Monthly Archives: August 2011

Charity Blackmail?

By Robin Hanson · August 6, 2011 5:35 pm · Comments (38)

Monday Tuesday I’ll be taped again for a segment of the John Stossel Show, to air [added: on some coming yet to be determined] Thursday at 10p. This time I’ll be defending blackmail, a subject I’ve discussed here, here, here. In preparation, I’ve just reviewed twenty academic papers on the subject.

Blackmail starts with a situation where A knows something embarrassing about B.  Assume A obtained this info legally, and has the legal freedom to tell or not tell this info to others, based on many noble or ignoble motivations, including rivalry and revenge. A is guilty of illegal blackmail if he requests compensation from B in exchange for A not telling others. Such a deal is legal, however, if B suggests it. (So A should say, “I happen to know this about you. And on a completely unrelated subject, I sure could use a new car.”) For example, recently someone was sent to prison for trying to blackmail David Letterman on his extramarital affairs.

In those twenty papers, roughly a quarter of the authors think blackmail should be legal. Others offered a wide range of arguments for illegality:

  1. Your right to keep quiet is weaker than your right to speak.
  2. It is stupid to pay a blackmailer; stupidity should be illegal.
  3. A blackmailer’s motives, in wanting money, are immoral.
  4. Saying embarrassing things about someone hurts them.
  5. It is especially wrong to gain money by hurting someone.
  6. The blackmailer uses third parties, without their permission, to extract gains.
  7. Blackmail discourages embarrassing activities, but some things just can’t be changed.
  8. Blackmailers may commit crimes to get the info, as may victims to get money.
  9. Rules forbidding or requiring the telling of certain info might be good, but are less “practical” than blackmail laws.
  10. If blackmail is impossible, people will instead gossip, and gossip will result in more folks knowing, and discourage embarrassing activities more.
  11. Government law can optimally discourage an activity via optimal punishment and rates of detection and error. Blackmail is an out of control private law, and will get these things wrong by detecting and punishing too often.

The issue of blackmailer motives could be addressed by only legalizing “charity blackmail”, where the compensation obtained is donated to a charity. (Credit to Rong Rong for the idea.) As probably few would support allowing only charity blackmail, it seems blackmailer motives aren’t the main issue.

Note that gossip is also an out-of-control private law which can discourage activities too much – why allow gossip but disallow blackmail? Note also that those who most dislike the idea of either blackmail or gossip discouraging their embarrassing activities seem to prefer that blackmail be illegal – they don’t believe that gossip alone discourages such activities more. Nor do I.

Posner ’93 offers an elite bias explanation:

It is extremely easy for a legislator, judge, or other public official to visualize himself or herself as a blackmail victim: any public official is a prime target for blackmail, and public officials are influential in the formation of law.

Smilansky ’95 agreees:

Part of the explanation for the perplexing attitude of common-sense morality on this issue is probably cynical, e.g. that the thought of being blackmailed in the ordinary ways is frightening to the rich and powerful in society, who may be less concerned with e.g. the threats of employers or politicians. Hence, that ordinary blackmail be taken so seriously is just what one would expect.

Boyle ’92 says we don’t like money intruding on “private” realms:

“Blackmail seems like the intrusion of market logic into the realm that should be most “private.” … To commodify is itself to violate the private realm. To commodify a violation of privacy, then, is doubly reprehensible. …. Blackmail is illegal because we have a vision of “privateness” that is constructed in part around the control of information as opposed to, say, wealth, healthcare, or housing. … We make a pre theoretical judgment that an activity is “private,” and only then do we “deduce” that it must be kept from the ruthless, instrumental logic of the market.

I made a similar suggestion last October.

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More Disagreement Is Far

By Robin Hanson · August 6, 2011 9:10 am · Comments (2)

More evidence that we tend to be less truth-oriented in far mode:

[Researchers] found participants were more persuaded to change their opinion after receiving concrete, detailed messages from a spatially near rather than distant source. These results fit well with recent [Near-Far] work on distancing and persuasion, which found that persuasion was highest when participants experienced a small (as opposed to large) amount of distance and received low-level, concrete (rather than high-level, abstract) persuasive messages. …

[Researchers] found that participants were less affected and less likely to seek information about a potential unpleasant truth (e.g., missing an opportunity on the stock market) when it concerned a distant rather than near situation (i.e., foreign vs. local company). (more)

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Subtle Signals

By Robin Hanson · August 5, 2011 10:35 am · Comments (12)

Here is a great example of signaling and screening:

The rock supergroup Van Halen had a clause in their concert contracts that stipulated that the band would “be provided with one large bowl of M&M candies, with all brown candies removed”. Once the “M&Ms” story leaked to the press, social commentators jumped all over it as an egregious example of the pampered and spoiled behavior that rock artists demanded. … [But] the band put the “no brown M&Ms” clause in their contracts for a very good reason. …

The band kept noticing errors (sometimes significant errors) in the stage setup in smaller cities. The band needed a way to know that their contract had been read fully. And this is where the “no brown M&Ms” came in. The band put a clause smack dab in the middle of the technical jargon of other riders: “Article 126: There will be no brown M&M’s in the backstage area, upon pain of forfeiture of the show, with full compensation”. That way, the band could simply enter the arena and look for a bowl of M&Ms in the backstage area. … A bowl of M&Ms with the brown candies? No bowl of M&Ms at all? Stop everyone and check every single thing, because someone didn’t bother to read the contract. (more; HT Phil Maymin)

This example also shows how hard it can be to collect solid evidence for signaling theories. If we didn’t have the evidence of band members explaining their reasons, how long would it take to guess this reason, and how much other evidence would one have to collect to convince skeptical observers? Because we are often trying to be subtle with our signals, it can be hard to convince skeptical observers that much signaling is actually going on.

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The Poor Are Not Fat

By Robin Hanson · August 4, 2011 8:15 am · Comments (42)

In both the popular press and academic research, there is the argument that the growth of fast food and energy-dense food has been an important cause of the overweight epidemic in the U.S. and that this has disproportionately affected poor people. [Some] argue that limited economic resources may shift dietary choices toward a diet that provides maximum calories at the least cost. An implication of this line of research is that the poor cannot afford healthy diets. (more; ungated)

In fact, however, the poor are on average not fatter than the rich:

Contrary to conventional wisdom, … the poor have never had a statistically significant higher prevalence of overweight status at any time in the last 35 years. Despite this empirical evidence, the view that the poor are less healthy in terms of excess accumulation of fat persists.

A new paper manages to find a relation between poverty and fat – both the very fattest and the very thinnest people tend to be poor:

Distribution-sensitive measures of overweight … [show] that the severity of overweight has been higher for the poor than the nonpoor throughout the last 35 years. … The strongest relationship between income and BMI is observed at the tails of the distribution. … For those at the tails of the BMI distribution, increases in income are correlated with healthier BMI values.

OK, but this hardly supports a general story that the poor can’t afford healthy diets. It fits much better with there being a small fraction of “broken” folks who tend both to have low abilities to earn money, and to have an unhealthy weight, both too high and too low.

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Still Scandalous Heat

By Robin Hanson · August 3, 2011 3:00 pm · Comments (24)

Me in ’09:

Physicists have long considered [thermodynamics] the physics area least likely to be overturned by future discoveries, in part because they understand it so well via “statistical mechanics.” Alas, not only are we far from understanding thermodynamics, the situation is much worse than most everyone admits! (more; related posts)

Many hope the theory of inflation can solve this, by predicting that a universe like ours would arise naturally out of “chaos.” But in the April Scientific American, Paul Steinhardt, a major contributor to inflationary theory, says:

Something peculiar has happened to inflationary theory in the 30 years since Guth introduced it. As the case for inflation has grown stronger, so has the case against. … Not only is bad inflation more likely than good inflation, but no inflation is more likely than either. University of Oxford physicist Roger Penrose first made this point in the 1980s. … Obtaining a flat universe without inflation is much more likely than with inflation — by a factor of 10 to the googol (10100) power! …

Many leading theorists argued that the problems with inflation are mere teething pains and should not shake our confidence in the basic idea. Others (including me) contended that the problems cut to the core of the theory, and it needs a major fix or must be replaced. (more)

Sean Carrol’s latest post reaffirms the point:

Imagine that you want to wait long enough to see something like the Big Bang fluctuate randomly out of empty space. How will it actually transpire? It will not be a sudden WHAM! in which nothingness turns into the Big Bang. Rather, it will be just like the observed history of our universe — just played backward. A collection of long-wavelength photons will gradually come together; radiation will focus on certain locations in space to create white holes; those white holes will spit out gas and dust that will form into stars and planets; radiation will focus on the stars, which will break down heavy elements into lighter ones; eventually all the matter will disperse as it contracts and smooths out to create a giant Big Crunch. Along the way people will un-die, grow younger, and be un-born; omelets will convert into eggs; artists will painstakingly remove paint from their canvases onto brushes. Now you might think: that’s really unlikely. And so it is! But that’s because fluctuating into the Big Bang is tremendously unlikely. (more)

We are not remotely close to having a reasonable account for the incredibly low entropy we seem to see in our past.

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Dark Is Far

By Robin Hanson · August 3, 2011 8:00 am · Comments (7)

In the dark, visual perception becomes less focused and detailed, leading to more abstract representations. … In three experiments, darkness triggered a more global perceptual and conceptual processing style than did brightness, regardless of whether the darkness was physically manipulated or primed. Additionally, two Implicit Association Tests (IATs) showed that darkness is more strongly associated with high-level construal than with low-level construal. … Eight IATs confirmed the implicit link between darkness and four dimensions [space, time, hypothetically, social] of psychological distance. …

Participants administered more intense shocks in a learning paradigm when the room was dimly rather than well lit and when the victim was in another rather than in the same room. … Darkness caused by dim lighting or by wearing sunglasses enhanced people’s sense of anonymity and in turn increased cheating and self-interested behavior in a dictator game. … Participants evaluated a fictitious employee more positively and were more willing to donate as unpaid volunteers when sitting in a dimly lit rather than a brightly lit room. (more)

Some obvious implications: We are more near in the rich modern world, with its ubiquitous lighting. We are more in far mode in winter and at night. Since leisure time tends to be spent more at night, we are in a more far mode then. Outdoor sporty leisure, however, tends to be more in near mode.

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Are Spirits Dark?

By Robin Hanson · August 2, 2011 8:00 am · Comments (40)

We see stars and galaxies moving in ways they should not; … we deduce the existence of hitherto unobserved substances, provisionally called dark matter and dark energy. … [Dark matter] outweighs ordinary matter by a factor of 6 to 1. Galaxies and galaxy clusters are embedded in giant balls, or “halos,” of dark matter. … It has to consist of particles that scarcely interact with ordinary matter. …

Could there be a whole sector of hidden particles? Could there be a hidden world that is an exact copy of ours, containing hidden versions of electrons and protons, which combine to form hidden atoms and molecules, which combine to form hidden planets, hidden stars and even hidden people? …

Hidden worlds cannot be an exact copy of our visible world. … Halos would have flattened out to form disks like that of the Milky Way. … [They] would have affected cosmic expansion, altering the synthesis of hydrogen and helium in the early universe. … That said, the dark world might indeed be a complicated web of particles and forces. … Dark matter may be accompanied by … a hidden version of electromagnetism, implying that dark matter may emit and reflect hidden light. … The observation that small galaxies are systematically rounder than their larger cousins would be a telltale sign of dark matter interacting through new forces. …

The theoretical case for a complex dark world is now so compelling that many researchers would find it more surprising if dark matter turned out to be nothing more than an undifferentiated swarm of [weakly interacting massive particles]. After all, visible matter comprises a rich spectrum of particles with multiple interactions determined by beautiful underlying symmetry principles, and nothing suggests that dark matter and dark energy should be any different. (more)

Many people have a strong intuition that around us there are “spirits”, i.e., unseen intelligences who are usually hidden, but who sometimes touch our lives and world. The hypothesis that these spirits are made of ordinary matter and big enough to see is extremely hard to square with common observations. And the hypotheses that they are made of ordinary matter but too small to see, or usually hiding in space or deep underground but popping into our areas on occasion, are also pretty hard to square with expert observations. We keep getting better at seeing things, and see little evidence of anything remotely similar. Intelligences must eat something, defecate something, have evolved from something, etc., all of which leaves traces.

But physics today does offer one plausible place for a spirit hypothesis, in “dark matter.” We know that our kind of matter (electrons, protons, etc.) makes up less than 5% of the mass of the universe around us. The rest is a mysterious matter that interacts only very weakly with our kind of matter, but could interact more strongly with itself, and in complex ways. And while we know most of this dark matter cannot be made of heavy things that clump tightly like our matter does, a substantial fraction of it (say ~1%) could.

So there could well be complex intelligences made out of dark matter, and there might also be ways for them to rarely interact with our world, though such interaction would probably require them to exert great and careful efforts. And furthermore, since dark matter is a high priority research topic, if there is complex clumping dark matter we’ll probably know about it within a half century. Perhaps even a decade.

We thus face a unique chance for folks with strong intuitions for or against spirits to make testable predictions, and even put their money where their mouth is. Those who think spirits likely should think substantial clumping dark matter is likely, and there should also be many who think neither is likely. I’ll go on record saying I doubt any substantial fraction of dark matter can support complex structures conducive to the evolution of life. What say you?

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Pigheaded Specialists

By Robin Hanson · August 1, 2011 11:15 am · Comments (21)

Kumar: “Excuse me, Professor Jones, could you explain why I was rejected for graduate study in your illustrious science program. I’m Vinay Kumar.”

Jones: “Ah yes, Mr. Kumar. You had excellent grades and test scores, and your teachers testified to your intelligence and work habits. However, you scored poorly on our new `scientist’ personality test – your pigheadedness score was near the bottom. We are sorry, but the NSF’s new rules for promoting progress give us no choice but to reject you.”

Kumar: “So I’m too pigheaded to be a scientist?”

Jones: “No, you are not pigheaded enough. You are too likely to objectively evaluate research on its methods, rather than on whether its conclusions match your previous positions. You are too willing to change your mind when evidence changes.”

Kumar: “But isn’t such objectivity a scientific ideal?”

Jones: “Well some say so, but the wise know otherwise. If all scientists were like you, they’d agree too much, and all work on the same projects. For robust scientific progress, we need different scientists to work on different projects. And to get that, we need them to pigheadedly draw different conclusions from the same data.”

Kumar: “But our modern economy is based on a vast specialization of labor. Are you saying that modern economies would be impossible without us all being pigheaded, because otherwise we’d all do the same job? Can’t we just pay people to do different jobs?”

Jones: “Money might motivate ordinary people to do different jobs, but in the magestarium of science money matters not. Scientists only pick research topics based on scientific beliefs. So to get different research, we need different beliefs.”

Pretty crazy, right? Behold this oped by Cordelia Fine in Saturday’s New York Times:

Scientists … rated the paper’s methodology, data presentation and scientific contribution significantly more favorably when the paper happened to offer results consistent with their own theoretical stance. … This is a worry. Doesn’t the ideal of scientific reasoning … shun the ego-driven desire to prevail over our critics … ? Perhaps not. Some academics have recently suggested that a scientist’s pigheadedness and social prejudices can peacefully coexist with — and may even facilitate — the pursuit of scientific knowledge. …

An irrational tendency like pigheadedness can be quite an asset in an argumentative context. A engages with B and proposes X. B disagrees and counters with Y. Reverse roles, repeat as desired — and what in the old days we might have mistaken for an exercise in stubbornness turns out instead to be a highly efficient “division of cognitive labor” with A specializing in the pros, B in the cons. It’s salvation of a kind: … by way of positive side effect, these heated social interactions, when they occur within a scientific community, can lead to the discovery of the truth. (more; HT Eric Schliesser)

This idea that humans disagree because disagreement is good for society, by getting people to take different actions, is an old one. I’m rather skeptical about it in general, and especially regarding academic research. Academics are easily motivated by money and other personal perks, and if such payments are insufficient, I see no advantages to a diversity of beliefs that a diversity of values can’t supply. Given enough value diversity, I see no net social gain from folks being unwilling to update based on evidence.

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Teachers As Dictators

By Robin Hanson · August 1, 2011 9:35 am · Comments (10)

Thousands of teachers traveled across the country to protest in front of the White House on Saturday. … Their message boiled down to one point, which was summed up by the sound check before the first speaker took the stage: Tap. Tap. “No testing, no testing, 1-2-3.” … Under that “failing” label, Romero’s school has cut back time for physical education and recess, and she has been required to use a new reading curriculum, she said. The regimen “stifles imagination,” she said. (more)

Schools are designed to, and do, stifle student imaginations. So why would we care much if teacher imaginations get stifled in the process? Do we care if prison guard imaginations gets stifled? This makes more sense once you realize just how much autonomy teachers were used to having:

In the early 1970s [sociologists] carried out a large survey of superintendents, principals, and teachers in San Francisco school districts. The initial reports indicated that something was amiss in these organizations. Reforms were announced with enthusiasm and then evaporated. Rules and requirements filled the file cabinets, but teachers taught as they pleased and neither principals nor superintendents took much notice. State and federal money flowed in and elaborate reports went forth suggesting compliance, but little seemed to change in the classrooms. Studies of child-teacher interactions in the classroom suggested that they were unaffected by the next classroom, the principal, the district, the outside funds, and the teacher training institution. (more)

In a [2011] study of nearly a million Texas children, … researchers found that nearly identical schools suspended and expelled students at very different rates. … The analysis used more than 80 variables, including race, economics, test scores, attendance, teacher salary and experience, and expenditures per student. ….

While some high-poverty schools suspended students at unexpectedly high rates, others with strikingly similar characteristics did not. The same discipline gap was clear for prosperous, suburban schools and small, rural schools. … Suspension or expulsion greatly increased a student’s risk of being held back a grade, dropping out or landing in the juvenile justice system. …

97 percent of disciplined students got in trouble for “discretionary” offenses, which can include serious fights but often refer to classroom disruption and insubordination. Fewer than 3 percent were ousted for violations with state-mandated punishment, such as bringing weapons or drugs to school. … African American students had a 31 percent higher likelihood of being disciplined for a discretionary offense, compared with whites and Hispanics with similar characteristics. (more)

So why do we tolerate dictator levels of teacher autonomy? As with our tolerating excesses in homework, early hours, and frequent evaluation, this makes much more sense as a way to train and select compliant workers than to teach course “content.”

Note our love of teacher autonomy even deters us from having independent bodies administer the tests by which we evaluate teachers are – they test themselves, which of course leads to lots of cheating.

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Open Thread

By Robin Hanson · August 1, 2011 6:00 am · Comments (23)

This is our monthly place to discuss relevant topics not covered in recent posts.

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