Overcoming Bias

Loud Subtext

We literally don't know what we communicate in important conversations:

What you say in a conversation -- whether it's on a first date, a job interview or pitching an idea -- may be less important than how you say it.  But the cues that may decide the outcome can be so subtle that neither person in the conversation is consciously aware of them. Whether or not you get the job, or the other person's phone number, is very strongly influenced by unconscious factors such as the way one person's speech patterns match the other's, the level of physical activity as people talk, and the degree to which one person sets the tone -- literally -- of the conversation. .. The features he found that are highly predictive of outcomes, he says, "match the literature in biology about signaling in animals." ... "Half of our decision-making seems to be predicted by this unconscious channel," ... The strong correlations between unconscious forms of communication and the decisions that result strongly undermines people's perception that they are making choices based on rational, conscious factors. 

HT to Michael Bishop.

Politics isn't about Policy

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

The above summarizes much of my contrarian world view.  (What else should go on this list?) When I say "X is not about Y," I mean that while Y is the function commonly said to drive most X behavior, in fact some other function Z drives X behavior more.  I won't support all these claims here; for today, let's just talk politics. 

High school students are easily engaged to elect class presidents, even though they have little idea what if any policies a class president might influence.  Instead such elections are usually described as "popularity contests."  That is, theses elections are about which school social factions are to have higher social status.  If a jock wins, jocks have higher status.  If your girlfriend's brother wins, you have higher status, etc.  And the fact that you have a vote says that others should take you into account when forming coalitions - you are somebody.

Glory vs. Relations

From a thoughtful essay by Christina Sommers: 

MIT biologist Nancy Hopkins, ... (a prominent accuser of Harvard president Lawrence Summers ... [who suggested] men and women might have different propensities and aptitudes), points to the hidden sexism of the obsessive and competitive work ethic of institutions like MIT.  "It is a system," Hopkins says, "where winning is everything, and women find it repulsive. ... The list of cultural norms that appear to disadvantage women ... includes the favoring of disciplinary over interdisciplinary research and publications, and the only token attention given to teaching and other service" ...

If asked to make a drawing, little girls almost always create scenes with at least one person, while males nearly always draw things - cars, rockets, or trucks. ... Among primates, including our closest relations the chimpanzees, males are more technologically innovative, while females are more involved in details of family life. ... After two major waves of feminism, women still predominate - sometimes overwhelmingly - in empathy-centered fields such as early-childhood education, social work, veterinary medicine, and psychology, while men are over-represented in the "systematizing" vocations such as car repair, oil drilling, and electrical engineering. ...

[Consider] women's [amazing] progress in veterinary medicine ...

Against Disclaimers

Blog posts are short and have a broad audience.  One of the worst things about writing them is having to make disclaimers.  Not just legal disclaimers mind you - those are only the tip of an iceberg.

Writing is hard in part because words have many associations that vary among readers.  Even when we use carefully choose our words to signal certain associations, we know some readers will instead hear other associations.  So in addition to saying what we do mean, we sometimes have to say explicitly what we do not mean. 

For example, most who say "Can I help you with that?" also mean to say "I am offering to help you with that."  So if you really just want to ask about your ability to help, but do not want to offer to help, you must explicitly disclaim the offer, as in "I'm not offering to help, but I was wondering, is it somehow possible for me to help?"  It seems reasonable to have to say more in this case, as this is the more unusual case. 

Less reasonably, in our current legal system anyone with an employer who writes anything is expected to explicitly declare that they are not speaking for their employer.  Apparently if they do not their employer can be sued for anything they say. This is unreasonable because the vast majority of writings by people with jobs are not intended to speak officially for their employer.  It would be far more reasonable to assume that we speak only for ourselves unless we explicitly say otherwise.  It is similarly unreasonable for fiction authors to have to always declare all their characters are fictional.

Unfortunately, the problem goes way beyond dumb legal rules.  Consider these common presumptions:

Exploration As Status

I was puzzled to hear Paul Graham say:

Innocence is also open-mindedness. We want kids to be innocent so they can continue to learn. Paradoxical as it sounds, there are some kinds of knowledge that get in the way of other kinds of knowledge. If you're going to learn that the world is a brutal place full of people trying to take advantage of one another, you're better off learning it last. Otherwise you won't bother learning much more.

So last week I asked:

This has some intuitive appeal, but it is puzzling - why exactly would learning that the world is a brutal place make one less interesting in learning more about that world?  Wouldn't learning help one to avoid brutality? 

Tyler Cowen and Russ Roberts also posed this question to their readers, and all of the thoughtful comments have persuaded me to a new signaling view.

2nd Annual Roberts Podcast

Last year on Memorial Day Russ Roberts published his first podcast interview with me, that time on mostly on medicine.  This year again on Memorial Day Russ published his second podcast interview with me, this time more on signaling in human behavior and related topics.  It is long and somewhat rambling, and I may not have been in top form, but it sure was fun.  Dare I hope to do it again next year? 

Spooky Action at a Distance: The No-Communication Theorem

This post is part of the Quantum Physics Sequence.
Previously in series:  Bell's Theorem: No EPR "Reality"

When you have a pair of entangled particles, such as oppositely polarized photons, one particle seems to somehow "know" the result of distant measurements on the other particle.  If you measure photon A to be polarized at 0°, photon B somehow immediately knows that it should have the opposite polarization of 90°.

Einstein famously called this "spukhafte Fernwirkung" or "spooky action at a distance".  Einstein didn't know about decoherence, so it seemed spooky to him.

Though, to be fair, Einstein knew perfectly well that the universe couldn't really be "spooky".  It was a then-popular interpretation of QM that Einstein was calling "spooky", not the universe itself.

How To Vs. What To

When should you seek decision advice?  One factor is decision size: the bigger the decision, the more effort you should devote, including effort to get advice.  Oddly, on our biggest decisions, other people seem to go out of their way to offer us advice that we don't want to hear or follow.  We rarely seek out advice, and when we do it is usually on much smaller decisions. 

For example, we like HowTo books, but not WhatTo books.  How to manage your computer, not what machine to manage.  How to please your partner, not what partner to please.  How to fix your house, not where to live.  How to drive fast, not what speed to drive.  How to get promoted, not what job to work at.  How to raise your kids, not how many kids to raise.  And so on.

One reason we avoid getting advice is that it lowers our status relative to those who give advice.  Of course this is also makes asking for advice a good way to flatter and supplicate.  Not sure if this explains the puzzle though.  But all this doesn't seem to bode well for fielding decision markets on the biggest organizational decisions. 

Economist As Scrooge

In Today's Weekly Standard, Harvard's Harvey Mansfield writes on "Saving Christmas From The Economists":

Economists ... have become critical of the frenzy of Christmas gift-making. ... Economic analysis says that consumers would be better off making their own purchases, buying things they know they want, rather than trying to get the benefit out of gifts bought ignorantly for them by others. Worse than ignorance is the imposition of the giver's own taste or views, ... The economy as a whole... would be better off without the surge in sales of Christmas gifts at the end of the year.  ...  In this aspect economics is ... a way of life--the life of efficiency and frugality. This life is bourgeois, middle-class, and opposed to your wasting your money on whims, as do rich aristocrats. ...