1. Morals – Entering into larger conversations on what actions are right and moral.
2. Deals – Helping groups find mutually-beneficial deals, by suggesting deal parts.
3. Showing Off – Doing hard things like analysis, so we can be credentialed as impressive.

Bryan agrees that #2 would be more popular, but suggests adding two more options (slightly reworded by me):

4. Social Welfare – Identifying policies that are best for society as a whole.
5. Partisanship – Identifying ways to advance political goals we identify with.

I agree with Bryan that #4 would now be more popular, but are these new options different concepts, or phrases popular in part because of their vagueness? The three options I presented seem more clearly conceptually distinct. Do economists seek “best” policies to help people argue about which actions are moral, to help encourage political and other group deals that include these better policies, or to show off their abilities to do clever analysis? My proposed three part question seems to me better suited for digging to this deeper level.

Now consider a new Vanity Fair survey:

Questions: Would most people you know kill their favorite pet for $1 million? What about you?
Answers: Most people: Yes (23%) No (72%); Yourself: Yes (11%) No (83%).

Matt Yglesias (Hat tip Sir Charles):

I don’t believe it for a minute. Saying you wouldn’t kill your favorite pet for $1 million is cheap talk. Actually declining an offer of $1 million in exchange for the life of your pet, by contrast, costs $1 million. How many people would really turn that offer down in these cash-strapped times?

Actually, my guess is that if no one you knew had ever taken such an offer, and if you took it you’d be in the news so that most folks you know would hear of it, most of you wouldn’t take the offer. But once a few associates had taken the offer, and such offers weren’t newsworthy anymore, most folks would take such offers.

This just shows how much we hate seeming weird. Accepting a million to kill your pet is weird, but then so is paying a million for your pet’s medical treatment. In each case most will do the non-weird thing.

(I posted in July on how you’d take a million to give up the internet.)

If there is such a thing as a human ability to perceive moral truth, independent of person, culture, moment, and mental context, it is a very noisy ability. Beliefs about moral truth vary greatly across cultures, who you ask, when you ask them, and how you ask the question. This high level of noise limits our ability to discern fine and unusual moral detail.

Larry Temkin has a new book arguing that moral intuitions are commonly intransitive, forcing us to reject either transitivity or some strong intuitions. Tyler summarizes:

Temkin is skeptical of transitivity. … The main contribution of this book is to show you that the transitivity postulate is far less intuitively appealing than it seems at first.

Tyler’s position:

I see the good is more holistic than additive-aggregative. … For many individualized normative comparisons there simply isn’t a right answer. I view “ranking” as a luxury, occasionally available, rather than an axiomatic postulate which can be used to generate normative comparisons, and thus normative paradoxes, at will. I see that response as different than allowing or embracing intransitivity across multiple alternatives and in that regard my final position differs from Temkin’s.

Whatever that means.

It seems to me that even if we accept that moral truth could be intransitive, the fact that specific moral intuitions are typically transitive forces our best guess moral beliefs to also be almost always transitive. Let me explain.

Even if moral truth is in fact transitive, the huge error rates in our moral intuitions would still produce a high rate of intransitivity in our moral intuitions. A rate similar in fact to the rate we see. So we basically have little evidence that moral truth is intransitive.

Furthermore, the strong overall transitive tendency in our intuitions implies that there is at least a strong overall transitive tendency in moral truth. So in any specific case where moral intuitions seem intransitive, our best explanation for that intransitivity is moral error, even if in fact moral truth does have a lot of intransitivity. Our moral vision is just not clear enough to discern real moral intransitivity’s from among error-induced apparent ones. We should thus continue on as before with our transitivity-based policy analyses.

Added 6a: Here’s what I mean by “the strong overall transitive tendency in our intuitions.” When we pick random options A,B,C, (e.g., charities, foods, movies) and ask random people to rank A v B, B v C, A v C, and in each case ask people for a probability of a mistaken ranking, the fraction of intransitivity cases would be overall well explained by a model of mostly transitive preferences plus error. The error probability would fit the probability of ranking errors people give, once we allow for error in the probability numbers and make a usual correction for overconfidence.

The survey:

The survey was mailed to 2,450 randomly selected adults above the age of 18 years in Sweden during the spring of 2004; the overall response rate was 45%.

The main answer distribution:

How bad an action is, from an ethical point of view, depends primarily on:
5.3% How bad the consequences of the action are for myself
62.7% How bad the consequences of the action are for other people and for society 
17.5% The extent to which the action infringes upon someone else’s natural rights
10.6% The extent to which the action violates what is natural
3.7% The extent to which the action violates Christianity according to the New Testament in the Bible
0.3% The extent to which the action violates the rules given by any other religion (such as Islam or Buddhism)

How answers varied with type of person:

Added noon: Bryan is skeptical:

When you pose specific moral questions, Jonathan Haidt and others show that almost no one is remotely close to pure consequentialism.

Yup, as Bryan emphasizes, on abstract political and moral topics where they have a weak personal stake, most people are confused and contradict themselves. Few folks are closely pure anything. So the best we can do is to see their tendencies amid the noise.

Added 5Jan: Bryan points out that I mistakenly added the word “natural” to the rights option. My apologies.

Some lessons:

1) Neither is a purist. Both accept that animals often suffer, and are slaves of humans. Both work within the current system to make animals lives better, even if the result falls short of their ideals. Compromising with bad is often essential to doing good.

2) Though are similarly insightful, Grandin has a far bigger impact, as her innovations are embodied in physical capital, e.g., the layout of large plants, chosen by large firms. She has revolutionized an industry. In contrast, Brannaman’s innovations are embodied in human capital chosen by small organizations. While Brannaman is personally impressive, it is far from clear how much practice people like him have really changed. Capital intensity does indeed promote innovation.

3) Many doubt that we should feel bad about animal suffering, because they doubt animal minds react like human minds to force, pain, etc. The impressive abilities of Grandin and Brannaman to predict animal behavior by imagining themselves in animal situations supports their claim that cattle and horse fear and suffering is recognizably similar to human fear and suffering. I tentatively accept that such animals are afraid and suffer in similar ways to humans, with similar types of emotions and feelings, even if they cannot think or talk as abstractly about their suffering.

4) The fact that animals are slaves does not imply that animal lives have no value, or that nothing can effect that value. Slavery need not be worse than death, and usually isn’t. A future where the vast majority of our descendants are slaves could still be a glorious future, even if not as glorious as a future where they are not slaves.

In the last decade or so, psychologists have confirmed one of the most robust mind patterns ever seen: construal level theory, which I call near vs. far thought. In brief: humans think more abstractly, and in less detail, about things far away in time, space, social contact, and probability, and assume that things near or far in some ways are also near or far in other ways.

Since far mode thoughts tend to have weaker decision consequences, I’ve suggested that far mode is better adapted to managing social images, relative to making helpful choices. This fits with far mode being more associated with confidence, high power/status, positive moods and reasons, pride and shame, self-control, trusting others, resisting conformity pressure, supporting underdogs, love over sex, words over sounds, polite speech over slang, and ideal values over practical constraints.

But even if its greater role in managing social images makes far mode beliefs less accurate, far mode is built too deeply in us to do without it. If we must use it, how can we best use it, to avoid bias? My tentative answer starts from the observation that in far mode we are better at creativity, while near mode we are better at analysis.

Mental tasks can be roughly divided into generation and evaluation. Our minds must search a vast space of possible thoughts, generating possible thoughts to explicitly consider. We must also evaluate such explicit thoughts. Since far mode is better at creativity, while near mode is better at analysis, we should prefer to generate in far mode, and evaluate in near mode. First see if idealism can be made practical, before resorting to cynicism. This fits with claims that groups create better when they temporarily avoid criticism and evaluation.

Of course we can’t make this a strict rule; circumstances will often force us to evaluate in far mode, and to generate in near mode. But we should at least be aware of our handicaps in such situations. Which brings us to the subject of evil.

Humans evolved a sense of morality, helping us to coordinate to discourage many specific forms of selfish behavior that hurt groups. We thus evolved to tell stories of evil villains who engaged in such harmful behaviors, and of good heroes who opposed them. Such stories often depicted villains who are tempted in near mode by concrete personal gain, such as loot or sex, and heroes who thought in far mode about a wider good.

But today, most evil is probably not of this selfish sort. Instead, very bad things are caused more by far thinking. Consider the prototypically-evil Nazis. Their urge to exterminate Jews came less from unhappy personal experiences with individual Jews, and more from abstract fears gone wrong – killing Jews probably hurt Germans overall. Similarly, most xenophobia comes less from personal interactions and more from abstract, and largely incorrect, fears. People tend to have satisfactory and mutually advantageous relations with immigrants, even as they politically support policies to prevent such relations.

Similarly, democratic regulation usually goes wrong by supplanting direct consumer evaluations of products, services, and practices, which tend to be made in near mode, with abstract public opinions about good policy, which tend to be formed in far mode. Autocratic regulation goes wrong similarly, since power tends to put leaders in a far mode. I’m not saying that there should never be regulation, but rather that an important and neglected cost of regulation is displacing reliable near mode evaluations with unreliable far mode evaluations.

We can’t think without far mode, but we can use it most where it works best: to suggest candidate actions, products, policies, theories, etc. We should minimize biases from a far mode system designed more for social image management, by using near mode where it works best, to analyze and evaluate these candidates. Science experiments, computer engineering demos, policy trials, prediction bets, and business profits all offer such crucial concrete near-mode feedback. We need these to avoid the all-too-common selfless evil of far mode evaluation errors.

Added 8Sept: There is some tension between this post and my older post on The Felt & The Unfelt.

Libertarians believe: Each human is endowed with property in his or her own body, and can obtain property in other physical objects, including land, via certain “making” processes. People can trade such property rights via explicit contracts. It is not morally permitted to violate property rights as determined by current contracts, except to defend or retaliate against other violations. Contract violations can happen via “fraud” (= lies) that create deviations between a contract’s words and deeds. (If a contract specifies damages for breach, it is not immoral to breach if you pay the specified damages.) There is more to morality, and within these constraints people should use their property to achieve such other morality.

I’m an economist who appreciates the economic analysis of law. I know how very useful property and contract can be in achieving economic efficiency. But the most efficient forms of property and contract are not obviously only these libertarian ones. For example, many sorts of non-physical property are probably efficient, beyond those that can easily be created via local contracts. It is probably sometimes efficient to initially allocate property in other ways than via the usual “making.” It is probably efficient to endow parents with partial ownership of their children. And it is probably efficient to enforce non-explicit contracts, such as among very large groups.

Yes most libertarians bite these bullets and say the libertarian choices are the moral ones, even if inefficient. But I just don’t find very compelling the morality of this urge to make most everyone worse off on average in order to follow certain traditional rules.

I especially get stuck on the claim that law should limit its attention to “physical,” not info, property and harms. (That’s in quotes because info is completely physical; in fact, there may be nothing physical that isn’t info.)  That is, physical rights are said to be pre-existing, but any info rights must be explicitly constructed by contract. Yet people can hurt each other “non-physically” via info in so many ways.

Many libertarians seem to feel they have discharged most of their info moral obligations if there is a reasonable interpretation of their words which has them telling no clear lies. As someone who spend most of my early economist years specializing in the economics of info, this seems spectacularly inadequate. I wonder if, as kids, libertarians tended to be witty weaklings – losing most fair physical fights, but winning most fair verbal sparring. Perhaps such kids prefer everyone to embrace the slogan “Sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me,” because then the people they hurt via words can’t complain, because they can’t even admit they were hurt.

Now as a matter of practice, libertarians and I tend to agree in many policy disputes. Their support of property and contract often promotes economically efficient outcomes. And for that, I salute them. I even say sometimes that I “lean libertarian.” But I cannot embrace the above strict concept of libertarian morality.

Five studies supported the hypothesis that people are more willing to express prejudiced attitudes when their group members’ past behavior has established nonprejudiced credentials. Study 1a showed that participants who were told that their group was more moral than similar other groups were more willing to describe a job as better suited for Whites than for African Americans. In Study 1b, when given information on group members’ prior nondiscriminatory behavior (selecting a Hispanic applicant in a prior task), participants subsequently gave more discriminatory ratings to the Hispanic applicant for a position stereotypically suited for majority members (Whites). In Study 2, moral self-concept mediated the effect of others’ prior nonprejudiced actions on a participant’s subsequent prejudiced behavior such that others’ past nonprejudiced actions enhanced the participant’s moral self-concept, and this inflated moral self-concept subsequently drove the participant’s prejudiced ratings of a Hispanic applicant. In Study 3, the moderating role of identification with the credentialing group was tested. Results showed that participants expressed more prejudiced attitudes toward a Hispanic applicant when they highly identified with the group members behaving in nonprejudiced manner. In Study 4, the credentialing task was dissociated from the participants’ own judgmental task, and, in addition, identification with the credentialing group was manipulated rather than measured. Consistent with prior studies, the results showed that participants who first had the opportunity to view an in-group member’s nonprejudiced hiring decision were more likely to reject an African American man for a job stereotypically suited for majority members. These studies suggest a vicarious moral licensing effect. (more)

Citizens of the United States are especially proud of a history of (supposedly) doing good. The US sees itself as having saved the world from Nazism and Communism, of creating and sustaining modern medicine, of educating the world via the best universities, of being the main innovators in computer tech, of upholding the highest standards of civil and gender rights, of being unusually devoted to religion, etc.

All this self-respect, deserved or not, probably makes US citizens more willing to do bad, both individually and collectively. Dear US citizens: please ask yourself how sure you can be that your actions on the world stage are actually for good.

1. Signaling
2. Idealism

Alas we recorded the second one outside, with odd distracting noises, perhaps the wind.

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.