Overcoming Bias

Animal Morality

A New Scientist book review:

Wild Justice makes a compelling argument for open-mindedness regarding non-human animals. It also argues that social behaviours such as cooperation provide evidence for a sophisticated animal consciousness. In particular, the authors propose that other animal species possess empathy, compassion and a sense of justice - in other words, a moral code not unlike our own. ... They believe such codes are necessarily species-specific and warn against, for instance, judging wolf morals by the standards of monkeys, dolphins or humans. ...

Bekoff and Pierce make their case by calling on a wide range of animal studies, from field biology to the laboratory and from the anecdotal to the statistical. ... [In an] experiment, rats refused to push a lever for food when they realised their action meant another animal got an electric shock.

Some possible responses:

1. Apparent animal "morality" isn't real morality, because it lacks human factor X.
2. To the extent animal morality differs from human, animals are just wrong.
3. Each species only intuitively knows what it is moral for that species to do.
4. Creature have preferences and social norms; there is no further "morality."

Toward Honest Ideals

In Generous Lust, I quoted:

In women, mating goals boosted public— but not private— helping. ... In men, it did induce more helpfulness in contexts in which they could display heroism or dominance. ... Overall, romantic motives seem to produce highly strategic and sex-specific self-presentations best understood within a costly signaling framework.

In Far Thoughts Fit Ideals, I said:

We tend more to say we will act in accord with our verbally expressed and proudly embraced abstract ideals, e.g., individualism, collectivism, universalism, environmentalism, when we are put into the mental mode that was designed more for talking relative to doing - the far mode.  In contrast, when we are in our usual near mode ... we tend to ignore those abstract ideals, ... practically achieving our usual ends.

I asked:

In what sense, if any, are folks who act these ways mistaken about what they want?

I'll say we tend to be mistaken about how much our wants depend on contextual details.  As I said in Generous Lust:

The disturbing thing is that these folks were probably unaware that their generosity was caused in large part by romantic feelings.  They probably thought they just wanted to help, not that they wanted to help especially when it might impress potential mates.

We tend to talk as if we "really" want to follow our ideals but are sometimes thwarted by "distractions" or "weakness of will."  But we probably favor our ideals more when:

Far Thoughts Fit Ideals

Back in January, a Journal of Personality and Social Psychology article found:

Values are more likely to be expressed through value-congruent judgments and behaviors when individuals think abstractly about their actions, and not when they think concretely.

This wording sounds strange to an economist; to us someone's "values" are just whatever preferences explain his behavior.  The behavior of folks thinking in near (concrete) mode is just as explainable as for those thinking in far (abstract) mode - it is just explainable via different preferences.

However, by "values" these psychologists actually mean what I'll call "ideals" - abstract, as opposed to concrete, goals that we verbally, and usually proudly, embrace.  They include:

individualistic goals (e.g., “For unique individuals like you”). ... collectivistic goals (e.g., “For spending quality time with friends and family”) ...  universalism (i.e., understanding, appreciation, tolerance, and protection for the welfare of all people and of nature) and self-direction values (i.e., independent thought and action choosing, creating, and exploring)

Morals From Stories?

Scott Sumner suggests utilitarian stories drive our moral intuitions:

One of the most common strategies of the anti-utilitarian position is to assume some societal set-up which shocks our sensibilities, and then assume that it would satisfy the utilitarian criterion of maximizing aggregate happiness.  Thus we might be asked to imagine a scenario where the total pleasures of the slave-owner exceed the suffering of the slaves ... Bryan has an even more shocking example where the benefits to Nazi’s from the Holocaust exceeded the suffering to the Jews. ...  At the end of these thought experiments we are told that unless we are willing to embrace the society envisioned in the thought experiment, we must, on logical grounds, give up on utilitarianism.

I have several interrelated objections to this style of philosophical inquiry.  I’d like to start with Richard Rorty’s assertion that the narrative arts (novels and film) produce liberal values. ... So if Rorty is correct, how do we know that slavery was so awful?  Because we have been exposed to accounts of slavery in the arts which vividly showed how the suffering of slaves was immeasurably greater that the frivolous pleasures of the slave-owner.  Can we then turn around and use an imaginary slave-owning society that passes the utilitarian test as an argument against utilitarianism?  I’m not sure that we can, unless one can show that our initial visceral reaction against slavery is based on non-utilitarian grounds, i.e. based on some abstract philosophical principle.  And that’s much harder than many people might imagine.

This seems to me a powerful argument.  What data could test it?

Added 9pm:  As I understand it, the argument isn't that we can't now imagine compelling stories of, e.g., non-utilitarian-maxing slavery.  The argument, I think, is more that we overgeneralize from the stories where we first picked up our morals.  For example, we first hear stories where slave owners gain less than slaves lose, and then come to see all slavery as bad. 

On Liberty vs. Efficiency

To "win" a debate you aren't supposed to tip your opponent to the arguments you'll use.  But to promote a more productive conversation, that is exactly what you might do.  So in this post I'll lay out my basic (rather technical) argument for tonight's debate.  I've said:

The topic, as I see it, is the relative value/importance for economists of pushing "liberty," i.e., a policy of minimal government interference, and "efficiency," a standard policy evaluation metric that attempts to neutrally weigh policy consequences for different people.

Humans often find themselves in conflicts where they might make (and enforce) "deals" instead of "fighting" (or doing "nothing").  Such conflicts are often complex enough for many parties to be uncertain how they would fare, relative to fighting, under various possible deals.  In such situations, I see a noble and important role for expert arbiters who are "neutral," i.e., who develop deserved reputations for suggesting "win-win" deals where most or all parties should expect to benefit, relative to fighting.  Given access to such neutral expert advisers, conflicting parties can make better deals, to their mutual benefit. 

One reason I'm proud to be an economist is that we often fill this neutral expert arbiter role to varying degrees, and could do so even more if we tried.  And "efficiency," also known as "cost-benefit analysis," helps make this possible.  To estimate the efficiency of a deal, relative to a status quo, one adds up estimates for each person of the dollar value that person would place on this deal. 

Self-Haters Donate More

Psychological Science told us "Haters Cheat Less"; now it tells us "Self-Haters Donate More":

We propose a framework suggesting that moral (or immoral) behavior can result from an internal balancing of moral self-worth and the cost inherent in altruistic behavior. In Experiment 1, participants were asked to write a self-relevant story containing words referring to either positive or negative traits. Participants who wrote a story referring to the positive traits donated one fifth as much as those who wrote a story referring to the negative traits. In Experiment 2, we showed that this effect was due specifically to a change in the self-concept. In Experiment 3, we replicated these findings and extended them to cooperative behavior in environmental decision making. We suggest that affirming a moral identity leads people to feel licensed to act immorally. However, when moral identity is threatened, moral behavior is a means to regain some lost self-worth.

So when can it be good to make people feel bad about themselves, so that they will be good to others?

Haters Cheat Less

From a recent Psychological Science:

In Experiment 1, our confederate cheated ostentatiously by finishing a task impossibly quickly and leaving the room with the maximum reward. In line with social-norms theory, participants' level of unethical behavior increased when the confederate was an in-group member, but decreased when the confederate was an out-group member.

So folks will cheat less when they believe outsiders cheat more.  When can this justify preaching that other nations, religions, races, genders, etc. are evil or immoral?

Augustine's Paradox of optimal repentance

Eliezer once wrote this about Newcomb's problem:

Nonetheless, I would like to present some of my motivations on Newcomb's Problem - the reasons I felt impelled to seek a new theory - because they illustrate my source-attitudes toward rationality. Even if I can't present the theory that these motivations motivate...

First, foremost, fundamentally, above all else:

Rational agents should WIN.

As I just commented on another thread, this is faith in rationality, which is an oxymoron.

It isn't obvious whether there is a rational winning approach to Newcomb's problem. But here's a similar, simpler problem that billions of people have believed was real, which I'll call Augustine's Paradox ("Lord, make me chaste - but not yet!")

All conservative variants of Christianity teach, in one way or another, that your eternal fate depends on your state in the last moment of your life. If you live a nearly-flawless Christian life, but have a sinful thought ten minutes before dying and the priest has already left, you go to Hell. If you are sinful all your life but repent in your final minute, you go to Heaven.

The optimal self-interested strategy is to act selfishly all your life, and then repent at the final moment. But if you repent as part of a plan, it won't work; you'll go to Hell anyway. The optimal strategy is to be selfish all your life, without intending to repent, and then repent in your final moments and truly mean it.

I don't think there's any rational winning strategy here. Yet the purely emotional strategy of fear plus an irrationally large devaluation of the future wins.

Beware Value Talk

Last week I wrote:

[For] lawyers supporting clients, engineers presenting designs, accountants presenting financial accounts, or academics presenting analyses, styles are more "no-nonsense."  They avoid colorful flashy emotional visual aids and music, use precise concise technical and unemotional language, make structured and standardized arguments, explicitly summarize and address opposing views, make methods and premises explicit, and warn early of conclusions and structures. ... Authors who want to be seen as minimizing the propaganda element of their communications avoid using flashy styles. ... [In contrast,] in such propaganda contexts, impressive charismatic leaders tend to speak in simple repetitive eloquent poetic vague emotional language, often with rambling structures, engaging stories, vivid colorful flashy emotional music and visual aids.

Communities of conversation "serious" about working together to make progress in understanding things tend not only to follow the above style conventions, they also tend to follow a key content rule:  avoid arguing basic values. 

Communities that mostly agree on how to evaluate claims can make a lot of progress, and such agreement comes naturally enough when discussion is restricted to "facts" connected to frequent observations and actions.  Such communities can also discuss how to achieve a few commonly accepted values. 

For example, athletes can talk about how to win games, lawyers about winning cases, salesmen about increasing sales, business managers about increasing profits, scientists about accelerating scientific progress, engineers about improving design efficiencies, medical experts about increasing health while decreasing costs, and economists about increasing policy "economic-efficiency." 

In all of these cases, explicit agreement on simply-expressed values allows group conversations to progress effectively toward achieving such values.  Members can specialize, develop and use specialized language and techniques, and evaluate others' contributions to the common cause.  In contrast, groups that freely argue about basic values tend to fragment into like-thinking-cliques focused more on clique loyalty than on fairly crediting informative contributions.

The Thing That I Protect

Followup to:  Something to Protect, Value is Fragile

"Something to Protect" discursed on the idea of wielding rationality in the service of something other than "rationality".  Not just that rationalists ought to pick out a Noble Cause as a hobby to keep them busy; but rather, that rationality itself is generated by having something that you care about more than your current ritual of cognition.

So what is it, then, that I protect?

I quite deliberately did not discuss that in "Something to Protect", leaving it only as a hanging implication.  In the unlikely event that we ever run into aliens, I don't expect their version of Bayes's Theorem to be mathematically different from ours, even if they generated it in the course of protecting different and incompatible values.  Among humans, the idiom of having "something to protect" is not bound to any one cause, and therefore, to mention my own cause in that post would have harmed its integrity.  Causes are dangerous things, whatever their true importance; I have written somewhat on this, and will write more about it.

But still - what is it, then, the thing that I protect?

Friendly AI?  No - a thousand times no - a thousand times not anymore.  It's not thinking of the AI that gives me strength to carry on even in the face of inconvenience.