Comments for Overcoming Bias

Comment on Efficient Isn’t Moral by James Andrix

James Andrix — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 16:05:07 +0000

I’ve come to think that we use the non-experiential nature of other people’s preferences as an excuse to discount them, even to the point of citing different levels of experience as significant.

i.e. Some people are very concerned about what other consenting adults do in the privacy of their own bedrooms. I might say to them “What do you care? It doesn’t affect you at all.” I don’t much care to help them with their preferences, (even ignoring the required control of others) and I say their preferences are silly because they are non-experiential.

The same people would be concerned about consenting adults displaying affection in public. I might now say “What do you care? It’s not hurting you.” I still don’t care about this preference, but I can’t deny it is experiential. I claim their preferences are silly because the experience doesn’t have some other arbitrary quality.

On the other hand, if someone were to complain about something I also find morally objectionable, even though it doesn’t affect me, I would want to help with that preference. I would never cite it’s non-experiential nature are a reason not to care. (In fact some would claim this is a sign of noble altruism.)

Comment on Uninsured ER Fallacy by Karl Smith

Karl Smith — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 15:31:51 +0000

Moreover, I am suspect about the “high-cost” of emergency rooms.

If there is any part of the hospital that at least looks like its using resources efficiently its the emergency room. Now granted the emergency room has to deal with much more extensive cases than a simple child with a cough, but given what they are doing both the capital and the labor seem to be running at capacity.

This does not appear to be the case in the rest of the hospital where one often sees huge, presumably very expensive, machines sitting idle and very expensive doctors engaged in idle banter.

Comment on Managing Our Cut by Tracy W

Tracy W — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 15:09:15 +0000

I don’t get your medical cost analysis. I’m guessing you are saying that the fixed costs of funding a cure for a disease are much higher than the marginal benefit to any one customer. But in a market society people do invest in such assets, one group of people build something and then charge everyone else who wants to use it a fee – eg how many of the people who visit Disneyland would pay for the entire park to be built?

Comment on Uninsured ER Fallacy by jz-md

jz-md — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 15:07:46 +0000

@Jess,
ER use in MA went up 9% after universal insurance.

Comment on Uninsured ER Fallacy by David

David — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 15:04:39 +0000

I think the argument also includes the idea that under a health care plan where the currently uninsured have medical coverage, the costs of emergency room visit are no longer absorbed by the hospitals and can be passed on to the insurance company/the government. Costs would go down as hospitals no longer have to plan their budgets around people skipping out on the bill, and care would improve as hospitals don’t go bankrupt, or can utilize those funds in other areas.

Comment on Uninsured ER Fallacy by Jess Riedel

Jess Riedel — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 15:04:18 +0000

After Massachusetts adopted universal insurance, emergency-room use remained higher than the national average, an Urban Institute study found.

Use remained higher, but did it decrease?

Comment on Uninsured ER Fallacy by jz-md

jz-md — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 14:54:49 +0000

Medicaid beneficiaries should count as “no pay”. Those single moms and their kids do use the ED disproportionately because no primary docs will accept them.

Comment on Uninsured ER Fallacy by jz-md

jz-md — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 14:51:48 +0000

1) True that many “insured” use the ED because of shrinking number of primary care docs/extenders.
2) Does the data count Medicaid/equivalents as “insured”? Medicaid, in most states, is reimbursed almost nothing, so should count as a no pay.

Comment on Managing Our Cut by Tracy W

Tracy W — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 13:41:29 +0000

Is it really a matter of status? I’ve encountered situations where the neighbours had no respect for my need to sleep, and I am not unique. I mostly eat good food because I don’t buy the other sort and can cook. This has been true throughout my adult life.

How good is the food and respect for need to sleep in the military? How about when it was a conscription military? I think it’s a matter of how easily you can switch to other options, not how low or high status you are.

Comment on Ancestor Worship is Efficient by Tracy W

Tracy W — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 12:29:56 +0000

So you are saying that the British lawyers and judges who developed the law against perpetuities were merely acting out of “unthinking repugnance” and a desire to steal the dead’s resources? A brave claim to make, that other people are not merely being irrational but unthinking.

It may not be *obvious* that the dead will persistently make the wrong trade-off between flexibility and putting their preferences into trusts, but plenty of non-obvious things are true (eg refrigerators manage to cool things). If the experience of a number of lawyers and judges over a massive variety of trial cases is that old trusts keep causing problems by being inflexibile when asset use needs to change, then a rule against perpetuaties is not unthinking repugnance. It might still be wrong, but my Bayesian priors are with the British common law system on this point. The prosperity of the UK and its offshoots (USA, Canada, Australia, NZ) doesn’t match with a hypothesis that the English system was being run by fools.