More wisdom from my experience on horse racing prediction markets:
Updating for odds which are very low or very high is far more sensitive to new information. i.e., the lower the probability of an outcome, the greater the volatility of its odds on a prediction market.
For instance, for a mid-range 'average' probablity of a horse winning (which in horse racing is around $5), the price is quite robust to new information coming in, even lots of new information and updating doesn't change the odds that much in the short term. But for a very low priced runner (say $1.40), even updating with tiny amounts of new information can cause huge probability shifts (hence the greater volatility).
This behaviour of prediction markets shows up the big problem with all discussions about extreme far-mode events (Singularity, AI, nano-goo, immortality etc. etc). The fact is that very low probability events are highly sensitive to new information - i.e., even tiny amounts of new information used to update can cause huge probability shifts. Perhaps this is the reason that futurist and 'expert' discourse about the far future isn't that much more accurate than the man on the street?
But in fairness, our society has become (to my way of thinking) extremely focused on the “overnight success” mentality i.e. American Idol and every other reality TV series.
That's what I was getting at, but you put it better.
If the tendency was for a majority of our young people to suddenly want to be the next Shakespeare, Hemmingway or Picasso I think a lot of very valuable education would likely come with the effort. But as you said, they're wanting microwave success so they can have all of the bling, etc.
I have read at least one article suggesting that liberal arts majors and liberal arts programs at many universities are on the decline because of the increasing cost of getting a university education. So there might be fewer of these artists and dilettants you speak of based purely on economic forces and the rising cost of getting an education.
But in fairness, our society has become (to my way of thinking) extremely focused on the "overnight success" mentality i.e. American Idol and every other reality TV series. There's a great deal of attention paid by the various media sources to lottery winners, reality TV star contestants, and other people who got a lot of something, usually money and fame, without the expenditure of much sweat equity.
I think colleges and high schools would provide a better service to their pupils if on occasion they say, 'And this thing you're striving for won't happen overnight. Stephen King didn't become a bestsellign author by banging out 'Carrie' one weekend at his beachfront estate in Maine. He spent years upon years getting rejected.'
In reality, rejection, disappointment, and utter cruelty are going to be our constant companions. Learning to not be driven to despair, heartbreak, chemical dependency, and suicide are the things we must really focus on, and learning to get use to disappointment and to accept it as the standard human condition, that's what we must all really learn and grasp. We must also integrate the fundamental lesson that achieving something great may ultimately be impossible, and that the best we'll ever do is to just scrape by. But with a noisemachine media that emphasizes again and again the pure, super-lucky ones in our society, it becomes difficult to not want more for yourself, too. The Biblical fable of Cain killing Able was based on Cain's envy of Able's sacrifice being better liked by God. So envy was the first precursor to murder. And we have a society based on stirring up envy, and encouraging people to want more and more worthless crap, so we can impress worthless people about our own worthless lives.
Have you ever approached the subject of how many young people have serious plans to become artists, musicians, and in general, celebrities and more specifically, the downside to this? Sounds great to produce a generation of artists, but when most of them are not actually very talented nor do they possess the work ethic to obtain these lofty goals, we have a nation of "mere dabblers" to paraphrase Epictetus. But of course they have no real job skills, and they doubly damaging effects of being somewhat detached from the reality of why they're drifting through life. (Epictetus goes on to compare the dabbler to a child playing soldier one day, and playing another fanciful role the next.)
The obvious retort is that kids have always wanted to be "rock stars" but I would contend not in these numbers.
Eliezer's "happy death spiral" sounds a bit like that.
davidc, James Scott talks a bit about the hostility of settled society to nomads in "The Art of Not Being Governed". But he's mostly focused on slash-and-burn horticulturalists who also hunt & gather rather than more urban-adapted groups dependent on the rest of society like gypsies.
On the "just world fallacy" and global warming - subjects induced to think about the world as fair (just world) express more skepticism about global warming and less willingness to reduce their carbon footprint than matched subjects induced to think about the world as sometimes unfair, after both groups were subsequently exposed to global warming PSAs portraying children as the victims of global warming (a depiction of an especially unfair situation, given the children did nothing to cause global warming).
I don't normally contribute to these threads because I read Overcoming Bias intermittently. However, your contining discussions of commitment and obligation bring up an idea. Suppose you try to devise an economic system that attempts to reduce legally enforced commitment and obligation as much as possible, perhaps even to the point of elimination, You can still have obligation, but it's no longer enforced by whatever authority manages the economic system.
A relatively extreme example of this is a massively multiplayer space opera game called "Eve Online", It basically is a fairly extreme, hypercapitalist game with few externally imposed rules. Here, scams, theft, piracy, etc are in large part legal (there are certain regions of space where certain acts are unlawful and met with near instant annihilation by a highly advanced police force, though players often can benefit from the illegal action despite the consequences).
The core is a financial and modest legal infrastructure that is near impossible to break (and leads to elimination of the player's characters, true death in the sense of a game, if a means is found and the player caught). In this framework have developed a number of "efficient breach" contracts.
For example, a player can issue a "courier contract" in which specified cargo is shipped from point A to B. A reward is offered and the shipper has to submit an amount of collateral specified by the original player. Once that is done, the shipper is under no legal obligation to complete the contract. They can choose to break the contract, in which case the original player gets the collateral. Ultimately, it provides a limited means for a player to offer services for another player.
The system has some very serious problems. A key one is simply that a lot of otherwise criminal behavior is allowed with little recourse (the offended parties can hunt the original thief or scammer down, but they can't do very much to them, especially given that the money or assets can easily and covertly be transferred to other characters that the offender has).
Still it leads me to wonder if true efficient breach contracts might play a useful role in the workings of society. For example, if you can't renege on a contract, then that keeps some human interactions from ending up in an expensive court system.
Thanks, that worked better. I had tried the search box on the OB page and didn't get a fraction of the ones from Google; I guess I just need to always use Google and site: from now on.
In relation to foragers and farmers. What does the treatment of foragers in modern societies tell us?If you look at nomadic groups in various cultures whether they be Irish Travellers, Gypsies, Sami or even (i'm told) Carnival folk in the US they have been treated with suspicion and hostility.
If nomadism is seen as a threat to farmer values what will happen to these people is forager values become more common?
A wonderful fiscal question for 2011. Though I do not know the answer, I do know that the citizens of states like Texas (where I am a fourth generation) will be extremely agitated and upset should these fiscally irresponsible states be bailed out by the federal government.
One can look at history and see that one result of a declining and bankrupt country (i.e. the U.S.) is the breaking apart of certain regions and states. For this, I see the rebirth of the Republic of Texas within the next 50 years - should the spoiled, labor-union heavy states and federal government not get their fiscal houses in order.
Forgive me if I've missed some of your thoughts on the return to forager mores. I think this is a wonderful idea, but I have two questions:
(1) Are you not perhaps excessively Rousseauian in describing iconic foragers as "promiscuous, artistic, professional, cosmopolitan, well-traveled, with few kids"? Is there good evidence for this? I would imagine that life in a small group could be very stultifying, with severe peer pressures to conform. Stephen Pinker's descriptions of violence in hunter-gatherer societies suggests that an instinct to be cosmopolitan and well-travelled would be rapidly bred out of the gene pool.
(2) If the cultural constraints of agricultural social structures dramatically altered our instinctive attitudes and behaviors, why would you not expect living in an industrial society to impose other constraints? In other words, rather than reverting to forager mores, why wouldn't we be expected to move toward a third configuration, in some ways perhaps more forager like, but in other ways perhaps less so?
Thank you for sharing your imagination and insights. Life is wonderful!
I might be misreading your definition "intelligence distribution" but it seems from anecdote, and from what I've read that the more successful a person - highly intelligent or not - the more they tend to discount luck and happenstance in their accomplishments.
Those intelligent folks who do not make it to the top are usually painfully aware of the need for some good fortune, and even more importantly, the costs of bad or lazy decisions.
More wisdom from my experience on horse racing prediction markets:
Updating for odds which are very low or very high is far more sensitive to new information. i.e., the lower the probability of an outcome, the greater the volatility of its odds on a prediction market.
For instance, for a mid-range 'average' probablity of a horse winning (which in horse racing is around $5), the price is quite robust to new information coming in, even lots of new information and updating doesn't change the odds that much in the short term. But for a very low priced runner (say $1.40), even updating with tiny amounts of new information can cause huge probability shifts (hence the greater volatility).
This behaviour of prediction markets shows up the big problem with all discussions about extreme far-mode events (Singularity, AI, nano-goo, immortality etc. etc). The fact is that very low probability events are highly sensitive to new information - i.e., even tiny amounts of new information used to update can cause huge probability shifts. Perhaps this is the reason that futurist and 'expert' discourse about the far future isn't that much more accurate than the man on the street?
But in fairness, our society has become (to my way of thinking) extremely focused on the “overnight success” mentality i.e. American Idol and every other reality TV series.
That's what I was getting at, but you put it better.
If the tendency was for a majority of our young people to suddenly want to be the next Shakespeare, Hemmingway or Picasso I think a lot of very valuable education would likely come with the effort. But as you said, they're wanting microwave success so they can have all of the bling, etc.
I have read at least one article suggesting that liberal arts majors and liberal arts programs at many universities are on the decline because of the increasing cost of getting a university education. So there might be fewer of these artists and dilettants you speak of based purely on economic forces and the rising cost of getting an education.
But in fairness, our society has become (to my way of thinking) extremely focused on the "overnight success" mentality i.e. American Idol and every other reality TV series. There's a great deal of attention paid by the various media sources to lottery winners, reality TV star contestants, and other people who got a lot of something, usually money and fame, without the expenditure of much sweat equity.
I think colleges and high schools would provide a better service to their pupils if on occasion they say, 'And this thing you're striving for won't happen overnight. Stephen King didn't become a bestsellign author by banging out 'Carrie' one weekend at his beachfront estate in Maine. He spent years upon years getting rejected.'
In reality, rejection, disappointment, and utter cruelty are going to be our constant companions. Learning to not be driven to despair, heartbreak, chemical dependency, and suicide are the things we must really focus on, and learning to get use to disappointment and to accept it as the standard human condition, that's what we must all really learn and grasp. We must also integrate the fundamental lesson that achieving something great may ultimately be impossible, and that the best we'll ever do is to just scrape by. But with a noisemachine media that emphasizes again and again the pure, super-lucky ones in our society, it becomes difficult to not want more for yourself, too. The Biblical fable of Cain killing Able was based on Cain's envy of Able's sacrifice being better liked by God. So envy was the first precursor to murder. And we have a society based on stirring up envy, and encouraging people to want more and more worthless crap, so we can impress worthless people about our own worthless lives.
Have you ever approached the subject of how many young people have serious plans to become artists, musicians, and in general, celebrities and more specifically, the downside to this? Sounds great to produce a generation of artists, but when most of them are not actually very talented nor do they possess the work ethic to obtain these lofty goals, we have a nation of "mere dabblers" to paraphrase Epictetus. But of course they have no real job skills, and they doubly damaging effects of being somewhat detached from the reality of why they're drifting through life. (Epictetus goes on to compare the dabbler to a child playing soldier one day, and playing another fanciful role the next.)
The obvious retort is that kids have always wanted to be "rock stars" but I would contend not in these numbers.
Eliezer's "happy death spiral" sounds a bit like that.
davidc, James Scott talks a bit about the hostility of settled society to nomads in "The Art of Not Being Governed". But he's mostly focused on slash-and-burn horticulturalists who also hunt & gather rather than more urban-adapted groups dependent on the rest of society like gypsies.
The speed of light regulates radio waves, with a higher frequency offset by shorter wavelength.
Urban living is similar with the trade-off between doing the simple things poorly and the complicated things well.
You may actually gauge the desirability of a location by the difficulty of doing the simple things.
Topeka Kansas may not have a world class cuisine, but washers and dryers aren't status symbols either.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011...
On the "just world fallacy" and global warming - subjects induced to think about the world as fair (just world) express more skepticism about global warming and less willingness to reduce their carbon footprint than matched subjects induced to think about the world as sometimes unfair, after both groups were subsequently exposed to global warming PSAs portraying children as the victims of global warming (a depiction of an especially unfair situation, given the children did nothing to cause global warming).
http://www.nature.com/news/...
Our commitment to believing the world is fair undermines our ability to accurately perceive the world when it is unfair.
I don't normally contribute to these threads because I read Overcoming Bias intermittently. However, your contining discussions of commitment and obligation bring up an idea. Suppose you try to devise an economic system that attempts to reduce legally enforced commitment and obligation as much as possible, perhaps even to the point of elimination, You can still have obligation, but it's no longer enforced by whatever authority manages the economic system.
A relatively extreme example of this is a massively multiplayer space opera game called "Eve Online", It basically is a fairly extreme, hypercapitalist game with few externally imposed rules. Here, scams, theft, piracy, etc are in large part legal (there are certain regions of space where certain acts are unlawful and met with near instant annihilation by a highly advanced police force, though players often can benefit from the illegal action despite the consequences).
The core is a financial and modest legal infrastructure that is near impossible to break (and leads to elimination of the player's characters, true death in the sense of a game, if a means is found and the player caught). In this framework have developed a number of "efficient breach" contracts.
For example, a player can issue a "courier contract" in which specified cargo is shipped from point A to B. A reward is offered and the shipper has to submit an amount of collateral specified by the original player. Once that is done, the shipper is under no legal obligation to complete the contract. They can choose to break the contract, in which case the original player gets the collateral. Ultimately, it provides a limited means for a player to offer services for another player.
The system has some very serious problems. A key one is simply that a lot of otherwise criminal behavior is allowed with little recourse (the offended parties can hunt the original thief or scammer down, but they can't do very much to them, especially given that the money or assets can easily and covertly be transferred to other characters that the offender has).
Still it leads me to wonder if true efficient breach contracts might play a useful role in the workings of society. For example, if you can't renege on a contract, then that keeps some human interactions from ending up in an expensive court system.
Thanks, that worked better. I had tried the search box on the OB page and didn't get a fraction of the ones from Google; I guess I just need to always use Google and site: from now on.
In relation to foragers and farmers. What does the treatment of foragers in modern societies tell us?If you look at nomadic groups in various cultures whether they be Irish Travellers, Gypsies, Sami or even (i'm told) Carnival folk in the US they have been treated with suspicion and hostility.
If nomadism is seen as a threat to farmer values what will happen to these people is forager values become more common?
Robert -
A wonderful fiscal question for 2011. Though I do not know the answer, I do know that the citizens of states like Texas (where I am a fourth generation) will be extremely agitated and upset should these fiscally irresponsible states be bailed out by the federal government.
One can look at history and see that one result of a declining and bankrupt country (i.e. the U.S.) is the breaking apart of certain regions and states. For this, I see the rebirth of the Republic of Texas within the next 50 years - should the spoiled, labor-union heavy states and federal government not get their fiscal houses in order.
Do expressions of confirmation bias correlate with an increased risk of cancer mortality?
hanson.gmu.edu is down and has been so for several days. I want to read about the next Big Thing :<. Btw your cato unbound articles were awsome.
From time to time one observes the false consensus effect coupled with wishful thinking. Is there a term for this? Any research?
Forgive me if I've missed some of your thoughts on the return to forager mores. I think this is a wonderful idea, but I have two questions:
(1) Are you not perhaps excessively Rousseauian in describing iconic foragers as "promiscuous, artistic, professional, cosmopolitan, well-traveled, with few kids"? Is there good evidence for this? I would imagine that life in a small group could be very stultifying, with severe peer pressures to conform. Stephen Pinker's descriptions of violence in hunter-gatherer societies suggests that an instinct to be cosmopolitan and well-travelled would be rapidly bred out of the gene pool.
(2) If the cultural constraints of agricultural social structures dramatically altered our instinctive attitudes and behaviors, why would you not expect living in an industrial society to impose other constraints? In other words, rather than reverting to forager mores, why wouldn't we be expected to move toward a third configuration, in some ways perhaps more forager like, but in other ways perhaps less so?
Thank you for sharing your imagination and insights. Life is wonderful!
I might be misreading your definition "intelligence distribution" but it seems from anecdote, and from what I've read that the more successful a person - highly intelligent or not - the more they tend to discount luck and happenstance in their accomplishments.
Those intelligent folks who do not make it to the top are usually painfully aware of the need for some good fortune, and even more importantly, the costs of bad or lazy decisions.