Tag Archives: Arts

Moneyball Slavery

By Robin Hanson · September 26, 2011 1:00 am · Comments (52)

Moneyball is a good movie – it is fun to see an underdog economist start a revolution somewhere. (Though I’d be more inspired if I could see more clearly how the world is better because of this revolution. Are fans happier now? Players? Who?)

Along the way, the movie vividly depicts profit-driven buying and selling of people, over which the people involved have little say. If traded, players must immediately move across the country, with little compensation. On the screen, it sure looks a lot like slavery. But I can’t find a single mention of slavery in any of the Moneyball commentary. It seems viewers don’t even notice the issue — even viewers who don’t know or care much for baseball, and doubt baseball makes the world a better place.

This supports the theory that we see “slavery” as low status by definition – so by definition anyone high status can’t be a slave. You may recall that in May I wrote:

Bryan is probably right – we don’t call conscripts slaves, but do call comfort women slaves, because the first is high status and the second low. … On reflection, the main effect here is probably that many people take “slavery is bad” to be part of the definition of slavery. So therefore by definition anything good cannot be slavery. (more)

Here is some detail on trading of baseball players:

Players eligible for neither free agency nor salary arbitration are very seldom offered contracts for much more than the league minimum salary, as the player has no recourse to try to obtain a better salary elsewhere. For this reason, in the first three major league years of their careers (except for the “Super Two” exception above), it is standard practice for players to accept comparatively low salaries even when their performance is stellar. (more)

Added 10a: It is possible to be sold into slavery, or to sell oneself into slavery, so up front compensation is consistent with slavery. The key is that while you are a slave you have little control over what you do. The “degree” of slavery is set by the size of the penalty if you don’t follow orders. A death penalty makes for a strong slave, while merely being fired from your current job with many similar jobs available makes for a rather weak “slave.” In baseball, the penalty is pretty big — never again working in your chosen profession and life-calling, and having almost no prospect for anything remotely as fun or profitable. For an analogy, imagine that if you don’t do what your boss says, you must to move permanently to a poor country where you don’t know anyone and have no unusually valuable skills.  That is a strong enough commitment that I’d be tempted to call it “slavery.” Even though you still have a choice.

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Against Terror

By Robin Hanson · August 28, 2011 11:00 am · Comments (17)

You might have thought that terror was a bad thing, especially terror of death, which is why a war on terror would be a good thing (if it worked). But in today’s NYT, Stephen Cave praises terror:

[In] the TV series “Torchwood: Miracle Day,” … the “miracle” of the title is that no one dies anymore, but it proves to be a curse as overpopulation soon threatens. … [This] is right to be pessimistic about what would happen if this dream were fulfilled — but for the wrong reasons. Materially, we could cope with the arrival of the elixir. But, psychologically, immortality would be the end of us.

The problem is that our culture is based on our striving for immortality. … It has inspired us to found religions, write poems and build cities. If we were all immortal, the motor of civilization would sputter and stop. …

Asked to rule on a hypothetical case of prostitution, … judges who had first been reminded of their mortality set a bond nine times higher than those who hadn’t. …
In more than 400 experiments, … results consistently support … Terror Management Theory — that particular aspects of our outlook are governed by our need to manage our fear of death. In other words, our cultural, philosophical and religious systems exist to promise us immortality.

Such systems … are embodied in the pyramids of Egypt, the cathedrals of Europe and even the skyscrapers of modern cities. … We also find the promise of deathlessness … in the accumulation of wealth; … [and in] immersion in a greater whole, whether a nation or a football team; or even in the pursuit of scientific research, with its claim to enduring truth.

… All our death-defying systems, if there were no more death, … would be superfluous. We would have no need for progress or art, faith or fame. … Action would lose its purpose and time its value. This is the true awfulness of immortality. Let us be grateful that the elixir continues to elude us — and toast instead our finitude. (more)

So we want something so desperately that we delude ourselves to imagine that we’ll get it, and that makes it bad if we actually get it, because then we wouldn’t delude ourselves?! This seems another bout of insanity triggered by the word “immortality.” Once again, with feeling:

A big part of the problem, I think, is that talk of “immortality” invokes an extremely far view. But finite increases in lifespan really have little to do with immortality. Immortality means you never die, ever. But forever is a really really long time! In fact, nothing you can imagine is remotely as long. … A thousand year lifespan would be fantastic, relative to our lifespan. I want it! But it is nothing like immortality. It would have clear stages, and a very real end to anticipate. (more)

True immortality isn’t remotely an option anytime soon. What might be an option is a dramatic increase in lifespan. But death would remain, and with it a terror of death, and the cultural achievements such terror may inspire.  And if less terror leads to fewer cultural achievements, surely that seems be a price well worth paying!

P.S. Today is my birthday, which I like to call not-dead-yet day.

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Beware Morality Porn

By Robin Hanson · July 7, 2011 8:40 pm · Comments (30)

“Porn” stimulates strong sexual desire and satisfaction in ways detached from many of the contextual features that usually accompany such desire and satisfaction in real and praiseworthy sex. Critics complain that this detachment is often bad or unhealthy.

Metaphorical applications of this porn concept include food porn, gadget porn, shelter porn, and chart porn. “X porn” refers to stimuli that induce desires and/or satisfactions usually related to X, but detached in possibly unhealthy ways from context that ideally accompanies X. Food porn, for example, might entice you to eat foods with poor nutrition, or distract you from socializing while eating.

Of course how fair it is to call something “X porn” depends on how bad it is to desire X detached from some ideal context. For example, isn’t it ok to sometimes eat really tasty but unhealthy food, as long as you don’t do that too often? And what’s so wrong about loving cool-looking gadgets, even ones that aren’t very useful – everyone’s gotta have a hobby, right?  In fact, many use “X porn” terms not as criticism but to say they like a stimulation even though others may disapprove of its detachment.

But there’s one case where the “X porn” criticism seems to me especially solid: morality.  Let us call a stimuli “morality porn” if it gives people a strong desire to act morally, and a feeling of satisfaction of that desire, but without their actually acting morally. It seems an especially bad idea for people to feel moral, without actually acting moral.

For example, the Lord of the Rings movies are some of my favorites. They let viewers vicariously feel Frodo’s moral quandary – whether or not to sacrifice himself for the greater good – and then vicariously feel Frodo feeling good about himself for doing the right thing. Many war movies function similarly as morality porn.

But is this good? First it might be bad for people to feel good about their morality when they haven’t actually been moral – maybe this will make them feel like they’ve done enough when they’ve hardly done anything. Second, it is way too easy to imagine from the comfort of your seat that you would do the heroic thing in the situation on the screen, when in fact you would do no such thing.

Third, movie morality is often unhealthily detached from important moral context. For example, movies usually focus more on whether characters have the strength of will to do what is obviously right than on whether they have the wisdom to discern what is right. And movie characters rarely have to choose between the praise of associates and doing the right thing - key associates usually support doing the right thing.

I’m not saying all porn is bad, or even that any porn is bad. Or even that morality is good. But if I was going to worry about some sort of porn, I’d worry most about morality porn.

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Hail War And Peace

By Robin Hanson · July 4, 2011 2:00 pm · Comments (15)

War And Peace is my favorite novel ever. In contrast to the modern style of appearing only to describe events and leaving interpretations to the reader, Tolstoy interprets openly and heavily. And oh what wonderfully insightful interpreting! He usually describe several levels, including what people say, what they think, and what they are doing without realizing. I see homo hypocritus played out in great detail. Here is a section on agency failures in charity:

[Count] Pierre … sent for all his stewards to the head office and .. told them that steps would be taken immediately to free his serfs- and that till then they were not to be overburdened with labor, women while nursing their babies were not to be sent to work, assistance was to be given to the serfs, punishments were to be admonitory and not corporal, and hospitals, asylums, and schools were to be established on all the estates. Some of the stewards … listened with alarm, supposing these words to mean that the young count was displeased with their management and embezzlement of money …

He discussed estate affairs every day with his chief steward. But he felt that this did not forward matters at all. … Pierre had none of the practical persistence that would have enabled him to attend to the business himself and so he disliked it and only tried to pretend to the steward that he was attending to it. The steward for his part tried to pretend to the count that he considered these consultations very valuable for the proprietor and troublesome to himself. …

The chief steward, who considered the young count’s attempts almost insane – unprofitable to himself, to the count, and to the serfs – made some concessions. Continuing to represent the liberation of the serfs as impracticable, he arranged for the erection of large buildings- schools, hospitals, and asylums- on all the estates before the master arrived. …

On all his estates Pierre saw with his own eyes brick buildings erected or in course of erection, all on one plan, for hospitals, schools, and almshouses, which were soon to be opened. Everywhere he saw the stewards’ accounts, according to which the serfs’ manorial labor had been diminished, and heard the touching thanks of deputations of serfs in their full-skirted blue coats.

What Pierre did not know was … that since the nursing mothers were no longer sent to work on his land, they did still harder work on their own land. He did not know that the priest who met him with the cross oppressed the peasants by his exactions, and that the pupils’ parents wept at having to let him take their children and secured their release by heavy payments. He did not know that the brick buildings, built to plan, were being built by serfs whose manorial labor was thus increased, though lessened on paper. He did not know that where the steward had shown him in the accounts that the serfs’ payments had been diminished by a third, their obligatory manorial work had been increased by a half. And so Pierre was delighted with his visit to his estates and quite recovered the philanthropic mood in which he had left Petersburg. …

The steward promised to do all in his power to carry out the count’s wishes, seeing clearly that not only would the count never be able to find out whether all measures had been taken, … but would probably never even inquire and would never know that the newly erected buildings were standing empty and that the serfs continued to give in money and work all that other people’s serfs gave – that is to say, all that could be got out of them. (more)

Note that even in such a different world (1806 Russia), the three classic “good deeds” were medicine, education, and poverty assistance. This suggests modern liberal obsessions with such areas are not a local historical accident.

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Live Long Or Wide?

By Robin Hanson · June 24, 2011 11:25 pm · Comments (18)

One of my favorite science fiction novels is Kiln People, by David Brin in 2003. Not so much for its characters or plot, but because it takes an interesting future/tech scenario seriously. Most fiction with artificial intelligence describes a world with only a few of them, yet one of AI’s most important features is its easy of copying.

In Kiln People, Brin takes seriously this idea of cheaply copying intelligent agents. The key assumption is that in a few minutes and for a modest cost one can copy a person’s mind into a new clay body that lasts about a day. That copy’s memories of its day can also be added back into the original at the day’s end. Brin imagines many details of how this would change society. While he gets some things wrong, and an economist would get more right, Brin does far better than most science fiction.

Assume for the sake of argument that you came to accept that such clay copies really were “you.” So that if on Monday you made six copies and merged them all back in at the end of Monday, and then you slept the rest of the week, you would have lived just as much as an ordinary person in a normal week. You’d remember having lived for seven days that week.

Now imagine that this copy technology is improved let copies last ten years. Then compare two ways to stretch your life:

  • Time Stretched Life: You are able to live for another 110 years before dying.
  • Space Stretched Life: You make nine copies now, and the ten of you live for ten years. Then you merge the memories of all these copies back together, and live for another ten years before dying.

I suspect most people would admire the life stretched across time more than the life stretched across space, similar to the way most people admire a time stretched civilization more than a space stretched one, and to the way they accept time genocide more than space genocide. I again attribute this to the future seeming more far:

The far future seems more far … than situations far away in space, or in the far past. The near/far distinction was first noticed in how people treated the future differently, and our knowing especially little detail about the future makes it especially easy to slip into abstract thought about the future. … We are less practical, more idealistic, and more uncompromising in far mode.

Added 8a:  The time stretched life lets you see more of human history, but the space stretched life lets you help yourself more (e.g., the ten of you could start a business together), is better able to prevent your death, and trades later for earlier decades of your life cycle. As most people seem to discount the future and to prefer earlier life decades, these factors seem to favor space-stretching overall.

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Stross on Singularity

By Robin Hanson · June 22, 2011 9:50 pm · Comments (9)

I’ve long enjoyed the science fiction novels of Charlie Stross, so I’m honored that he linked to my Betterness Explosion from his Three arguments against the singularity:

I periodically get email from folks who, having read “Accelerando”, assume I am some kind of fire-breathing extropian zealot who believes in the imminence of the singularity, the uploading of the libertarians, and the rapture of the nerds. … It’s time to set the record straight. … Santa Claus doesn’t exist. …

(Economic libertarianism is based on … reductionist … 19th century classical economics — a drastic over-simplification of human behaviour. … If acted upon, would result in either failure or a hellishly unpleasant state of post-industrial feudalism.) …

I can’t prove that there isn’t going to be a hard take-off singularity in which a human-equivalent AI rapidly bootstraps itself to de-facto god-hood. Nor can I prove that mind uploading won’t work, or that we are or aren’t living in a simulation. … However, … the prospects aren’t good.

First: super-intelligent AI is unlikely because … human-equivalent AI is unlikely. … We’re likely to leave out … needing to sleep for roughly 30% of the time, being lazy or emotionally unstable, and having motivations of its own. … We clearly want machines that perform human-like tasks. … But whether we want them to be conscious and volitional is another question entirely.

Uploading … is not obviously impossible. … Imagine most of the inhabited universe has been converted to a computer network, … programs live side by side with downloaded human minds and accompanying simulated human bodies. … A human mind would lumber about in a massively inappropriate body simulation. … I strongly suspect that the hardest part of mind uploading … [is] the body and its interactions with its surroundings. …

Moving on to the Simulation Argument: … anyone capable of creating an ancestor simulation wouldn’t be focussing their attention on any ancestors as primitive as us. … This is my take on the singularity: we’re not going to see a hard take-off, or a slow take-off, or any kind of AI-mediated exponential outburst. What we’re going to see is increasingly solicitous machines defining our environment … We may eventually see mind uploading, but … our hard-wired biophilia will keep dragging us back to the real world, or to simulations indistinguishable from it. …

The simulation hypothesis … we can’t actually prove anything about it. …. Any way you cut these three ideas, they don’t provide much in the way of referent points for building a good life. … It’s unwise to live on the assumption that they’re coming down the pipeline within my lifetime.

Alas Stross’s post is a bit of a rant – strong on emotion, but weak on argument. Maybe Stross did or will explain more elsewhere, but while he makes clear that he doesn’t want to associate with singularity fans, Stross doesn’t make clear that he actually disagrees much. Most thoughtful singularity fans probably agree that where possible hand-coded AI would be designed to be solicitous and avoid human failings, that simple unmodified upload minds are probably not competitive creatures in the long run, and that only a tiny fraction of our distant descendants would be interested in simulating us. (We libertarian-leaning economists even agree that classical econ greatly simplifies.)

But the fact that hand-coded AIs would differ in many ways from humans says little on the key issues of when AI will appear, how fast they’d improve, how local would be that growth, and how fast the world economy would grow as a result. The fact that eventually unmodified human uploads would not be competitive says little on the key issues of whether uploads come before powerful hand-coded AI, how long nearly unmodified uploads would dominate, or just how far from humans would be the most competitive creatures. And the fact that few descendants would simulate ancestor humans says little on the key question of how that small fraction multiplied by the vast number of descendants compares to the actual number of ancestor humans. (And the fact that classical econ greatly simplifies says little on the pleasantness of libertarian policies.)

Stross seems smart and well-read enough to have interesting things to say on these key questions, if only he can overcome his personal revulsion against affiliating with singularity fans, to directly engage these questions.

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Recipe: Men Exploit Fems

By Robin Hanson · March 27, 2011 8:50 am · Comments (47)

There are many movies and documentaries about female prostitutes. While some focus on women forced into prostitution against their will, most of the rest vaguely imply that the female prostitutes are exploited by their male customers. The message seems to be “Don’t they see that the money they gain is just not worth their loss of intimacy, self-respect, etc.?”

The ’06 documentary The Great Happiness Space (reviewed here) offers an interesting contrast. It shows the world of a certain kind of male prostitute in Japan. And it vaguely implies that male prostitutes exploit their female customers. The message seems to be “Don’t they see how much money they lose for just an illusion of intimacy, respect, etc.?” Even though many of the female customers shown are themselves prostitutes, we are expected to see them as victims.

Of course the two prostitution practices differ somewhat, according to male vs. female fantasies. Men tend more to seek simple no-strings sex and polygamy, while women more seek emotional stroking and hypergamy. But it is striking that any for-pay male-female relation portrays men as exploiters and women as victims, no matter who pays whom.

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Music Signals Status

By Robin Hanson · March 12, 2011 4:00 pm · Comments (21)

Seventy participants were asked to rate photos of eight individuals (four males and four females). … More positive traits were attributed to females, high-status looking individuals and individuals with a preference for high-status music. … Liking for low-status music lowered evaluations in high-status looking individuals, but liking for high-status music did not affect evaluations of low status looking individuals. Participants’ own musical preference did not consistently affect ratings of photographed individuals. …

Participants rated individuals who like classical and jazz music as possessing significantly more positive traits, such as educated, rational and intelligent, than negative traits, such as aggressive, ruthless and hostile. … Liking for rock–pop, trance, oriental (Arab) and oriental pop music was associated with more negative traits. (more; HT Eric Barker)

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Meaning of Meaning of Life

By Robin Hanson · September 7, 2010 1:10 pm · Comments (21)

Rewatching Monty Python’s Meaning of Life led me to wonder: what exactly do most people mean by “the meaning of life?” Now first, it seems to me people mainly want to know the meaning of their life; they consider life in general mostly for hints on that. So consider some sample answers to “what is the meaning of my life?”

  1. God has a plan for my life, so if I follow it my life has meaning.
  2. I am King George’s personal assistant; my life is to serve him.
  3. I am the custodian of this forrest, and will protect and nurture it.
  4. My children are my life; all I want is for them to thrive.
  5. I am a native american, and fight to regain what has been taken from us.
  6. In the historical battle between tyrants and freedom-lovers, I fight for freedom.
  7. I do scientific research, to push back our frontiers of knowledge.
  8. I am a good musician and love music.

It seems what people want is a satisfying story about their place in the universe. Since characters are the most important elements of a story, the main “place” that matters to people is their social place – who they relate to and how. People feel they understand their place when they have a story saying how they can relate well to important social entities.

Central to any social relation is whether the related person supports or opposes you in your conflicts. In fact, it seems enough to give your life meaning to just know who are your main natural allies and enemies among the important actors around, and what you can do to keep your allies supporting you, to give you high enough status.

For example, if there is a great powerful God, it seems enough to know what he wants you to do to keep him on your side. If you are a lowly servant but have the King for an ally, little else matters but pleasing him. (Unless you had higher status ambitions.)  If you have committed yourself to certain strong relations, like a spouse or kids, then it may be enough to know how to keep them on your side. If your relations shift more often, you might instead focus on general features of your natural allies, such as gender, personality, ethnicity, or some grand shared far value. For example, knowing you are good at and love music may ensure the support of music lovers, “your people,” wherever you go.

People think their life has less meaning when enough aspects of it are determined by “impersonal” forces that refuse to take social sides.  For example, a death caused by an enemy’s plan, or an allies failure to help, or by the dead person’s trying to help his allies, has far more meaning that a death caused by simple physics.

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Athletes vs. Musicians

By Robin Hanson · June 13, 2010 7:00 pm · Comments (67)

Consider three kinds of celebrities: politicians, athletes, and musicians. We clearly hold politicians to higher moral and social standards than we do musicians. This makes sense because we feel more vulnerable to bad behavior by politicians than by musicians. An out of control politician could kill us all, while an out of control musician would at worst just fail to make music we like.

What about athletes? While we may not hold athletes to the high of standards we hold politicians, we clearly hold them to higher standards than musicians. Tiger Woods was vilified for moral violations that wouldn’t be worth reporting about a musician. Yet the above explanation for politicians vs. musicians doesn’t work here. While we are no more vulnerable to athletes than to musicians, we still hold athletes to a higher standard.

For our distant ancestors, athletic skill was much closer to political power. Small forager bands feared that the few most physically powerful members would attempt to dominate the band by force. Foragers had much less reason to fear domination by the few most musical folks in the band. So it made sense for foragers to hold athletes to higher moral standards than musicians.

So I suspect our tendency to hold athletes to higher standards than musicians is a holdover from our forager days; I’d explain similarly the fact that it is easier for an athlete than a musician to covert into a politician.

We can understand why we treat different kinds of celebrities differently today in terms of reasons our distant forager ancestors had to treat them differently.  Can this approach help us understand our differing treatments of other kinds of celebrities?

Added 7p: The fact that athletes are held up as role models seems less an explanation for them being held to higher standards, and more as a restatement of the question. I’m not saying athletes are actually more moral, just that they are punished more severely when caught.  I think the fact that we tolerate far more subjectivity in judging musicians than athletes is also related, but I’m not sure how.

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