I, Sandwich

Well, almost I, Sandwich. Pay attention to all the capital used, from the stoves, to the boat, to the farms, to the plastic jugs, piped gas, &c &c &c. But even with all that, making a humble sandwich from (almost) scratch should lend an appreciation for the BATNA to market exchange, a BATNA that folks in, eg, Venezuela are obliged to accept.

False or Unfalse

I am a child of my upbringing, so when I think of statements that cannot be falsified, my thoughts inevitably turn to Mr. T and his stern warnings about the perils of jibber-jabber. Indeed, I pity the fool who listens to anyone making weaselly, motivated, partisan claims about stock market movements, alleged effects of policy on quarterly growth, or spurious remarks about employment rates. In short, most of what passes for financial or economics journalism is so obviously tripe that I honestly have to wonder at the good sense of the people who consume it.

"The stock market rallied following blah blah blah from the President today" is less informative than the nether bellowing of a porcine oaf. At least in the event of a noisy fart, listeners can conclude that at one point, the issuing individual enjoyed a fine meal. With financial soothsaying, the wind and volume accompany nothing.

So here's the common-sense jurisprudence question: should market-watching geese be subject to false advertising statutes? If their inane proclamations induce individuals to trade based on naught but empty bellows, shouldn't they bear some liability? Or is the soul of commercial regulation located only in the profit center? Does it matter whether or not commercial speech is made by a third party who does not stand to profit directly?

If it does matter, what does that say about citizen jurisprudence towards third party review sites like Yelp or Zillow or whatever?

The public (and the Supreme Court) have already decided that some forms of commercial speech are not protected by the First Amendment. If deception were the only issue, most financial journalists would be liable in tort. It appears that you need to combine deception and profit-seeking to run afoul of the popular sentiment. Curious.

EE on the Shores of Lake Wobegone

The Lake Wobegone effect is the propensity for folks to believe that they're above average along any given dimension. Now, there are a lot of ways to interpret this result: ego preservation, cheap talk, systematic error, innocent self-delusion. It's usually not that big a problem, but it appears to be a cognitive bias that is exploitable (at least in the lab) for gain.

So if folks think they're smarter or better looking or stronger or whatever than they actually are, is it exploitation to sell them things that leverage this delusion?

Should Dove be upbraided for misleading marketing practices?

Before we put the spurs to this mustang, let's haul those reins in a bit there, Cowboy. If folks are objectively wrong about measuring up to an actual population parameter, what are the moral intuitions supporting third-party interventions?

Okay, hombre. Think of it this way: I've got a mental mannequin of what my life looks like and how it stacks up against my relative reference group (which changes, naturally, depending on what I'm measuring). I dress this mannequin up and align it in the poses I see fit based on my perceptions, faulty as they might be. Even if I'm systematically wrong, does that imply that I'm worse off? And even if I'm worse off, does that imply that a third party would know better? And even if I'm worse off and a third party knows better, does that imply that such a third party can consistently remedy my error in a way that will make me sufficiently better off to offset the resources spent to correct my error?

A dubious prospect made more dubious by the possibility that I actively enjoy my self-deception. I pay for escapist fantasies after all. I don't particularly relish having my delusions dashed.

Even if it's "for my own good."

Euvoluntary Exchange, Sympathy, and Evolution

Two interesting examples.

1.  Is generosity adaptive?  It used to be verboten to suggest that group selection worked across species (though it might work within a species, for hives or nests of eusocial insects).  But now we can ask, is generostiy adaptive?  Notice that this is NOT altruism, exactly.  Interesting.

Evidence from economic games played in the laboratory for real money suggests humans are both trusting of those they have no reason to expect they will ever see again, and surprisingly unwilling to cheat them—and that these phenomena are deeply ingrained in the species’s psychology. Existing theories of the evolution of trust depend either on the participants being relatives (and thus sharing genes) or on their relationship being long-term, with each keeping count to make sure the overall benefits of collaboration exceed the costs. Neither applies in the case of passing strangers, and that has led to speculation that something extraordinary, such as a need for extreme collaboration prompted by the emergence of warfare that uses weapons, has happened in recent human evolution to promote the emergence of an instinct for unconditional generosity.

I'm not so sure.  Smacks of a "just so" story.

2.  On the other hand:  the incredible shrinking wholly mackeral ball.  Do watch:



Bait ball, bait ball, watcha gonna do?  Whatcha gonna do when tuna come for you?

My colleague Emerson Niou insists that this behavior is a straightforward one-shot PD.
That is, this behavior is NOT adaptive, at the group level, but it is adaptive at the individual level.

Consider:
a.  If somehow the mackeral could signal, "1, 2, 3....GO!" they could all skedaddle at once, in random directions, before predators gather in large numbers.  The bluefin would have had to concentrate on single skedaddlers, instead of taking a bite of the ball, and then another, and then another.

b.  However, if I expect you to skedaddle, I should stay in the (for now) relative safety of the bait ball, while you lead predators away (and, of course, you die, because one loan mackeral can't escape the speedy tuna).

c.   If instead  I expect you to stay in the bait ball, I should...stay in the baitball.  In other words, "stay in the bait ball" is an individually dominant strategy, even though the Pareto optimum is "everybody skedaddle now!"

The question is how a species that acts like this survives.  The answer has to be (as commenters pointed out when I discussed this over at KPC) that it just doesn't happen very often.

My question for Prof. Niou is:  why not?  Why would it be rare?  Why aren't mackeral extinct?

(UPDATE: I accidently said "loan mackeral" above. But I left it. Because it's true that a loan mackeral could never escape a loan shark. Man, I kill me...)