Cofounder of Beeminder
dreeves
Karma: 590
I’m curious to hear Nick Bostrom’s response to this.
Something like modal logic is needed to automate solutions to things like this: Blue-eyed Monks Though you might be right about the proliferation of modal logics.
You made some similar points here: Where Philosophy Meets Science And Robin Hanson followed up here: On Philosophers
Both times it was pointed out that Paul Graham has some similar complaints about philosophy here: How to Do Philosophy
Just a note: The established term for “a hypothetical unit of utility” is “util” or “utile” (typically pronounced “yootle”).
What really makes people uncomfortable is taking this to its logical conclusion and pointing out that enough economic inefficiency is as much of a human tragedy as, say, driving a school bus full of kids off a cliff. Which I absolutely believe.
Just as a comment on labels, I used to be an “evangelical atheist” but this essay by Sam Harris changed my mind:
http://richarddawkins.net/article,1702,The-Problem-with-Atheism,Sam-Harris
Excerpt:
...I’m not saying that racism is no longer a problem in this country, but anyone who thinks that the problem is as bad as it ever was has simply forgotten, or has never learned, how bad, in fact, it was.
So, we can now ask, how have people of good will and common sense gone about combating racism? There was a civil rights movement, of course. The KKK was gradually battered to the fringes of society. There have been important and, I think, irrevocable changes in the way we talk about race—our major newspapers no longer publish flagrantly racist articles and editorials as they did less than a century ago—but, ask yourself, how many people have had to identify themselves as “non-racists” to participate in this process? Is there a “non-racist alliance” somewhere for me to join?
Attaching a label to something carries real liabilities, especially if the thing you are naming isn’t really a thing at all. And atheism, I would argue, is not a thing. It is not a philosophy, just as “non-racism” is not one. Atheism is not a worldview—and yet most people imagine it to be one and attack it as such. We who do not believe in God are collaborating in this misunderstanding by consenting to be named and by even naming ourselves.
Driving distance? I live in Manhattan, sans car.
It’s easy to make up excuses for why it might still be rational to go to the movie. Here’s how to factor all that out and cut to the real issue:
Scenario 1: You bought a $10 non-refundable ticket to a show. (And note that you definitely would not have done so if the show cost $20.) As you get to the theater you realize you lost your ticket. Luckily, they have more available, still at $10. Do you buy another ticket?
Scenario 2: You didn’t buy a ticket ahead of time. As you get to the theater you realize that $10 has fallen out of your pocket and is lost. Luckily, you still have enough to buy a ticket. Do you do so?
Everyone agrees on Scenario 2. Of course you do. No one’s on such a tight budget that an unexpected change in wealth of $10 changes their utility for theater.
But many people refuse (I’ve checked) to see that Scenario 1 is fully equivalent. They can’t bear to pay another $10 for a show they already paid $10 for. If Scenarios 1 and 2 don’t feel fully equivalent, you’re probably suffering from the sunk cost fallacy!
I really liked Robin Hanson’s essay about this, “Policy Tug-O-War”:
http://www.overcomingbias.com/2007/05/policy_tugowar.html
Moral: Pull policy ropes sideways!
I’m not sure if we’re saying the same thing but I think the reason they’re equivalent is just that the cost of the first ticket is sunk so in both cases you’re $10 poorer and are faced with the decision of whether to spend $10 on the show.
By the way, there are two ways to fall prey to the sunk cost fallacy: In the original post the problem is throwing good money (or effort/energy) after bad. In the lost ticket scenario the problem is refusing to throw good money after bad. In general, the problem is being influenced in either direction by money/effort that is spent and unrecoverable.
In examples like in the original post, I will ask myself “would I go to see this show (or whatever) right now if it were free?”. I’ve actually seen people hyper-correct for the sunk cost fallacy and ask themselves “do I still think this is worth $X?”. The point is to make your decision now as if the cost had never happened, hence “sunk cost”.
I’m Daniel Reeves (not that other Daniel Reeves who I’ve seen comment on OvercomingBias, although conveniently I think every post by him I’ve seen I’ve agreed with!), a research scientist at Yahoo in New York City. I work on game theory and mechanism design though I’m a computer scientist by training. At the moment I’m particularly interested in anti-akrasia tools and techniques.
PS: You pointed out a handy inbox link—lesswrong.com/message/inbox—but I can’t seem to find that anywhere else on the site.
“I have no need of that hypothesis.”—Laplace to Napoleon
“This isn’t right. This isn’t even wrong.” -- Wolfgang Pauli, on a paper submitted by a physicist colleague
“Trying to be happy is like trying to build a machine for which the only specification is that it should run noiselessly.” -- (unknown)
“They laughed at Einstein. They laughed at the Wright Brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown.” -- Carl Sagan
“Faced with the choice of changing one’s mind and proving that there is no need to do so, almost everyone gets busy on the proof.” -- John Kenneth Galbraith
Interesting that you mention surgery.
I believe that much of the benefit of stomach surgery can be achieved without the actual surgery. The surgery costs on the order of $20,000 and is typically not covered by insurance—people are actually coughing up those amounts. What it accomplishes is to make you feel physically ill when you eat too much. That’s all. There’s no other magic going on. It just makes you eat less.
Or, more specifically, makes you want to eat less, since otherwise you’ll be nauseated. So, what if you put the $20,000 in escrow and had a yellow brick road to follow such that if you ever went off the road, even for just a day, the $20,000 would be gone? You would first starve yourself for a while to make sure you were safely below the road. Then you would be cautious for a while. If you ever got close to the edge of the road then you’d really be nervous. That piece of pie would not look so appetizing. It could possibly be enough to put you over the edge. It might be a $20k piece of pie. You would really not want to eat it.Finally, to respond to your point about weight loss vs fat loss, we don’t disagree, just that if you’re well outside your ideal weight range then scale weight is a perfectly good proxy for what you really care about and has the advantage of being much simpler to measure.
Great questions. It’s just honor system for now. That’s not necessarily crazy though. I mean, why do people on ebay actually send the goods after they get paid?
Mea culpa! Apparently I’m blind. I deleted all but the 5 highest voted quotes I had added.
Good point, though ebay still succeeds in the sense of providing a valuable service despite the fraud. Kibotzer should probably always remain community oriented—perhaps an existing user has to recruit you and vouch for you (and for Kibotzer) before the bet starts.
Right now I’m just focused on the value of a service like this, assuming away the trust/fraud issues. I’m confident those are ultimately solvable. People are mostly pretty decent, in my experience.
By the way, thanks everyone for all the feedback! The comments would also be a great place for pointers to other anti-akrasia tools. I mentioned stickk.com already. Are there others? Anti-akrasia can be interpreted more broadly than “create new carrots and sticks”.
This may be mostly an issue of terminology. Treat the upfront payment as a fee for the service and then there’s a contest with prizes. It’s not gambling for the same reason it’s not gambling when you pay an entry fee for a race with cash prizes.
I have a special interest in faireness. There’s a technical definition in mechanism design: a mechanism (say for allocating goods) is Fair if all participants derive equal utility from participating. Compare to Efficiency: total utility is maximized (each good went to the person who wanted it most). You get both fairness and efficiency by having the winners pay the losers just enough so that the losers are as happy with the money as the winners are with the booty minus the money. A related mechanism property is envy-freeness: no one would prefer to trade places with anyone else.