s abilities. … We test an important specific prediction of these models: individuals with a higher belief will be less likely to search for further information about their skill. … Our data also reject this prediction. The third theory is that overconfidence is induced by the desire to send positive signals to others about one’s own skill; this suggests either a bias in judgment, strategic lying, or both. We provide evidence that personality traits strongly affect relative ability judgments in a pattern that is consistent with this third theory. Our results together suggest that overconfidence in statements is most likely to be induced by social concerns than by either of the other two factors.

This of course means that you should expect to risk looking less impressive to others if you correct for your overconfidence.

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Robots vs. Aliens vs. …

By Robin Hanson · April 5, 2010 10:50 pm · Comments (19)

There are a many kinds of potentially powerful creatures one might consider.  These include: robots, aliens, spirits, gods, alters, revived hominids (e.g., neanderthals, hobbits), time-travelers (e.g., ancestors, descendants), and extreme human personality types (e.g., aspergers, psychopaths).

For each creature type, consider the degree to which you might:

  1. accept/want to live intermingled with them?
  2. seek/expect to gain via deals & trade with them?
  3. worry if they have similar enough values?
  4. exterminate them if you could?
  5. enslave them if you could?
  6. hide us from them if you could?
  7. fear them killing us all?
  8. fear them enslaving us?
  9. fear them out competing us?
  10. mind them marrying your child?
  11. take their advice?
  12. mind killing a single one of them?
  13. help them lots if that were cheap for you?
  14. mind becoming one of them?
  15. mind if they dominate the universe?

OK, now here is the interesting meta question: what patterns are there in how different sorts of people answer these questions differently for the different possibly-powerful creature types?  Once we have some patterns, we can seek explanations for them.

For example, compared to other types of creatures, we seem to less fear alters having differing values or our-competing us, seem more willing to take their advice and kill them, but seem less willing to enslave them.

Added 7Apr: For spirits or time-travelers, stories about dominance or gift-exchange relations sometimes go well, but stories about trade relations usually go very badly.

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