Thoughts on Ethics

Ethics is one of my favorite topics. If philosophy departments weren't so full of quacks, the grading wasn't so subjective, and the requirement's didn't include so much tripe, I'd probably be a philosophy major. (More thoughts on philosophy in one of my two Amazon.com book reviews.)

Warning: This is the customary warning that someone has probably made these points before.

Consequentialists think that the right thing to do is the action with the best consequences. Utilitarians are the most common type of consequentialists because they specify an intuitive criteria for "best:" whatever generates the most happiness is best. Of course, what exactly that means is a subject of much debate.

One "refutation" of utilitarianism is this reductio ad adsurdem argument. Consider a scenario where a million people will be happier by blaming and punishing a scapegoat for their problems. A slight increase in happiness multiplied a million times over could easily cancel out a ton of misery for one scapegoat. So the right thing to do is punish the scapegoat. But we know that isn't right. You can't punish someone for crimes they didn't commit.

But who says the utility function should just be the sum of happiness in the universal minus the pain in the universe. The point is that the distribution of happiness could matter. The utility function could take the happiness of each individual into account separately. One idea for how to do that would be to think of all possible words and rank them according to which one you'd want to live in if you didn't know who you'd be. This utility function captures the value of original position and veil of ignorance from John Rawls without the weaker parts of his theory of justice. This gives the utility function a much more natural, and less grand, interpretation too.

If we apply this utility function to the scapegoat case we find it gives the "right" prediction. If the risk of being that scapegoat is large enough no one would choose to live in that world. On the other hand, if everyone gains a lot and the risk of being the scapegoat is small, then the theory says punish the scapegoat. That makes sense. We don't want to lower the speed limit even though we know it would save a few lives because we all want the little bit of extra happiness from a shorter commute. Those who die in accidents are de facto scapegoats.

The interesting thing about this theory is that is changes the utility function from being concerned with the nature of "the good," i.e. with the meaning of a good life is. It punts on those questions and simply assumes that whatever we prefer is a good life. There's a large literature on this "good life" question, the debate largely revolving around the issue of whether a good life is one with satisfied preferences, happiness, or "virtue" (whatever that is).

An interesting property of this utility function, though, is that everyone might end up with different rankings of preferences. I might be risk averse and hate worlds with lots of inequality while you might be risk-neutral and just prefer the happiness world. How should we decide what the "actual" best world is? We'd have to know that to know what the true "best action" is. (Ignore the fact that it's already impossible to do this thought experiment and rank all possible worlds on our own, much less for everyone!)

One idea is that you could just take everyone's ranking of all possible words (suppose there is a finite number) and use them as some kind of vote. Whichever world wins the vote is the best world and the corresponding action is the best action. The problem with this is Arrow's Impossibility Theorem applies which means, under some basic criteria, there is no fair system for deciding which world is the best.

The lesson I take from this is that ethics is really a game where we make the rules and it's important not to over think the significance of these rules. When you try to make them consistent and sensible things start to fall apart, even on a purely theoretical level. When the utility function represents something objective (e.g. happiness, brain states, activity in pleasure sensing areas of the brain) then you're left asking why should ethics be concerned with that quantity? Is the purpose of the universe really to maximize the activity in pleasure sensing areas of the brain? But if you go with a less meta-physically grand strategy based on preferences, things fall apart. I ignored two even more basic problems with preferences. First, they may not even be transitive (e.g. A > B, B > C, yet C > A). Second, people are bad predictors of what they like. The lotteries will likely be heavily influenced by cognitive biases, like focusing too much on small changes of a miserable life.

Theoretical ethics is a mess, yet the alternative of having ad hoc rules for living seems equally unsatisfying.

Update: Related thoughts from Bryan Caplan.

Markets in Everything

This is the strangest job opportunity I've ever heard of.

This one is more my style. (HT: Marginal Revolution)

John Fitzgerald

This "8.9 on Hot or Not, Ivy League grad, Mensa member, can bench . . . over 1200 lbs." single-handily killed the notion that nice guys finish last with his epic display of class on Match.com. No one, it appears, can finish behind John Fitzgerald, former (self proclaimed) star of "Male Egos: Out of Control."

Now he's back in action, running a scam modeling agency and trying to extort money from some 19 year old girls.

Uncompetitive hospitals

There is a simple little game about lemon stands that they teach about in game theory classes. The setting is a beach where thirsty swimmers are scattered about. You want to put your stand where you can maximize the number of customers, given that the customers just go to the closest stand.

If no one has placed a stand you can put yours anywhere, although if the customers are deterred somewhat by walking you'll place it in the "middle" where you'll have the highest demand. If there is already a competitor's stand on the beach, where should you place your new stand? After some careful consideration you decide that you need to place it right next to the other stand because you'll take all of his customers one side and that's the best you can do.

This game is meant to illustrate why gas stations tend to be so close together and supermarkets are often right across the street from one another. Well, they are in Florida anyway where competition is cutthroat. In my hometown there is even a Lowe's that was built right across the street from Home Depot.

The lesson, then, is that in a competitive market stores are going to tend to cluster in the middle of the populace and do battle to win customers. At least until Wal-Mart crushes them.

With this in mind I was wondering why the three hospitals in my hometown are spaced so far apart. And why are they are right on the edges of residential areas? One is North of 95% of the houses, one is south of 95% of houses and one is East of 100% of the houses. They're placed as if the town was carved up by a cartel and each hospital has its own section. If health care provision was competitive shouldn't the hospitals be located closer to the heart of the city, side-by-side?

Or wait, maybe the health care sector isn't competitive. Could that have something to do with the outrageous costs?

Note: File this post under "musings not backed by careful research or good data."

Sport Demographics

I found this map on ESPN.com. It tells an interesting story about sports demographics.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The blue states considered Brazil's outser from the World Cup the bigger upset of the year while purple voted for Kentucky's quick defeat in the NCAA basketball tournament. (Ohio is green because it voted for Cleveland loss in the NBA playoffs and the D.C. metro states are red because of a similar loss in the NHL playoffs. Gray states had ties.)

So what separates the purple from the blue? Since the majority of states are purple I think it's easier to ask what sets the blue states apart?

Well, we'll start with a theory, based on the "ambiguity effect," that says people discard options where it's hard to assess the probability. That means I'm assuming basketball fans will vote for the NCAA upset while soccer fans will tend towards the World Cup upset, because it's easier to put in perspective.

Under this theory, blue states should be states with lots of soccer fans. And who likes soccer? Yuppies and Latin Americans. Indeed, it turns out that the Yuppie states (Northeast, but notably not Maine) and the states with large Hispanic populations (Florida, border states) voted for the World Cup upset.

But what's up with Georgia and Louisiana? They don't have large Hispanic populations. Perhaps they don't care much about NCAA basketball either.

Are you gay?

The best airplane comedy since Snakes on a Plane.

Should our politics be predictable?

Mike Huckabee doesn't think so:

[Huckabee] finds it “repulsive” when people assume that they know his mind simply because they know his affiliations. “I was never that predictable,” he said with satisfaction. “. . . I was never one to just pick up the company line and recite it. I hate that . . . And politics is becoming more and more where you’re handed this script and told, ‘Don’t improv.’ ”

I think it's fair to say that toting the party line is not a good thing. If that's why you're predictable you shouldn't be proud of your ignorance.

But, in general, we should have predictable political positions.

Someone who knows you well should have a good sense of your fundamental ethical beliefs. You think such and such criteria are what makes the world a good place, so given policies A, B, and C you would pick the one with the best consequences. (This assume you are some kind of consequentialist. And you should be.)

This doesn't mean people won't be surprised by your position on things. You probably have read articles and know statistics other people are unfamiliar with, and that evidence might be why you prefer B to A.

But if someone looking at the same evidence as you can't pretend to be you and derive your opinion, you're probably letting emotion color your opinions. And that's usually a bad thing in politics.