“Maybe this is all straw-manning, all of this is taken out of context, and the only place that Robin says his true opinion is in his book. But in that case I feel like this is a pretty extreme failure of communication that’s not entirely my fault. Also, other people seem to interpret it the same way I do:“
Based on the link above to Robin’s “debate” with Scott Alexander, I went back and reviewed the whole thing again, possibly in more detail than I did the first time.
I think I am mostly on Team Robin.
But the one place I agree with Scott is on the quoted bit above.
If Robin stuck to and repeated the “we spend too much taxpayer money on healthcare, including how we subsidize it in the tax code” and “we should reduce by half medical spending done on behalf of others” given the highly questionable returns on marginal spending, and “consider whether you would do xyz if you had to pay for it all yourself”, he would be on MUCH firmer ground.
What I found most surprising reviewing the debate was that no one brought up the alternative uses of the money, nor that marginal value differs enormously for each person - in no small part based on their income and assets! [Apologies to Robin if he did bring it up in one small place and I missed it.]
The fact that upper middle class Scott would value and pay for so many of the examples is kinda irrelevant. The better marginal point is whether - even assuming a generally accurate understanding of the risks and rewards - any given beneficiary of government or mandated insurance company largesse for a medical intervention would prefer the cash to the intervention.
Paternalistic leftists, of course, would say people don’t know what’s good for them - or can’t know, in the case of medicine. Re: the first part, I just roll my eyes; re: the 2nd part, this is where Robin’s points about ultimate outcome differences are entirely relevant.
Re: public policy the enormous total spending by taxpayers for limited / questionable benefits is the key point.
For individuals making decisions, their marginal utility of the medical intervention versus the cash spent alternative is the key point.
I put this on Robin more as a) the economist and b) the one pushing the more “controversial” view.
But it’s also on polymath Scott who should know better about these two basic points of public policy and economics, despite Robin’s failings at communicating this clearly.
“When disciplines conflict, I try to use discipline-neutral principles of evaluation.” However, this seems rather vague. For instance, sociologists and economists often have very different explanations for social phenomena. Which discipline should hold more weight in this case? Should we give more credence to individuals recognized as authorities in both fields? Additionally, what about beliefs and theories that rely on data from other disciplines, especially those that are subject to significant revisions over time, like social sciences that heavily depend on historical context? How confident can we be in our theories within social science?
The idea that most of the people in the social sciences today [economics mostly aside] are in fact experts who act the way you describe seems to me highly questionable, to say the least.
Without denying that some non-zero, and indeed perhaps non-trivial, percentage of today’s social scientists are disciplined and have real knowledge and expertise, given that their avowed mission is almost purely vibes based, the idea that most in the social sciences today are “experts” seems dubious.
The various and multiplying grievance studies fields are the most obvious, of course, but said missions have seeped into most other fields to greater and lesser extents.
Perhaps you simply assumed and meant “well, only those ‘experts’ that I have evaluated as proper experts”, and/or “well, I’m primarily talking about expertise established 30+ years ago before academia was infected with the change in mission from truth to social justice.”
But since you make no mention of the issue, this is very hard to know.
On that last type, I feel often it leads to error not because they were wrong, it's simply they don't have good mechanisms to defend against attacks. Experts can claim expertise, groupthink can call on the herd, the third type, nothing but their gut which more often than not is right enough.
Then goes back to vibes again, do I trust this polymath or that, maybe gpt is the best polymath, this feels like some form of appeal to authority.
“Maybe this is all straw-manning, all of this is taken out of context, and the only place that Robin says his true opinion is in his book. But in that case I feel like this is a pretty extreme failure of communication that’s not entirely my fault. Also, other people seem to interpret it the same way I do:“
Based on the link above to Robin’s “debate” with Scott Alexander, I went back and reviewed the whole thing again, possibly in more detail than I did the first time.
I think I am mostly on Team Robin.
But the one place I agree with Scott is on the quoted bit above.
If Robin stuck to and repeated the “we spend too much taxpayer money on healthcare, including how we subsidize it in the tax code” and “we should reduce by half medical spending done on behalf of others” given the highly questionable returns on marginal spending, and “consider whether you would do xyz if you had to pay for it all yourself”, he would be on MUCH firmer ground.
What I found most surprising reviewing the debate was that no one brought up the alternative uses of the money, nor that marginal value differs enormously for each person - in no small part based on their income and assets! [Apologies to Robin if he did bring it up in one small place and I missed it.]
The fact that upper middle class Scott would value and pay for so many of the examples is kinda irrelevant. The better marginal point is whether - even assuming a generally accurate understanding of the risks and rewards - any given beneficiary of government or mandated insurance company largesse for a medical intervention would prefer the cash to the intervention.
Paternalistic leftists, of course, would say people don’t know what’s good for them - or can’t know, in the case of medicine. Re: the first part, I just roll my eyes; re: the 2nd part, this is where Robin’s points about ultimate outcome differences are entirely relevant.
Re: public policy the enormous total spending by taxpayers for limited / questionable benefits is the key point.
For individuals making decisions, their marginal utility of the medical intervention versus the cash spent alternative is the key point.
I put this on Robin more as a) the economist and b) the one pushing the more “controversial” view.
But it’s also on polymath Scott who should know better about these two basic points of public policy and economics, despite Robin’s failings at communicating this clearly.
I am less interested in contrarianism than empiricism - but perhaps they are not so different: https://tempo.substack.com/p/a-teacher-of-evil
“When disciplines conflict, I try to use discipline-neutral principles of evaluation.” However, this seems rather vague. For instance, sociologists and economists often have very different explanations for social phenomena. Which discipline should hold more weight in this case? Should we give more credence to individuals recognized as authorities in both fields? Additionally, what about beliefs and theories that rely on data from other disciplines, especially those that are subject to significant revisions over time, like social sciences that heavily depend on historical context? How confident can we be in our theories within social science?
This just hasn't seemed to be that hard in practice for me, when we get to particular questions.
The idea that most of the people in the social sciences today [economics mostly aside] are in fact experts who act the way you describe seems to me highly questionable, to say the least.
Without denying that some non-zero, and indeed perhaps non-trivial, percentage of today’s social scientists are disciplined and have real knowledge and expertise, given that their avowed mission is almost purely vibes based, the idea that most in the social sciences today are “experts” seems dubious.
The various and multiplying grievance studies fields are the most obvious, of course, but said missions have seeped into most other fields to greater and lesser extents.
Perhaps you simply assumed and meant “well, only those ‘experts’ that I have evaluated as proper experts”, and/or “well, I’m primarily talking about expertise established 30+ years ago before academia was infected with the change in mission from truth to social justice.”
But since you make no mention of the issue, this is very hard to know.
On that last type, I feel often it leads to error not because they were wrong, it's simply they don't have good mechanisms to defend against attacks. Experts can claim expertise, groupthink can call on the herd, the third type, nothing but their gut which more often than not is right enough.