All of us are of diminished capacity when cognitive biases degrade our thinking, and one way to fight cognitive biases is to expose our thinking to the scrutiny of others, as was done in the recent debate on Paternalism. In all of our thinking, whether we are thinking of taking cocaine or Dr. Quacko’s Snake Oil Miracle Tonic, or gambling with futures options or roulette wheels, we are subject to cognitive biases. For example, for gambling we humans are subject to the following biases: gamblers fallacy, clustering illusion, availability heuristic, attentional bias, illusory correlation, ludic fallacy, optimism bias, overconfidence effect, positive outcome bias, rosy retrospection, and the Texas sharpshooter bias.
paternalism in the FDA kills far more people than it saves.
The question is not how many people die because of the FDA, but how many people would die if the FDA did not exist. Would deaths go up or down? (And, from another angle, would people prefer the system with FDA or without?) I can make convincing-sounding arguments either way on both cases, but do we have any evidence to decide?
NickThe argument for "inertia paternalism" does not require we keep the FDA or an FDA like entity or say that all patnernalism is good. The argument is that, on balance, overall, we have a working system (not necessarily perfect) and therefore downside risks should be weighted more strongly than upside ones.
The inertia paternalist would say that we should take each case on a case by case example and determine whether the existing status is on balance positive or not. If not, then they would agree to replace it, perhaps after trying to modify it. But they would not agree to elimination of all paternalism at once, without the case by case debate. This recognises the complex integrated nature of human society and its systems, it may seem like it is a no brainer to eliminate, say, the FDA, but until we do we can't say whether it is actually a good idea (because of second and third order effects).
The best defense of parternalism I think is that most western countries have a partly parternalistic system, and it works well enought in that these countries are not, by and large, hellish places. If you propose to change a system that works to get something you believe is even better, you should proceed carefully and with small steps.
I think the expressive model of voting is true. I think Bryan Caplan's theory of "rational irrationality" is the best description of how things are that I've heard of. It does not make me confident in our democratically elected government.
It is true that I would not hire Nick. I don't smoke and I don't want to be protected from myself. The thing about that scenario though is that people are actually choosing Nick, just as people can choose to limit their freedom through other contracts like marriage or non-disclosure agreements. Stirner is one of my significant influences, but I think this post from Will Wilkinson at Happiness & Public Policy on the "Stirnerite fallacy" (and the Virginia Postrel review of "Paradox of Choice" it links to) do a decent job of explaining how we do choose to limit our choices or commit to things. Many of the paternalistic things the government does we could do as well, like Odysseus having his men tie him up. We don't because we don't want to. The government is enacting these policies not on people who have requested them for themselves (even different versions of selves) as in the Nicotrel commercial, but on people who don't want it. For a government that considers abortion to be a constitutional right, claiming that they are protecting the senior citizen me who will get diabetes but cannot speak for himself due to his current (and possibly permanent) non-existence rings hollow.
Judging from some of his other posts here, I doubt Robin Hanson would concur with your faith in professors / University departments. They aren't so much a market for advice/information as prestige/credentials and once in government aren't a market at all. I suppose I have less confidence in the first X names in the phone-book than William Buckley but they would still have many advantages over the faculty of Harvard for reasons discussed in The Wisdom of Crowds. The nature of the Harvard faculty would of course also change (as would the American Economic Association) if it were made into a governing institution, making the random phone-book page more attractive.
System 1 vs system 2 is standard heuristics and biases terminology for fast automatic cognitive systems and slow deliberative but potentially debiasable systems respectively.
I think that corporations serve to dilute aspects of responsibility asymmetrically, often in order to encourage relatively consequentialist behavior. Employees can be obliged to do things that they might otherwise not have the stomach for, some of which need to be done.
Sadly, no time to go into detail into my institutional ideas.
I agree that the "self" is a fiction. I would not say that we have multiple "selves" though. What is actually "self-like" about us is the continuous stream of consciousness, but the idea we have of agency is an illusion (in fact the "I" itself is simply a thought which is believed in, which is what Buddhism means by anatta).
I still don't see how this actual lack of selfhood means that treating each individual person as an autonomous agent is worse than relying on government agents to make all the decisions they care to make about how everyone should live. That is the part of your thesis I think is not well developed, and the one that historically governments have made a complete hash of. . . E.g. consider cost/benefit studies of the FDA, and how many lives it costs through drug delays vs. lives saved by keeping bad drugs off the market. . .
Your proposal is very interesting, and I have some questions.
What are 'system one' errors, I'm not familiar with that term?
Also, isn't this what we do with old people, when they begin to have what we see as diminished capacity, we children try to persuade them not to drive, and the state takes away their licenses, etc, though of course there it is the children who have a legal? right to restrict the behavior of their aged parents, as well as minor children being restricted by their more competent parents, as you point out. As you also point out, in loco parentis is used in college, before the children are 21.
But you seem to be proposing such a scheme for those between 21 and 65, right?
if I read you right. I see why you say that the law is a system of this kind, but I am puzzled what you mean when you refer to the corporation, what do you have in mind there?
As far as business opportunities, I guess life coaches, psychotherapists (often with licensing requirements), and similar professions are voluntary systems along the lines you have in mind. I wonder if a system more aligned with modern norms might be developed along the lines of discussion groups, things like men's groups ( in which I participated for a while some years ago, and got some excellent advice based on other's life experiences, etc.), and other voluntary social groupings.
Please let me know the what you think about these questions.
To Stuart Armstrong, Robin Hanson, and other commentors:
I think Robin Hanson's question along with Stuart Armstrong's proposal goes right to the heart of the matter
-- how can we decide paternalism vs. the libertarian alternative on an empirical basis, instead of bloviating hot air? as I have been doing --
and let me propose an answer to the question: Where do we find the most unbiased and knowledgable advice market?
I bet you see where I'm going already... IT'S THE PROFESSORS! That's why they give us tenure, right? And by way, if you have spent some time in the bowels of government, as I have (as an outsider at DARPA, ONR, AFOSR, US Forest Service, mostly) did it seem to you, as it did to me, like nothing so much as a University Department, inside of which I spent several decades: it's full of seminars, and papers, and reviewing papers, and discussion groups, and committees and subcommittees (the only thing missing is the teaching, but there are a lot of add-ons, like annual day long refresher courses on defensive driving, and mandatory training on Total Quality Management, etc). I've spent only a little time in business environments, but not ones that function as advice markets, so I can't say anything useful about those.
I suppose though that Professors shouldn't be trusted to give advice on things in which we have a possibly biased self interest, like University Governance -- but wait! Isn't that exactly the thing they do ask us to give advice on? Oh Dear.
As I read this over, it sounds like it might be interpreted as ironic, because there may be an ironic edge to the writing, but be assured I am serious, I do think the Professors are the best advice market available. And I'm not saying that with an ironic edge, though I can see that people who are not Professors might wonder .....
I think the model you are referring to is the Rational Choice Model of Voting Participation, which is that people will vote if
p times B > C
where p is the probability that your vote will change the outcome, B is the Benefit you would obtain from your candidate winning, and C is the cost of voting ( inconvenience, shoe wear, etc,)
Since p is vanishingly small, maybe 10 to the -90th power for a US Presidential election, the model predicts much lower turnout than actually occurs, for which reason it has been suggested that instead of calling it the Rational Choice Model, it should simply be called the False Model of Voter Participation.
Fortunately for the reputation of Behavioral Economics, there is a related model which predicts much better, which is that people will vote if
p times B + E >C
where E is the Expressive Value of voting, to include the satisfaction derived from such things as: compliance with the ethic of voting, affirming one's allegiance to the political system, affirming a partisan preference, affirming one's efficacy in the political system, and other satisfactions, such as the pleasures of gathering information to decide which way to vote, social interaction associated with voting (discussion and debate, etc) and similar factors.
This model is probably to be preferred, since it predicts the results better than the other. I wonder what we should call it.
(All this comes from Keith Dowding's 2005 paper in the British Journal of Politics and International Relations, 7(3), 442-459.)
I saw the Nick Cotrell video, and it's very funny, thanks. My son liked it too. But I have to say that if I had a choice I would actually pick the government over Nick Cottrell. Actually, I wouldn't be surprised if you would too, unless you are a serious masochist ( I don't mean to get personal here). The government has not beaten me to a pulp and defenestrated me, not yet. Nor has it banned smoking, yet. And yet I gave it up, without the help of either Nick or the Government, in a previous century. The Dual-self Model of Impulse Control is probably more relevant here than either Nick or Uncle Sam.
To the other commentors, I plan to get to the other comments just as soon as I wash the dishes and check the homework.
The question is whether each person should be able to choose who to trust for debiased advice, or whether a democratic majority should be able to force others to follow their advice.
The question is also which situation offer the most debiased advice - a governmentally imposed system or a free-market one (unless you are morally a libertarian to the extent that that trumps all other considerations, in which case that question is irrelevant). In both cases you are effectively at the mercy of groups of people who have a huge information asymetry with you, and their own goals in mind.
We've been over some of the weaknesses of governmental advice, but what do you need for free-market advice to be reliable? Which advice markets are efficient, and which aren't? I'm thinking of trying to put together some criteria, but there probably already are some already; anyone know where I can find them?
(My previous comment deleted by Robin at my request.)
Additions to Telnar's list:
-- A voter cannot hold an elected official to a campaign promise other than via the weak sanction of not voting for them two, four, or six years later.
-- A voter's vote is diluted by the votes of millions (most of whom get their information about candidates from television news, ads and highly-rehearsed televised debates). In contrast, a decision made by a individual under the nonpaternalistic arrangement does not suffer from a similar dilution.
Yes, it's an important part of your argument against libertarianism, Bruce, but I feel that you haven't defined it sufficiently. Can you explain exactly what you mean? And preciesly how it undermines libertarianism?
I also echo Stuart's request for more explanation of your claim here and how it invalidates libertarianism and makes paternalistic government a superior choice.
What a load.
Stuart, look at Eric Crampton's comment above. You'll have to ask him for a source.
paternalism in the FDA kills far more people than it saves.
The question is not how many people die because of the FDA, but how many people would die if the FDA did not exist. Would deaths go up or down? (And, from another angle, would people prefer the system with FDA or without?) I can make convincing-sounding arguments either way on both cases, but do we have any evidence to decide?
NickThe argument for "inertia paternalism" does not require we keep the FDA or an FDA like entity or say that all patnernalism is good. The argument is that, on balance, overall, we have a working system (not necessarily perfect) and therefore downside risks should be weighted more strongly than upside ones.
The inertia paternalist would say that we should take each case on a case by case example and determine whether the existing status is on balance positive or not. If not, then they would agree to replace it, perhaps after trying to modify it. But they would not agree to elimination of all paternalism at once, without the case by case debate. This recognises the complex integrated nature of human society and its systems, it may seem like it is a no brainer to eliminate, say, the FDA, but until we do we can't say whether it is actually a good idea (because of second and third order effects).
ChrisA, this ignores the above-cited hypothesis that paternalism in the FDA kills far more people than it saves.
The best defense of parternalism I think is that most western countries have a partly parternalistic system, and it works well enought in that these countries are not, by and large, hellish places. If you propose to change a system that works to get something you believe is even better, you should proceed carefully and with small steps.
I think the expressive model of voting is true. I think Bryan Caplan's theory of "rational irrationality" is the best description of how things are that I've heard of. It does not make me confident in our democratically elected government.
It is true that I would not hire Nick. I don't smoke and I don't want to be protected from myself. The thing about that scenario though is that people are actually choosing Nick, just as people can choose to limit their freedom through other contracts like marriage or non-disclosure agreements. Stirner is one of my significant influences, but I think this post from Will Wilkinson at Happiness & Public Policy on the "Stirnerite fallacy" (and the Virginia Postrel review of "Paradox of Choice" it links to) do a decent job of explaining how we do choose to limit our choices or commit to things. Many of the paternalistic things the government does we could do as well, like Odysseus having his men tie him up. We don't because we don't want to. The government is enacting these policies not on people who have requested them for themselves (even different versions of selves) as in the Nicotrel commercial, but on people who don't want it. For a government that considers abortion to be a constitutional right, claiming that they are protecting the senior citizen me who will get diabetes but cannot speak for himself due to his current (and possibly permanent) non-existence rings hollow.
Judging from some of his other posts here, I doubt Robin Hanson would concur with your faith in professors / University departments. They aren't so much a market for advice/information as prestige/credentials and once in government aren't a market at all. I suppose I have less confidence in the first X names in the phone-book than William Buckley but they would still have many advantages over the faculty of Harvard for reasons discussed in The Wisdom of Crowds. The nature of the Harvard faculty would of course also change (as would the American Economic Association) if it were made into a governing institution, making the random phone-book page more attractive.
System 1 vs system 2 is standard heuristics and biases terminology for fast automatic cognitive systems and slow deliberative but potentially debiasable systems respectively.
I think that corporations serve to dilute aspects of responsibility asymmetrically, often in order to encourage relatively consequentialist behavior. Employees can be obliged to do things that they might otherwise not have the stomach for, some of which need to be done.
Sadly, no time to go into detail into my institutional ideas.
Bruce,
I agree that the "self" is a fiction. I would not say that we have multiple "selves" though. What is actually "self-like" about us is the continuous stream of consciousness, but the idea we have of agency is an illusion (in fact the "I" itself is simply a thought which is believed in, which is what Buddhism means by anatta).
I still don't see how this actual lack of selfhood means that treating each individual person as an autonomous agent is worse than relying on government agents to make all the decisions they care to make about how everyone should live. That is the part of your thesis I think is not well developed, and the one that historically governments have made a complete hash of. . . E.g. consider cost/benefit studies of the FDA, and how many lives it costs through drug delays vs. lives saved by keeping bad drugs off the market. . .
TO Michael Vasser:
Your proposal is very interesting, and I have some questions.
What are 'system one' errors, I'm not familiar with that term?
Also, isn't this what we do with old people, when they begin to have what we see as diminished capacity, we children try to persuade them not to drive, and the state takes away their licenses, etc, though of course there it is the children who have a legal? right to restrict the behavior of their aged parents, as well as minor children being restricted by their more competent parents, as you point out. As you also point out, in loco parentis is used in college, before the children are 21.
But you seem to be proposing such a scheme for those between 21 and 65, right?
if I read you right. I see why you say that the law is a system of this kind, but I am puzzled what you mean when you refer to the corporation, what do you have in mind there?
As far as business opportunities, I guess life coaches, psychotherapists (often with licensing requirements), and similar professions are voluntary systems along the lines you have in mind. I wonder if a system more aligned with modern norms might be developed along the lines of discussion groups, things like men's groups ( in which I participated for a while some years ago, and got some excellent advice based on other's life experiences, etc.), and other voluntary social groupings.
Please let me know the what you think about these questions.
To Stuart Armstrong, Robin Hanson, and other commentors:
I think Robin Hanson's question along with Stuart Armstrong's proposal goes right to the heart of the matter
-- how can we decide paternalism vs. the libertarian alternative on an empirical basis, instead of bloviating hot air? as I have been doing --
and let me propose an answer to the question: Where do we find the most unbiased and knowledgable advice market?
I bet you see where I'm going already... IT'S THE PROFESSORS! That's why they give us tenure, right? And by way, if you have spent some time in the bowels of government, as I have (as an outsider at DARPA, ONR, AFOSR, US Forest Service, mostly) did it seem to you, as it did to me, like nothing so much as a University Department, inside of which I spent several decades: it's full of seminars, and papers, and reviewing papers, and discussion groups, and committees and subcommittees (the only thing missing is the teaching, but there are a lot of add-ons, like annual day long refresher courses on defensive driving, and mandatory training on Total Quality Management, etc). I've spent only a little time in business environments, but not ones that function as advice markets, so I can't say anything useful about those.
I suppose though that Professors shouldn't be trusted to give advice on things in which we have a possibly biased self interest, like University Governance -- but wait! Isn't that exactly the thing they do ask us to give advice on? Oh Dear.
As I read this over, it sounds like it might be interpreted as ironic, because there may be an ironic edge to the writing, but be assured I am serious, I do think the Professors are the best advice market available. And I'm not saying that with an ironic edge, though I can see that people who are not Professors might wonder .....
To TGGP: Thanks for your comment.
I think the model you are referring to is the Rational Choice Model of Voting Participation, which is that people will vote if
p times B > C
where p is the probability that your vote will change the outcome, B is the Benefit you would obtain from your candidate winning, and C is the cost of voting ( inconvenience, shoe wear, etc,)
Since p is vanishingly small, maybe 10 to the -90th power for a US Presidential election, the model predicts much lower turnout than actually occurs, for which reason it has been suggested that instead of calling it the Rational Choice Model, it should simply be called the False Model of Voter Participation.
Fortunately for the reputation of Behavioral Economics, there is a related model which predicts much better, which is that people will vote if
p times B + E >C
where E is the Expressive Value of voting, to include the satisfaction derived from such things as: compliance with the ethic of voting, affirming one's allegiance to the political system, affirming a partisan preference, affirming one's efficacy in the political system, and other satisfactions, such as the pleasures of gathering information to decide which way to vote, social interaction associated with voting (discussion and debate, etc) and similar factors.
This model is probably to be preferred, since it predicts the results better than the other. I wonder what we should call it.
(All this comes from Keith Dowding's 2005 paper in the British Journal of Politics and International Relations, 7(3), 442-459.)
I saw the Nick Cotrell video, and it's very funny, thanks. My son liked it too. But I have to say that if I had a choice I would actually pick the government over Nick Cottrell. Actually, I wouldn't be surprised if you would too, unless you are a serious masochist ( I don't mean to get personal here). The government has not beaten me to a pulp and defenestrated me, not yet. Nor has it banned smoking, yet. And yet I gave it up, without the help of either Nick or the Government, in a previous century. The Dual-self Model of Impulse Control is probably more relevant here than either Nick or Uncle Sam.
To the other commentors, I plan to get to the other comments just as soon as I wash the dishes and check the homework.
.
The question is whether each person should be able to choose who to trust for debiased advice, or whether a democratic majority should be able to force others to follow their advice.
The question is also which situation offer the most debiased advice - a governmentally imposed system or a free-market one (unless you are morally a libertarian to the extent that that trumps all other considerations, in which case that question is irrelevant). In both cases you are effectively at the mercy of groups of people who have a huge information asymetry with you, and their own goals in mind.
We've been over some of the weaknesses of governmental advice, but what do you need for free-market advice to be reliable? Which advice markets are efficient, and which aren't? I'm thinking of trying to put together some criteria, but there probably already are some already; anyone know where I can find them?
I don't vote. Neither do most Americans. One vote doesn't have any marginal impact (you're more likely to win the lottery than change an election).
If I wanted to hire someone to protect me from myself it would be Nick Cotrell, not the government.
(My previous comment deleted by Robin at my request.)
Additions to Telnar's list:
-- A voter cannot hold an elected official to a campaign promise other than via the weak sanction of not voting for them two, four, or six years later.
-- A voter's vote is diluted by the votes of millions (most of whom get their information about candidates from television news, ads and highly-rehearsed televised debates). In contrast, a decision made by a individual under the nonpaternalistic arrangement does not suffer from a similar dilution.
Yes, it's an important part of your argument against libertarianism, Bruce, but I feel that you haven't defined it sufficiently. Can you explain exactly what you mean? And preciesly how it undermines libertarianism?
I also echo Stuart's request for more explanation of your claim here and how it invalidates libertarianism and makes paternalistic government a superior choice.