Tag Archives: Signaling

Extreme Parenting

By Robin Hanson · January 6, 2010 4:00 pm · Comments (39)

In October I reviewed explanations for the clearly-maladaptive demographic transition, whereby societies consistently have fewer kids as they get rich.  I leaned to:

Lower … acceptance of childbearing and motherhood as measures of the status of women.

Mothering can be time consuming, but, relative to career success, succeeding at mothering isn’t seen to signal good abilities much besides a kind heart and willingness to work hard.  Very successful career women are far more respected than than very successful mothers.  So women who want to look good focus on a career, and hope to have kids later once they’ve succeeded there.   Apparently once-adaptive status cues now induce a maladaptive obsession with status markers that only careers can bring.

Bryan Caplan wants to encourage more folks to have kids, via convincing them that parenting needn’t be as hard as we think:

When parents falsely believe that they have to break their backs to raise decent human beings, though, the private cost is quite high.

Alas I fear this may have the opposite affect, lowering even further the status to be gained for a successful parent.  Maybe what we instead need is some form of extreme parenting, i.e., a parenting style that, when done successfully, says great things about parent abilities.  A parenting style that requires not just time or cash, but also great intelligence, social savvy, artistic taste, and so on.  One where a successful mom could look as good or better than a successful author, actor, or businesswoman.

Home-schooling seems a step in the right direction; is this why home-schooling is so popular?  Could we at least start by more visibly celebrating moms who have done a fantastic job, such as via a better funded and higher profile greatest mom of the year award?

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Our World In Ape Eyes

By Robin Hanson · January 1, 2010 7:00 pm · Comments (17)

While humans have adapted a bit to our modern world, we are mostly forest apes tossed into tech cities and told to deal or die.  So we deal.  But to understand how exactly we deal, it would help to see how our world looks to a forest ape, especially in terms of their cues for conditional behavior.  Let me explain.

The environment of our ape ancestors varied from time to time and place to place.  So our ancestors evolved not just a typical behavior for a typical environment, but they also evolved ways to condition their behavior on environmental changes.  For common types of environments, flagged by cheap noticeable clues, our ancestors should have evolved to notice those cues and then switch to environment-behavior.

So what does our world look like, in terms of the clues that our ancestors might have used to condition their behavior?  We are:

  1. Exposed to an unusually large number of unknown people, with varied customs, as if two tribes had just merged.
  2. Exposed to strange new things, as if just entereing a new region with new terrain, plants, animals, etc.
  3. In a time of great plenty, as if the weather had been favorable lately, or we had just entered a rich unpopulated region.

So what should we have expected our ancestors do in such situations?

  1. When tribes merge, and new coalitions are not yet clear, you should start out being nice to most everyone; tit for tat begins as nice.  You should be interested to learn about many folks, seeking good allies, and be eager to make good first impressions on those you meet.
  2. In a new region with strange terrain, plants, animals, etc., you should be cautious in actions, and eager to hear of news about new things.  You’ll want to affiliate with folks who consistently have news first, and want others to think you are such a person.
  3. In good times, invest in assets that will last until the coming bad times.  Groups may clear a path, explore a cave, send a colony to a new place, or settle old scores.  Individuals may collect body fat, have kids, and collect allies.  To get and keep allies, signal your long-term abilities and loyalties, via feasts, medicine, building homes, and revenge killings.  Perhaps do something dramatic that folks will talk about for years.

So, in summary, to our ancestor’s eyes, compared with their world our should look like a place to be: nicer, fatter, more fertile, more curious about new folks, things, and places, and more eager to signal our long-term abilities and loyalties.

This theoretical analysis gets many things right, though not our reduced fertility.

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Up In The Air

By Robin Hanson · December 27, 2009 11:10 pm · Comments (15)

Up in the Air is like Doubt, both in being a well done movie and in tempting viewers to project their values onto its ambiguity.  It is about Ryan Bingham, who fires folks for a living.  At first the film seems to criticize corporations for firing folks, and to criticize Ryan for his collaboration.  But eventually the film doesn’t so much change its mind as lose interest.  The movie cares far more about what a willingness to fire people says about Ryan’s character, than it does about the people fired.  Once Ryan has an awakening to self-insight, we the audience are fine with whatever he chooses.

To the extent the movie criticizes firing folks, it mainly frowns on doing so on the cheap, via a low paid newbie following a script by phone rather than a handsome thoughtful professional in person.  Apparently we are ok with firing folks, as long as the occasion has sufficient solemnity to show respect for the departed.  It is like how we respect a hunter who pauses to say an eloquent prayer for the animal he killed, in contrast to an insensitive slaughterhouse worker just passing time till his shift ends.  As with executing humans, we don’t really mind animals dying, if we show we are good people via the process.

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Aritists Need Not Be Nice

By Robin Hanson · December 12, 2009 10:45 pm · Comments (26)

A week ago I heard Philippe Petit, featured in the respected movie Man on Wire, on a radio show and thought he sounded fun and so I ordered his movie from Netflix.  This  morning I read about Polanski in the New Yorker, this afternoon I was talking to an artist at a party about how artists are held to much lower morality standards – behavior that is shrugged off in artist biopics would be condemned for business-folk or politicians or economists.  When I got home I watched Man on Wire, and alas found that confirmed yet again.

A team of folks spent years planning and preparing for the dramatic stunt of Petit walking on a wire strung between the world trade center towers.  The movie gives lots of screen time to the rest of the team, but at the end we find that Petit abandons them all the instant he is famous.  Within hours he has dumped his loyal girlfriend for a stranger’s bedroom.  He is released without penalty and becomes the toast of the city for years; his teammates are immediately expelled from the country and into oblivion.  They are clearly hurt by this.  And we never do hear anything about whomever supported Petit and team financially for all those years.

Just as most movie reviews focus on the actors and ignore the hundreds of other folks it takes to create films, the dozen reviews of this film I read, mostly glowing (here’s Tyler), are overwhelmingly focused on the man on the wire.  They seem more impressed by his feat than by the entire team who created those buildings.  The reviews hardly mention that anyone else was even involved in the event; certainly none show interest in their ultimate treatment.  With art, all that matters is demonstration of individual artistic ability; we don’t need artists to be nice or considerate or cooperative.  (Though their vague concern for African kids may touch us deeply.)  Beware: the rest of us will be held to higher standards.

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Parenting Is Not About Kids

By Robin Hanson · November 26, 2009 2:50 pm · Comments (22)

Bryan Caplan wondered why parents forget a kids view:

The mom and dad in these stories  … pointlessly alienate their kids by pushing them into activities that aggravate parent and child alike.  … [they] largely ignore all sorts of kid-on-kid abuse, leaving their older sons in a brutal Hobbesian jungle.  When they do respond, it’s awfully arbitrary. …  Many parents really do forget what’s it’s like to be a kid. … I honestly don’t know why.  I bet Robin Hanson would have a clever functionalist story.

I commented:

Parents seem so eager to appear adultish that they alienate their kids. How could parents possibly care so much about what other adults think of them than they sacrifice their own kids happiness?  It is almost as if parents cared more about being respected than having fun.

Bryan responded:

[This] assumes that other parents care about your parenting far more than they actually do.  In reality, most parents are too tired and preoccupied to worry if somebody else’s parents aren’t “adultish” enough.

But Bryan presumes we care less about the judgments others make when they make snappier judgments.  Yet we all care about how our surface features appear to others, especially when those others make snap judgments – after all if they judged more carefully, our inner beauty might shine through.  And the busier are other parents, the snappier are their judgments.

Katja Grace was once similarly puzzled: Continue Reading "Parenting Is Not About Kids" »

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Require Baby Paternity Test

By Robin Hanson · November 22, 2009 11:35 pm · Comments (151)

The most extensive and authoritative report … concluded that 2 percent of men with “high paternity confidence” — married men who had every reason to believe they were their children’s father — were, in fact, not biological parents. Several studies indicate that the rate appears to be far higher among unmarried fathers. …

At a federally convened symposium on the increase in paternity questions, a roomful of child-welfare researchers, legal experts, academics and government administrators agreed that much pain could be avoided if paternity was accurately established in a baby’s first days. Several suggested that DNA paternity tests should be routine at birth, or at least before every paternity acknowledgment is signed and every default order entered.  …

The same care that hospitals take ensuring that the right mother is connected to the right newborn — footprints, matching ID bands, guarded nurseries, surveillance cameras — should be taken to verify that the right man is deemed father.

More here, and HT to Roissy, who supports mandatory paternity testing at birth, as do I. After all:

Most states … have their own mandatory newborn screening programs … Almost all states now screen for more than 30 disorders.

Most of those disorders are much rarer than 2%, and we have a far stronger reason to expect market failure for paternity testing than for the other required tests.  Men are clearly reluctant to request a paternity test at birth because doing so sends a bad signal: Continue Reading "Require Baby Paternity Test" »

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Praise Results

By Robin Hanson · November 20, 2009 10:30 am · Comments (34)

I am deeply honored by Tyler Cowen’s blog post “In praise of Robin Hanson.” My first instinct is to respond in kind, but doing so now would seem forced; better to wait until no one expects it.  Instead let me use this opportunity to make a point about signaling: the world would be better if we praised folks more for what they did than who they are.

Most eulogies, introductions, reviews, etc., whether in praise or criticism, tend to discuss what a person has done mainly as clues to what sort of person they are.  For example, music reviews talk about what a new album says about how the musician has developed, instead of how that music can brighten the lives of listeners.

Very small acts are often mentioned, if they seem telling.  And we often hear that someone was head of an organization, or had a credential, without hearing much about what they did with such influence.  We often hear they were part of some project without hearing the difference they made, and the differences we do hear about are often merely due to others knowing of their association with the project.

Because the usual focus is on inferring how smart, strong, creative, caring, charismatic, determined, etc. people are, the incentives are more to do things that suggest good things about your character.  If instead we focused on describing the differences a person has actually made to the world, we would get more folks trying harder to actually make a difference.  And they would focus more on acquiring the features that produce results, instead of features that are easy to see.

And when we evaluate the difference someone made, we should correct for the opportunities they had.  For example, if they saved lives as a doctor, we should ask if they saved more than if someone else had been allowed to be a doctor in their place.  If they rose from rags to riches, we should ask who helped them along the way.  If they headed an group that did a great thing, we should wonder whether that group would have done something similar with someone else in charge.

If we praised results instead of character, maybe we will get more of both.

Added 7p: Will Wilkinson comments here.

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Execution Dignity

By Robin Hanson · November 19, 2009 10:20 am · Comments (26)

A state-sponsored execution is filled with ritual, from the agonizing countdown to the grim hour to the prisoner’s last meal. That final repast is such a curious display of compassion under the circumstances. Don’t let the man die hungry, as if that would be an indication of a truly uncivilized electorate. Or is the last meal a grudging willingness to let the convicted man have the tiniest bit of control over how he will exit this world? …

But the prisoner is allowed no control over what he will be wearing. He cannot add any final footnote — no matter how microscopically minor — about how history will remember him. … He cannot choose to die in a sober suit … [or] wear some disconcertingly blase garb that would allow him to mock the proceedings. …

Prison uniforms have always existed to rob a convict of his individuality, his power and all but the thinnest shred of dignity. … As a culture, we need to know that the death row inmate died with his dignity intact — at least a bit of it. Observers felt compelled to note whether Muhammad showed any emotions. … As a society, dignity is inextricably linked to appearance. … We needed to know that while he was robbed of control, individuality and the ability to torment, he was not fully stripped of his self-respect. He was not forced to perish in some clownish costume.

More here.   Hmm, interesting.  We allow executed folks the dingy dignity of choosing a last meal, last words, and perhaps execution method, and we choose for them clothes, background sounds, and ambiance that aren’t too humiliating or painful.  But we will not allow them a choice of clothes or musical accompaniment.  Or a fan club nearby.

We want to assert our higher status, but as with animals, we do not want to seem to enjoy their pain.  This is of course not about the prisoner at all (who we are killing); it is about us signaling our good features to observers.  We do this not just in executions, but more broadly in our entire system of criminal law, and at great expense.  Let me explain. Continue Reading "Execution Dignity" »

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Why Academics Aren’t Bayesian

By Robin Hanson · November 15, 2009 8:45 am · Comments (30)

Bryan Caplan asks Why Aren’t Academic Economists Bayesians?:

Almost all economic models assume that human beings are Bayesians, … [but] academic economists are not Bayesians.  And they’re proud of it!

This is clearest for theorists.  Their epistemology is simple: Either something has been (a) proven with certainty, or (b) no one knows – and no intellectually respectable person will say more.  If no one has proven that Comparative Advantage still holds with imperfect competition, transportation costs, and indivisibilities, only an ignoramus would jump the gun and recommend free trade in a world with these characteristics. …

Empirical economists’ deviation from Bayesianism is more subtle.  Their epistemology is rooted in classical statistics.  The respectable researcher comes to the data an agnostic, and leaves believing “whatever the data say.”  When there’s no data that meets their standards, they mimic the theorists’ snobby agnosticism.  If you mention “common sense,” they’ll scoff.

I’ve argued that the main social function of academia is to let students, patrons, readers, etc. affiliate with credentialed-as-impressive minds.  If so, academic beliefs are secondary – the important thing is to clearly show respect to those who make impressive displays like theorems or difficult data analysis. And the obvious way for academics to use their beliefs to show respect for impressive folks is to have academic beliefs track the most impressive recent academic work.

So it won’t do to have beliefs bounce around with every little common sense thing anyone says, however informative those may be.  That would give too much respect to not-very-impressive sources of common sense. Instead, beliefs must stay fixed until an impressive enough theorem or data analysis comes along where beliefs should change out of respect for it.  Academics also avoid keeping beliefs pretty much the same when each new study hardly adds much evidence – that wouldn’t offer enough respect to the new display.

Relative to the Bayesians that academic economic theorists typically assume populate the world, real academics over-react or under-react to evidence, as needed to show respect for impressive academic displays. This helps assure the customers of academia that by affiliating with the most respected academics, they are affiliating with very impressive minds.

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Sports Signals

By Robin Hanson · November 4, 2009 2:50 pm · Comments (18)

Sports leagues are cracking down hard on athletes who look smug after making a good play.  Football:

A crackdown on excessive touchdown celebrations … has moved from the National Football League to college football and now to high school football games across the country.  In the Washington area this fall, a wide receiver from 13th-ranked McNamara was flagged for pointing to the sky after a touchdown, and a Gwynn Park defender was penalized for pointing up at the sky after intercepting a pass. … “What’s happening is in the old days, there was a certain level of celebration that was allowed. Now it’s basically no celebration,” …

There are some who view the crackdown as necessary — ridding the high school game of the scripted Sharpie-in-the-sock, cellphone-in-the-goalpost-padding type of touchdown celebrations that first appeared in the NFL a few years ago. … The cleanup of those routines earned the NFL a new nickname — the No Fun League … How far can you go before you take the joy out of the sport?…  Federation rule 9-5-1 … reads, in part: “unsportsmanlike manner … Any delayed, excessive or prolonged act by which a player attempts to focus attention upon himself.”

Basketball:

Under a new zero-tolerance policy approved by the NCAA, penalizing excessive celebrations will be a point of emphasis this season. The regulation has left coaches … concerned that one of their sport’s most marketable aspects — its raw emotion — is being legislated out of the game. …

According to ACC officiating supervisor John Clougherty … the crackdown on excessive celebrations is meant to deter players from showing up or embarrassing a member of the opposing team.  Among the actions Clougherty said will be closely monitored are pointing, gesturing …

“It’s definitely going to be tough for all the players, especially when somebody gets dunked on,” said Maryland guard Greivis Vasquez, who’s been known to be excitable on the court from time to time. “You going to just keep your emotions in or you going to say nothing? You just going to be like this [stone-faced]? It’s going to be hard.

Organized sports exist in large part to let athletes look good by winning, and to let fans affiliate with winners.  Athletes commonly call attention to their wins via trophies, rings, team jerseys, score boards, etc.  So how can it be offensive for players to have a little fun by calling attention to their winning plays during a game?

That last quote by Vasquez gets at the key, I think: when it is hard not to brag, not bragging is more impressive than bragging.   Since we want our athletes to be impressive, we want them not to brag.  We don’t mind athletes having fun, but not fun that makes them seem less impressive.

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