In 1980 I took a cosmology class with Virginia Trimble at UC Irvine, and every time she would come to an effect that was named after someone, she would say "The X effect, because it was discovered earlier by Y," where X and Y were two different names. Usually X was male and Y was female.
A book which provides a good deal of evidence of these biases is Einstein's Luck: The Truth behind Some of the Greatest Scientific Discoveries by John Waller. Most people on this blog would mainly find it useful as evidence to convince skeptics rather than to improve their understanding of biases.Eliezer asks: "If tomorrow we found out that all Isaac Newton's discoveries were really made by his cleaning lady, how would the history of science change?"It would change what history says about the kind of personality that makes important discoveries (e.g. do they typically have Aspergers?). Which might affect, say, how we should go about identifying the person who will create the first AGI and thereby target arguments about AGI risks at him.Also, the difference between one hero and many incremental advances has some implications for the patent system, whose desirability is partly based on the assumption that the important inventors are typically identified.
TGGP, I hadn't seen Stigler's Conjecture - thanks! See also this essay by Krugman on "Ricardo's Difficult Idea" mentioned at http://worthwhile.typepad.c...
Reminds me of Stigler's Conjecture. George Stigler came up with it, but it was named after his son Stephen.http://en.wikipedia.org/wik...
My algorithms teacher states that algorithms are typically named after the last person to discover them, fitting with Steve Sailer's statement and the idea that "It's always in the last place you look, because after you find it you stop looking".
Robin, the problem is a widespread perception that the last innovator in a chain deserves an overlarge share of the credit. People who share this bias don't *think* that anyone is getting shortchanged on credit - that's the *problem*. So long as innovators share the same faulty perception, they will think that the incentive structure is working properly, and invest their time accordingly.
John, I didn't mean to imply that there are not real and important innovations, such as in engineering, business, and marketing, nearer to final applications. My point was just that if all the credit goes to those people, there will be too little incentive to do the other earlier innovation.
"MCP, the obvious place for us to start is here, with ourselves. Let us take the logs out of our own eyes before we try to take the motes out of the eyes of others. Especially since those others haven't exactly begged us for our help with their eye motes."
"When I point out that these are mainly people with power associated with an innovation, they admit they are more interested in power than in the real innovators."
But it's not like Henry Ford in your example was a wealthy monopolist who already owned a successful company and forced Nicolaus Otto to yield his inventions or anything. He was a automobile designer who produced technical innovations in his car *in addition* to process improvements in large-scale assembly line mass production, marketing, and other business organizations. Your statement gives the misleading impression that these are mainly people who had power who "stole" an invention.
Rather, the people listed are generally the *successful* people who took an invention, made improvements, and were able to successfully sell it to a mass audience and build a large company out of it. That adds value to life and affects people directly in a way that a discovery never marketed does not. Call it a bias towards engineers and away from scientists if you like, but there is a real reason behind the interest.
Henry Ford, Thomas Edison, Willis Carrier and others were inventors who also founded successful companies to market their inventions. Yes, the incremental improvements to inventions are very important, but it's understandable that attention focuses on the first person to make something widely commercially practical. Just as understandable (if a bit unfortunate) is the nationalistic bias that causes people to credit the "most significant" advance necessary for an invention to a citizen of their own country.
"The problem is not that, contrary to heroic mythology, staid committees made the discoveries rather than wild-eyed lunatics. Rather, the problem is that multiple wild-eyed lunatics carefully built on each other's work, or unknowingly duplicated each other's work, and then only one of them was crowned Innovator - often the very last one, after nearly all the prior work was accomplished."
Yes, all true and I agree. However, my answer to the question of "how it could be worse" is that I fear that the popular press, rather than getting the story right, would merely replace the current type of heroic myth with a new kind of myth, the one about committees.
Of course it's "wrong," in some sense, to give all the credit to the one winner rather than the giants on whose shoulders he stood. But it's no more particularly morally wrong than the first-mover or other winner-take-all advantages in a free-market system. I'm not sure how you can resolve those without taking away large amounts of incentive to improve things and invent. The historical story reflects the same "unfairness" as the economic results.
"But if what we really celebrate are people who grab credit for innovations, rather than the actual innovators, we may make things worse rather than better."
Yes. But please don't go too far in insulting those whose skills lie in business organization, marketing, implementation, or any of the other things that also help improve our lives. There is, I think, sometimes an urge to overpraise the "real inventors" (people who are absolutely very important) while ignoring that things like proper supply chain management and the ability to market, manufacture, distribute, and sell a product more efficiently have also brought dramatic gains in welfare.
MCP, the obvious place for us to start is here, with ourselves. Let us take the logs out of our own eyes before we try to take the motes out of the eyes of others. Especially since those others haven't exactly begged us for our help with their eye motes.
Well-said, Eric. As much as I like and appreciate markets, robust and well-defined property rights, and market process selection-filters, they may indeed not be very good at helping to select-against biases. That said, like democracy, what better choice do we have? But as a neo-institutionalist (more-or-less), I'd still like to find ways to "tweak" social institutions/processes more effectively towrad less bias, etc. But how to do this genuinely effectively and minimize unintended consequences/side-effects is, of course, the problem (or one of 'em).
Robin: Precisely my point as well. It's Alphonse & Gaston meets Chicken (as in both game-theoretic Chicken, and Chicken-&-egg). Which is to say that the masses of consumers choose journalist pap because **that's what's offered**---but then **that's what's offered** because that's what (keeps being) marginally-chosen in a self-reinforcing (perhaps even self-exaserbating, to some extent) feedback loop. Now, yes, that just may be "them primates" as it were, but there you have it, *that's* the problem (if one chooses to see it as problem, and in terms of diminishing/minimizing biases of all sort, as well as fact/truth discovery-&-publication, surely it IS, at least to *some* extent). It can be overcome to some (perhaps fairly significant) extent in the medium-to-long run, primarily, I would surmise, through improved educational institutions...
And, sure, Robin, educational institutions give consumers more-or-less what they want, but that is a bit oversimplified. James Buchanan and Tom Sowell, among others, have over the last several decades, discussed the perverse incentive structures of both "public" and "higher" education. I don't claim to have a solution. But Robin, bless your heart, and with tremendous respect, you sometimes seem to be a bit too *de facto* panglossian re the status quo---so panglossian that even idealized Pareto-optimality, say, pales in comparison. Though, I grant, it *is* difficult to articulate a minimally-biased, globally-consenual (as it were) "Archimedian Point" from which to meaningfully and fairly critique the status quo (see Rawls and Rawlsian "industry" liturature, Dave Gauthier (and Buchanan for that matter) and all the liturature grown-up around his works, etc., etc.) with regard to *any* institution, process, distribution(s), etc.
pdf23ds: True enough, but nonetheless a bit problematic, no? Which is to say that if profit-driven journalism (journalists) is going to give the masses what (it entrepreneurially surmises, at any rate, that) they want, what mechanism can we (try to) strengthen to get the "masses" or "consumers" to be more "responsible" and/or more "enlightened". And---and here's the Hayekian/Keynesian question---how will this new "enlightened" gaggle of of consumers communicate to the (still standard-operating, same ol' same ol') media organizations ***that*** there (intellectual?) preferences have changed? By incremental (marginal) selections over time, of course. Well, OK...but how long will that take, and how successful will it be? Granted, there will be a market-process selection filter, that will filter through entrepreneurial efforts to get the public what it wants, ***based on its [NEW, enlightened] marginal choices***, how do we (we???) kick-start that change in the consumer preferences in the first place? Aye, there's the rub!! Can it be done...? To some extent perhaps. But we might need a little (coercive??) (meta)paternalistic bootstrapping (of whatever sort---you decide) to get the ball rolling. Or else it'll take a generation via hopefully improved education/enlightenment starting with kids and adolescents.
In other words, at least in the short-to-medium run, you have self-sustaining feedback loop: less-than-optimally enlightened/sophisticated consumers going-ahead and marginally selecting sub-optimal (epistemically-speaking) journalistic pap, which sends precisely the signal to the journalist to "keep on keepin' on" with said sub-optimal pap. And unless the consumers (the ultimate, long-run *drivers* of the market process selection filter(s) , at least for Misesians [and, arguably within even the mainstream neoclassical models as well], **bootsrap** themselves to a higher level of "enlightenment" or "sophistication" AND **effectively communicate this to the journalists via marginal market transactions**, there is little reason to expect that "better", "more accurate", more "optimal" journalism/journalists **will *ever* tend to become selected-for---at least not in the short-to-medium run.
So how do we "wake-up" the masses of consumers to actually prefer AND " **effectively demand** " better journalism (of whatever sort)? Can it (be made, coaxed, to) happen? Well, yeah, hopefully; but it takes time...and *coaxing*...
This last exchange suggests that competition may not itself be a terrific discovery mechanism if the aim is overcoming bias. (There has always been an optimistic connection drawn between democracy, capitalism, and science by some Classical Liberals and Pragmatists.) It requires institutions that can re-direct our desires (or values) to this end. I take it that Robin's work on betting markets acknowledges and exploits this.
MCP, I don't think journalists misperceive their customers - customers may well want facts distorted to give them heroes. Education isn't obviously different - schools give their customers what they want as well, and that may also include distorting facts to various ends. "We" are not in charge of education, so we don't get to change it to our ends.
A book which provides a good deal of evidence of these biases is Einstein's Luck: The Truth behind Some of the Greatest Scientific Discoveries by John Waller. Most people on this blog would mainly find it useful as evidence to convince skeptics rather than to improve their understanding of biases.Eliezer asks: "If tomorrow we found out that all Isaac Newton's discoveries were really made by his cleaning lady, how would the history of science change?"It would change what history says about the kind of personality that makes important discoveries (e.g. do they typically have Aspergers?). Which might affect, say, how we should go about identifying the person who will create the first AGI and thereby target arguments about AGI risks at him.Also, the difference between one hero and many incremental advances has some implications for the patent system, whose desirability is partly based on the assumption that the important inventors are typically identified.
TGGP, I hadn't seen Stigler's Conjecture - thanks! See also this essay by Krugman on "Ricardo's Difficult Idea" mentioned at http://worthwhile.typepad.c...
Reminds me of Stigler's Conjecture. George Stigler came up with it, but it was named after his son Stephen.http://en.wikipedia.org/wik...
My algorithms teacher states that algorithms are typically named after the last person to discover them, fitting with Steve Sailer's statement and the idea that "It's always in the last place you look, because after you find it you stop looking".
Eliezer, I don't think that innovators do share as much of the the same faulty perception about who is doing what innovation.
Not that this is an excuse, but...
Robin, the problem is a widespread perception that the last innovator in a chain deserves an overlarge share of the credit. People who share this bias don't *think* that anyone is getting shortchanged on credit - that's the *problem*. So long as innovators share the same faulty perception, they will think that the incentive structure is working properly, and invest their time accordingly.
As with Columbus and America, after Darwin discovered the theory of natural selection, it stayed discovered.
John, I didn't mean to imply that there are not real and important innovations, such as in engineering, business, and marketing, nearer to final applications. My point was just that if all the credit goes to those people, there will be too little incentive to do the other earlier innovation.
"MCP, the obvious place for us to start is here, with ourselves. Let us take the logs out of our own eyes before we try to take the motes out of the eyes of others. Especially since those others haven't exactly begged us for our help with their eye motes."
But their motes are SO much bigger!
"When I point out that these are mainly people with power associated with an innovation, they admit they are more interested in power than in the real innovators."
But it's not like Henry Ford in your example was a wealthy monopolist who already owned a successful company and forced Nicolaus Otto to yield his inventions or anything. He was a automobile designer who produced technical innovations in his car *in addition* to process improvements in large-scale assembly line mass production, marketing, and other business organizations. Your statement gives the misleading impression that these are mainly people who had power who "stole" an invention.
Rather, the people listed are generally the *successful* people who took an invention, made improvements, and were able to successfully sell it to a mass audience and build a large company out of it. That adds value to life and affects people directly in a way that a discovery never marketed does not. Call it a bias towards engineers and away from scientists if you like, but there is a real reason behind the interest.
Henry Ford, Thomas Edison, Willis Carrier and others were inventors who also founded successful companies to market their inventions. Yes, the incremental improvements to inventions are very important, but it's understandable that attention focuses on the first person to make something widely commercially practical. Just as understandable (if a bit unfortunate) is the nationalistic bias that causes people to credit the "most significant" advance necessary for an invention to a citizen of their own country.
"The problem is not that, contrary to heroic mythology, staid committees made the discoveries rather than wild-eyed lunatics. Rather, the problem is that multiple wild-eyed lunatics carefully built on each other's work, or unknowingly duplicated each other's work, and then only one of them was crowned Innovator - often the very last one, after nearly all the prior work was accomplished."
Yes, all true and I agree. However, my answer to the question of "how it could be worse" is that I fear that the popular press, rather than getting the story right, would merely replace the current type of heroic myth with a new kind of myth, the one about committees.
Of course it's "wrong," in some sense, to give all the credit to the one winner rather than the giants on whose shoulders he stood. But it's no more particularly morally wrong than the first-mover or other winner-take-all advantages in a free-market system. I'm not sure how you can resolve those without taking away large amounts of incentive to improve things and invent. The historical story reflects the same "unfairness" as the economic results.
"But if what we really celebrate are people who grab credit for innovations, rather than the actual innovators, we may make things worse rather than better."
Yes. But please don't go too far in insulting those whose skills lie in business organization, marketing, implementation, or any of the other things that also help improve our lives. There is, I think, sometimes an urge to overpraise the "real inventors" (people who are absolutely very important) while ignoring that things like proper supply chain management and the ability to market, manufacture, distribute, and sell a product more efficiently have also brought dramatic gains in welfare.
Robin: Indeed, true enough...
MCP, the obvious place for us to start is here, with ourselves. Let us take the logs out of our own eyes before we try to take the motes out of the eyes of others. Especially since those others haven't exactly begged us for our help with their eye motes.
Well-said, Eric. As much as I like and appreciate markets, robust and well-defined property rights, and market process selection-filters, they may indeed not be very good at helping to select-against biases. That said, like democracy, what better choice do we have? But as a neo-institutionalist (more-or-less), I'd still like to find ways to "tweak" social institutions/processes more effectively towrad less bias, etc. But how to do this genuinely effectively and minimize unintended consequences/side-effects is, of course, the problem (or one of 'em).
Robin: Precisely my point as well. It's Alphonse & Gaston meets Chicken (as in both game-theoretic Chicken, and Chicken-&-egg). Which is to say that the masses of consumers choose journalist pap because **that's what's offered**---but then **that's what's offered** because that's what (keeps being) marginally-chosen in a self-reinforcing (perhaps even self-exaserbating, to some extent) feedback loop. Now, yes, that just may be "them primates" as it were, but there you have it, *that's* the problem (if one chooses to see it as problem, and in terms of diminishing/minimizing biases of all sort, as well as fact/truth discovery-&-publication, surely it IS, at least to *some* extent). It can be overcome to some (perhaps fairly significant) extent in the medium-to-long run, primarily, I would surmise, through improved educational institutions...
And, sure, Robin, educational institutions give consumers more-or-less what they want, but that is a bit oversimplified. James Buchanan and Tom Sowell, among others, have over the last several decades, discussed the perverse incentive structures of both "public" and "higher" education. I don't claim to have a solution. But Robin, bless your heart, and with tremendous respect, you sometimes seem to be a bit too *de facto* panglossian re the status quo---so panglossian that even idealized Pareto-optimality, say, pales in comparison. Though, I grant, it *is* difficult to articulate a minimally-biased, globally-consenual (as it were) "Archimedian Point" from which to meaningfully and fairly critique the status quo (see Rawls and Rawlsian "industry" liturature, Dave Gauthier (and Buchanan for that matter) and all the liturature grown-up around his works, etc., etc.) with regard to *any* institution, process, distribution(s), etc.
pdf23ds: True enough, but nonetheless a bit problematic, no? Which is to say that if profit-driven journalism (journalists) is going to give the masses what (it entrepreneurially surmises, at any rate, that) they want, what mechanism can we (try to) strengthen to get the "masses" or "consumers" to be more "responsible" and/or more "enlightened". And---and here's the Hayekian/Keynesian question---how will this new "enlightened" gaggle of of consumers communicate to the (still standard-operating, same ol' same ol') media organizations ***that*** there (intellectual?) preferences have changed? By incremental (marginal) selections over time, of course. Well, OK...but how long will that take, and how successful will it be? Granted, there will be a market-process selection filter, that will filter through entrepreneurial efforts to get the public what it wants, ***based on its [NEW, enlightened] marginal choices***, how do we (we???) kick-start that change in the consumer preferences in the first place? Aye, there's the rub!! Can it be done...? To some extent perhaps. But we might need a little (coercive??) (meta)paternalistic bootstrapping (of whatever sort---you decide) to get the ball rolling. Or else it'll take a generation via hopefully improved education/enlightenment starting with kids and adolescents.
In other words, at least in the short-to-medium run, you have self-sustaining feedback loop: less-than-optimally enlightened/sophisticated consumers going-ahead and marginally selecting sub-optimal (epistemically-speaking) journalistic pap, which sends precisely the signal to the journalist to "keep on keepin' on" with said sub-optimal pap. And unless the consumers (the ultimate, long-run *drivers* of the market process selection filter(s) , at least for Misesians [and, arguably within even the mainstream neoclassical models as well], **bootsrap** themselves to a higher level of "enlightenment" or "sophistication" AND **effectively communicate this to the journalists via marginal market transactions**, there is little reason to expect that "better", "more accurate", more "optimal" journalism/journalists **will *ever* tend to become selected-for---at least not in the short-to-medium run.
So how do we "wake-up" the masses of consumers to actually prefer AND " **effectively demand** " better journalism (of whatever sort)? Can it (be made, coaxed, to) happen? Well, yeah, hopefully; but it takes time...and *coaxing*...
This last exchange suggests that competition may not itself be a terrific discovery mechanism if the aim is overcoming bias. (There has always been an optimistic connection drawn between democracy, capitalism, and science by some Classical Liberals and Pragmatists.) It requires institutions that can re-direct our desires (or values) to this end. I take it that Robin's work on betting markets acknowledges and exploits this.
MCP, I don't think journalists misperceive their customers - customers may well want facts distorted to give them heroes. Education isn't obviously different - schools give their customers what they want as well, and that may also include distorting facts to various ends. "We" are not in charge of education, so we don't get to change it to our ends.