Today I speak with my great friend Robin Hanson. I'm lucky enough to be an elevated fanboy. I knew Robin through his blog, Overcoming Bias and his appearances on Econtalk well before we ever met in person. Since attending GMU as a student, I've been fortunate enough to get to know Robin both personally and academically. I'm not kidding when I say that he's quite probably the smartest person I know. I can't recall a single time I've had an economics-related discussion with him that I didn't walk away understanding something better, and this chat was no exception. It was my great privilege to record this talk, and I hope you enjoy listening to it as much as I enjoyed recording it.
download
Also, around the 24 minute mark, I misspoke. I said that if the marginal benefit of each additional brain emulation approaches zero, it makes sense to produce a whole bunch. This is an obvious error. If the marginal cost approaches zero, new units would be produced even if the marginal benefit is small. I apologize to anyone I offended.
For anyone interested, the new thing I learned is the exchange around the 37 minute mark re: coordination. I claim that big social norms are examples of grand-scale coordination successes, but Robin cannily points out that enforcing violations of these big norms is always local. This is now one of those burning questions that I'm fixin' to tear up on Twitter (I'm @spivonomist, you can follow Robin under @robinhanson).
And near the end, we talk about KORROK without actually mentioning his name, which is pretty cool.
On a side note, I'm still working out how to get these talks up on iTunes or a similar service. Expect something in the near future (see what I did there?).
Showing posts with label theory of mind. Show all posts
Showing posts with label theory of mind. Show all posts
Wednesday, May 14, 2014
Wednesday, August 28, 2013
Christopher Walken's Lesser Known Brother, Jay
From the Twitter, an interesting conversation between EE peeps Pamela J Stubbart, Adam Gurri, and Zac Gochenour, plus commentary from "Dr. Phil of Economics", the content of which can be found here. Again, the threading is a little hard to follow, so let's see if I can parse.
Peej: Aggressive but genuinely competent jaywalking still has pretty serious negative externalities because other pedestrians are taking cues from you.
Zac/Dr. Phil: That's an abuse of the language of economics. You're talking about information transmission, and negative externalities are what happens when a third party incurs costs of a transaction of which they are not a part. This doesn't count, since the decision of the other pedestrians in your example still have to make the rational decision whether or not to jaywalk.
Peej: Rational? What are you talking about? I'm talking Kahneman here, not Demsetz. Try to keep up, boys.
Adam: lol, pwned. But it's still hard to call that an externality. Even if the mental processing is not de facto rationally conscious, it's not like the classical examples where avoidance costs come from outside sources. Think of Coase's train sparks and cornfields. There's no farmer mulling over a private calculus, there are burning crops. The two just aren't equivalent.
Peej: Theory of mind much, Adam? What happens in your head is as "real" as what happens in physical space. [SLW note: Pamela didn't actually press this point, this is more me furthering the argument for didactic purposes]
Dr. Phil/Adam: Information transmission is how civilizations happen. We are human thanks to our habit of mimicry.
Peej: So you admit I'm right. That's what I thought.
And then she took a picture of herself in a victory pose.
What do you think? Does jaywalking impose mimicry costs on others? In a court of law, you wouldn't be able to make a case of actual physical coercion, but what of a sort of soft coercion centered on a weakness of will or overconfidence or whatever other cognitive bias might influence a novice (or a child) jaywalker-to-be?
Can we extend the example? Does pro wrestling bear some responsibility for idiot kids breaking their necks in the backyard when they try to recreate Wrestlemania XXIX with their idiot buddies? Do savvy day traders bear responsibility for overenthusiastic amateurs' dabblings in uncovered short sales? I don't mean in a legal sense, I mean in a pedestrian heuristic sense.
I think the ol' "I learned it by watching you, dad" cry is commonly brought to bear when convenient. Parents will storm the studios of MTV when their kids parrot what they see on Jackass (can you tell how long it's been since I've watched TV regularly?), but they're more likely to do the Justification Tango when it's their own behavior that might be suspect. Construal Level Theory strikes again.
It's also very interesting to revisit Munger's norms arguments in light of jaywalking. Nobody, and I mean but nobody jaywalks in Seattle. This is not true in Boston. Why? Is it more euvoluntary in Beantown? How did it get that way? Curious stuff, people.
Peej: Aggressive but genuinely competent jaywalking still has pretty serious negative externalities because other pedestrians are taking cues from you.
Zac/Dr. Phil: That's an abuse of the language of economics. You're talking about information transmission, and negative externalities are what happens when a third party incurs costs of a transaction of which they are not a part. This doesn't count, since the decision of the other pedestrians in your example still have to make the rational decision whether or not to jaywalk.
Peej: Rational? What are you talking about? I'm talking Kahneman here, not Demsetz. Try to keep up, boys.
Adam: lol, pwned. But it's still hard to call that an externality. Even if the mental processing is not de facto rationally conscious, it's not like the classical examples where avoidance costs come from outside sources. Think of Coase's train sparks and cornfields. There's no farmer mulling over a private calculus, there are burning crops. The two just aren't equivalent.
Peej: Theory of mind much, Adam? What happens in your head is as "real" as what happens in physical space. [SLW note: Pamela didn't actually press this point, this is more me furthering the argument for didactic purposes]
Dr. Phil/Adam: Information transmission is how civilizations happen. We are human thanks to our habit of mimicry.
Peej: So you admit I'm right. That's what I thought.
And then she took a picture of herself in a victory pose.
What do you think? Does jaywalking impose mimicry costs on others? In a court of law, you wouldn't be able to make a case of actual physical coercion, but what of a sort of soft coercion centered on a weakness of will or overconfidence or whatever other cognitive bias might influence a novice (or a child) jaywalker-to-be?
Can we extend the example? Does pro wrestling bear some responsibility for idiot kids breaking their necks in the backyard when they try to recreate Wrestlemania XXIX with their idiot buddies? Do savvy day traders bear responsibility for overenthusiastic amateurs' dabblings in uncovered short sales? I don't mean in a legal sense, I mean in a pedestrian heuristic sense.
I think the ol' "I learned it by watching you, dad" cry is commonly brought to bear when convenient. Parents will storm the studios of MTV when their kids parrot what they see on Jackass (can you tell how long it's been since I've watched TV regularly?), but they're more likely to do the Justification Tango when it's their own behavior that might be suspect. Construal Level Theory strikes again.
It's also very interesting to revisit Munger's norms arguments in light of jaywalking. Nobody, and I mean but nobody jaywalks in Seattle. This is not true in Boston. Why? Is it more euvoluntary in Beantown? How did it get that way? Curious stuff, people.
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