On the 4/29/07 episode of The Simpsons there was a sign at Springfield Little League Park reading:
"Warning: Your child is not as good as you think he is."
For most parents, (although certainly not my wife and I because we underestimate our son’s greatness) this sign would help correct bias. So, should signs like this be posted occasionally?
Many intelligent people, I suspect, believe that the Holocaust probably didn’t occur. This is likely because:
1) It seems very unlikely that a group now as powerful as “the Jews” could so recently have allowed themselves to be murdered on such a large scale, and
2) Many of their associates doubt that the Holocaust occurred, and
3) They live in countries where history books and newspapers promote obvious falsehoods. Thus, they have either read that the Holocaust was a myth, or they have reason to doubt the validity of writings that claimed the Holocaust happened.
If I met a Holocaust denier living in, say, Syria I would argue that nearly every sane person in the U.S., a nation with a free press, believes that the Holocaust did occur. But this Syrian could counter that the EU is considering criminalizing Holocaust denial. Such criminalization signals that many people living in the EU, also an area with a free press, doubt that the Holocaust occurred. Furthermore criminalization perhaps shows (from the viewpoint of the Syrian) that believers in the Holocaust want to foreclose debate on the subject and thus indicates that they fear they might lose an honest debate.
Imagine you are a jury member in a Mafia trial. You know that some prosecution witnesses have been intimidated into not testifying. You should think that the defendants are more likely to be guilty than you would if you looked at just the evidence presented to you.
Some undergraduates at Cambridge University published an article mocking Islamic extremists. Predictably, the students have had to go into hiding and face prosecution from their school and the UK government.
Many Western European academics and journalists no doubt fear expressing negative opinions about Islam. Some critics of Islam are being intimidated into “not testifying” against the faith and its followers. Readers of academic and journalistic writings will understand that many potential critics of Islam are censoring themselves. Thus, people should figure that there are probably some convincing negative critiques of Islam that are not being made because of this censorship. Western Europeans, therefore, should have a more negative view of Islam and its followers than would be justified by looking at just the evidence presented to them.
Politicians want voters to have a positively-biased view of themselves. Consequently, voters learn more about politicians from their failings than from their good deeds.
Barack Obama, for example, smokes. If being known as a smoker was politically beneficial to a candidate then we couldn’t know if Obama really enjoyed smoking or if he was just pretending to enjoy smoking to appeal to voters. But because being known as a smoker will probably hinder Obama’s political career, we know that he really wants to smoke. Consequently, Obama’s smoking reveals something about his character. Perhaps, for example, it shows he is not very future oriented and is willing to suffer long-term harm for a short term benefit.
Newt Gingrich has admitted to having had an extra-marital affair whereas Hillary Clinton appears to have been faithful to her husband. Perhaps Hillary Clinton really wants to cheat but for political reasons either hasn’t or has covered up her infidelity. We can’t be sure, therefore, if Hillary Clinton has the type of character that causes her to remain faithful. Since his infidelity will certainly not help his political career we can be sure that Gingrich wasn’t just pretending to be unfaithful or wasn’t being unfaithful just to gain political advantage. Rather, given his character being unfaithful maximized Gingrich’s lifetime happiness. This infidelity, therefore, provides considerable unbiased insight into Gingrich’s character.
Finally, it was recently revealed that Al Gore’s mansion uses 20 times as much energy as the average American’s home does. If Gore personally used much less energy than most Americans did we couldn’t be sure if he was doing this because he genuinely cared about the environment or if he merely wanted people to think he cared about the environment. In contrast, since his large energy use harms him politically, we can be sure that he didn’t use vast amounts of energy just to help his political image. Rather, given his character it is in Gore’s self-interest to use huge amounts of energy even though such considerable energy use will cause others to think he is a hypocrite.
Imagine I’m a professor who is going to lecture my students on global warming. Further assume that after carefully looking at the evidence I conclude that there is a 60% chance that global warming is true. So if I was the only one to lecture on global warming I would devote 60% of my lecture to evidence in support of the theory and 40% to evidence opposed to it.
But now imagine that I know that most of my students will be taught about global warming in other classes. Further assume that all the other professors at my college are 100% certain that global warming is true. These other professors, therefore, will only present evidence in favor of global warming. To cause students to get as unbiased a view as possible of global warming (from my prospective) shouldn’t I devote my entire lecture to criticizing global warming theory?
Imagine a professor has some ideology such as libertarianism or Marxism that is unusual at his college. The professor has this view because after looking at the evidence he decides it provides the best explanation of how the world works. The professor thinks that 20% of an unbiased education would consist of learning his ideology. But the professor knows that students won’t encounter his ideology outside of his classroom. Doesn’t this mean that to help the students get what the professor believes is an unbiased education the professor should devote far more than 20% of his lecture time to discussing his ideology?
Many U.S. voters, I suspect, give significant weight to their estimate of candidates’ intelligences when deciding who to vote for. We currently guess the level of candidates’ intelligences by evaluating their past actions and judging debate performances. But surely a better way would be to have all the candidates take IQ tests or perhaps some standardized test such as the SATs. True, most candidates took the SATs when they were much younger, but their intellectual capacity might have deteriorated since then. We could induce candidates to take IQ tests by giving federal election funds only to candidates who take them in the year prior to the first presidential primary election.
Consider a group of experts who are certain that fact X is true. This fact could be something such as global warming is occurring and is caused by human activity. They sign a statement saying X is true. If the experts turn out to be wrong, however, they will probably pay at most only a small reputational cost. This low error cost reduces the authority value of the expert’s statement. I propose a reputation commitment mechanism that would increase the personal cost to the experts of being wrong and so increase the authority value of their statement.
The experts could sign a document which reads: “We are extremely certain that X is true. In fact, we are so certain that X is true that if it turns out that X is not true it must mean that we who have signed this document have defective reasoning abilities and so are unfit to publicly comment on any issue of importance. If X turns out to be false we pledge not to claim that we were wrong because we were deceived, misled, or unlucky but rather we will admit that we were wrong because we lacked the intelligence to understand the issue.”
This reputation commitment mechanism would only work when experts were near 100% certain about something. It couldn’t be used by experts making probabilistic predictions.
Someone has developed a procrastinator’s clock that is probabilistically inaccurate. The idea behind the clock is that if you merely set your clock ahead by, say, 10 minutes then you know the clock is always ten minutes fast and so you will adjust accordingly. But this probabilistic clock is always somewhere between 0 to 15 minutes fast. Consequently, you never know the correct time and so can’t correct for the clock’s inaccuracies. The clock, therefore, is supposed to increase your punctuality by deliberately introducing bias into your timekeeping. Many bloggers have linked to it. But I don’t think that the probabilistic clock will decrease the average cost to you of your tardiness.
Let’s assume that you get a constant benefit for every second you procrastinate, but the cost of being late increases. With an accurate clock you will procrastinate until at the margin the benefit of procrastinating another second equals the cost of being one more second late.
With the probabilistic clock you don’t know how late you will be, so you don’t know the exact cost of being another second late. But you can estimate the time and so can estimate the lateness cost of procrastinating another second. So with the probabilistic clock you will procrastinate until at the margin the benefit of procrastinating another second equals the estimated cost of being one more second late. On average, therefore, the lateness costs you will suffer will be the same with the accurate and probabilistic clock.
For reasons I haven’t detailed I suspect you will on average be less late with the probabilistic clock. But because you will sometimes be extremely late with the probabilistic clock (more late than you would ever be with the accurate clock) the average lateness cost to you if you use the probabilistic clock equals the lateness cost to you if you use the accurate clock.
Former Harvard President Larry Summers lost his job for suggesting that researchers consider the possibility that biology partially explains the dearth of female science professors.
Some psychologists believe that if women are told they are less likely than men to be good at math then women will suffer from a “stereotype threat” that reduces their performance on math tests.
Let’s assume that this stereotype threat is real but also that there is some evidence that men are more likely than women to be born with the exceptionally strong mathematical ability needed to be a science professor. (Full disclosure: When I started college I wanted to be a theoretical physicist. I quickly realized I wasn’t good enough at math to accomplish this dream.)
Many professors, especially at the women’s college where I teach, discuss in class how society might and might not be discriminating against women. Should these professors discuss possible biological reasons for why men and women don’t achieve equal career outcomes?
In his blog post on Libertarian Paternalism Judge Richard Posner writes:
The dangers of smoking are well known; indeed, they tend to be exaggerated–including by smokers. (The increased risk of lung cancer from smoking is smaller than most people believe.)
Does this mean that government mandated warning labels on cigarettes should read "Smoking is probably not as dangerous as you think."
