I think that people can choose to do exactly those things. Food is a perfect example. Certainly we have taste buds that inevitably send certain signals when they encounter certain foods. Sugar always tastes sweet and salt always tastes salty; nothing anybody can do can change that, as far as I know. But we are entirely able to control how we react to sweetness, saltiness, and so forth. As a child I found sweet food to be wonderful and I always ate as much as I could get. When I grew up, I learned how sugar is bad for me and chose to cut down. At first it was hard and I often ate more sugar than I really wanted to, but as time went on I found myself getting less and less enjoyment from the taste of sugar, and now I eat less because I’ve chosen to enjoy it less. My mother has followed the same process and even reached the state where she barely gets any positive sensation from sugar at all.
Likewise I can see similar processes at work in relation to numerous other decisions, such as the selfishness vs. altruism question that’s dominated this thread. Some people start out selfish early on in life, but then have an epiphany or awakening where they realize that they need to reign in their selfish actions and start devoting their life to others. At first it’s difficult, but if they can force themselves into a certain type of behavior regularly then the result is not only unselfish behavior, but also wanting to be unselfish.
None of this is theoretical; it’s actually being applied. For example, it’s used to treat obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). In this disorder people experience a powerful need to perform some seemingly useless action like tapping their foot in a certain pattern. Dr. Jeffrey Schwartz has developed a therapeutic process whereby patients can cure themselves of this disorder simply by making a resolution to now want to perform their obsessive-compulsive action any longer, and sticking with that resolution.
Evolutionary psychologists believe that we’ve inherited a huge number of behaviors, tastes, and responses from our ancestors, each one of which would presumably involve multiple genes. So if the basic idea of evolutionary psychology is true, we’re talking about a massive number of genes here. Tests for thousands of genes are now available at low cost, as was the subject of a thread we both participated in a few weeks ago. The basic process of matching genes with traits is straightforward. You take a thousand people who have a trait and a thousand who don’t and you find the gene or genes that occur in the first group but not the second.
So you may say, well the genes only give us predispositions rather than guarantees, and there are multiple genes interacting with each other to produce the effects, and so forth. All that’s possible, and thus we wouldn’t expect to find a single gene present in every member of the first thousand but no member of the second thousand. However, in some cases there would be a strong correlation between the gene and the trait. You may have an explanation for not finding all the genes that ev psych people believe in, but we should certainly have found some of them by now.
I’m basing my conclusion on the way that evolutionary psychology functions, as best I can tell from what I read about it. When scientists are in polar disagreement, the correct response, in theory, is to do an experiment that will determine who’s right and who’s wrong. If C. Owen Lovejoy says that we’re evolved to be monogamous while Dr. Julie Holland says that we’re evolved to be polygamous, what they should do is design an experiment to determine who’s right. What they do do is to have each side continue spitting out theoretical “proofs” of why they’re right, with no experiments ever involved. Endless speculation about what happened on the African Savanna is not science; we’ll never know how people behaved in caveman times. The sole source of definite information we have on this topic is the human genome, so we should be doing experiments on that to test the claims of evolutionary psychology. Yet when I read the journals I see zero such experiments, and I grow suspicious that it’s because the more these experiments turn up blank, the sillier the field looks.
I’m basically relying on Chesterton’s maxim that if you want to evaluate a statement you should first rephrase it in simple language. When someone reads “Country differences in sexual motivation partly reflect varying costs of extramarital sexuality with females possibly increasing their interest in sexual variety to boost heritable disease resistance”, it can on like that for pages without causing the reader any thought at all. If we rephrase that as “women in countries with higher rates of AIDS sleep around more so that their children will be more likely to have disease-resistant genes”, it suddenly becomes clear what’s being said. I don’t believe that because I know plenty of women, and none of them sleep around because they want to produce children with disease-resistant genes. Perhaps your experience is different; I don’t know.
Likewise when someone writes “Kin selection theory predicts that grandparents will differentially invest in their grandchildren as a function of paternity certainty”. If we rephrase that as, “Grandparents call and write to their daughters’ children more than to their son’s children because they’re more certain of the parentage”, then it’s clear what’s actually being said. I know plenty of grandparents, and this claim just isn’t true.
A few instances of nonsense in a field may just be random noise, but when I see endless examples of this sort of thing piling up, I’m forced to the conclusion that the whole field is nonsense.
Neither study disagrees with me. We’re defining evolutionary psychology here as the driving of behavior by our genes, which arose from an evolutionary process. Our genes provide the necessary building material for our brain. That’s what the studies say and I’ve never denied it. But neither of the studies says that our genes determine our choices, personal preferences, or responses to a given situation. Likewise, saying that silicon is a necessary building block of the computer on which you read this does not mean that silicon was the cause of this post.
We have the capability to exist on a much higher level than chimpanzees. We can think, while chimps can’t.
Maybe that’s how you see it, but I see behavior patterns that are remarkably different even in the same geographical area. For instance, in Manhattan some people are devoting their lives to charity work while others are devoting their lives to hogging more money than they could ever possibly spend. Did all those Wall Street bankers and hedge fund managers simply evolve from different cavemen and thus fail to get the “altruism gene”? Or is it more likely that these people are selfish because they were raised in a culture that taught them to be selfish?
I don’t think the chimps are doing game theory. The assignment was not to try to negotiate a price, but to measure perceived value. Value of course fluctuates depending on demand and supply; this does not contradict that obvious principle. This experiment (which has been replicated over and over again) is talking about value estimates. Do you think that MBA students (who did the original experiment) are so clueless that they are so far off in evaluating the value of the mug? And why would it split between those with and those without? Since no negotiations were to be done, why set such a high price (or a low one, if you want to view it that way.)
The mug experiment is reported in Kahneman, Knetch, and Thaler (1990). By the way, the effect has not been found for induced value tokens.
I’ve seen a similar effect in IC design, where cooking overhead into the design from the beginning, as opposed to adding it after the design is done, significantly reduced the resistance of designers to adding the extra logic. The overhead of the completed chip is the same in either case.
Hayek’s paper has nothing to do with the current case. We are not discussing society-wide decisions, but very local decisions, often when full information is available. Clearly both those with and without cups had the same information in the cup experiment, and those signing up for subprime mortgages were presented with the legally required information, enough so that the “econ” as Thaler and Sunstein call him, would never take the mortgage.
Plenty of cases exist where these effects have been shown when people are spending their own money. For instance, some countries in Europe have widely different rates of organ donations than others - 60 percentage points different. The only explanation for this is the default effect - those countries who default to donation (unlike the US) have much higher rates than those who default to not donating. The 401K situation is well known. I think what happens to your parts qualifies as real, don’t you?
Your finding a Communist under every not an absolute free market bed is noted. I’m not aware of any behavioral economist who even slightly calls for central planning. I’m sure they would note that the planners are subject to these effects as the average man on the street, but with much worse effects on the economy. What we need is a recognition that these things happen, and adjustment of policies (like having new employees default to getting signed up for a 401K) to handle them. The most important thing is to not base economic policy on the fiction of homo economous, where each person can evaluate complex risks and do complex calculations at a moments notice.
In other words, bias the experiment to get the result you think it should get.
In “The Price is Right” - the last time I saw it, a long time ago - contestants didn’t possess the products when guessing the price. It would be interested to set up a parallel price is right where you give people the products then somehow force them to guess, and compare the results.
Have you ever read their self-justification? Many are convinced that these financial products make markets more efficient and are better for everyone. An exec who was at Countrywide was interviewed on Marketplace after the meltdown, and he was adamant that for the most part they were getting people into homes they could not otherwise afford, and the extra commission they got for subprimes had nothing to do with anything. Plenty of people do wrong while using their altrusism gene as a justification.
But how do you know that the change was the result of the decision and not the actions? Given that there was no change when you made the decision, but that there was change as a result of your actions, I don’t think it’s reasonable to claim you can decide your preferences. Work to change them, sure. Choose to, and have it be done, certainly not.
But here you’ve given the point away - you’ve suggested this requires an epiphany or awakening to change one’s desires, and those too aren’t under our control. I can’t choose to have an epiphany; I would generally consider myself to be a reasonably unselfish person, but I can’t choose to be more or less selfish than I am, nor can I choose to want to be more or less selfish. And, again, here you have the problem of actions being the cause, not decisions.
I actually have OCD myself. The problem with the process itself is that it is still dependent on wanting to change, wanting to make a resolution. A person with OCD is conflicted, to some extent or another. I mean, i’d very much like to be able to simply make such a resolution - after all, I know that I get nothing from my triggered actions. But then there is the other part of me, the enfucked part (I think that’s the technical term) which says that yes, I do get some benefit from those actions. That’s the problem with OCD; at the same time you don’t want to be affected by it, you do want to commit those actions.
If you’re in a position to be able to make such a resolution, certainly you’re going to get better. But you can’t choose to hold that view; if I were able to make such a resolution, i’d be cured long ago. The argument you’re making here is, essentially, that if people with OCD were able to ignore their triggers they wouldn’t have OCD. Well, yeah, but we can’t choose how good we are at ignoring.
As you yourself say, it is not so simple to declare one group to be altruistic and one to be selfish; those things are a sliding scale, not an on/off switch. And then of course you have to come up with an experimental procedure which accurately measures those traits, and controls for as much as possible besides genetics. The basic process of matching genes with traits isn’t straightforward at all.
Not necessarily. Contrary to your view, i’d say it’s pretty difficult to seperate out the effects of genes from other potential factors, and to define the traits in question on an effective scale in order to have something to compare against. Too, it depends on what you’d define as a “strong” correlation; a predisposition need not be overwhelming in nature.
The idea that to settle a dispute in psychology - or, indeed, any science, really - that settles who is right and who is wrong is pretty damn hilarious. One experiment to determine the nature of things? When, especially with psychology, people may have different ideas as to how such a study should be run, what should be looked at, and how?
As for not seeing experiments; did you perhaps notice that in the first cite you have here, there are quite numerous references? They’re not simply stating their opinions, they’re using cited material to back up those opinions. And the second cite isn’t a journal article, it’s an editorial which quotes the doctor in question. You can’t tell from that that the doctor hasn’t performed a study to look into the area, or that her opinions on the subject aren’t backed up by the research of others.
Ok, this is a really big problem. When you want to perform a study, there’s such a thing as “operationalising” your definitions, hypothesis, and so on. The idea, essentially, is that a statement of the second type you suggest is way too vague to answer; by specifying as much as possible, by confining the study to a narrower, more careful lens, the chance is increased that you’re actually studying what you think you’re studying. The whole idea is to avoid sloppiness, to avoid overstating your case, and to ensure to the greatest extent that is possible that you’re controlling for as many factors as possible.
You’re demanding something highly unreasonable; while the text of your second example may be clearer to understand, it is vastly more murky at actually getting to the subject in question, and reasons behind it. If you’re ignoring, or failing to understand, operational definitions and ideas, then i’m really not surprised that you don’t see what you want to see. Your second example is pretty much drilled into your head as something to avoid when you want a reasonable study.
I’d say to your last conclusion that you seem to be assuming that all motivations are obvious and known to us all. That I can take something I want to do, and know precisely all those factors which are affecting my decision and to what extent. Which is silly. Motivations can be unapparent. And if you’d consider a reasonable rebuttal to a studies findings to be that you, personally, believe you’ve experienced something different, i’m not particularly impressed.
You don’t know that, i’m afraid. Unapparent motivations can exist. And by rephrasing an operational definition you move away from the specificity of the study in question.
I’d be incredibly interested to see what you make of the medical and other hard science fields. I can assure you, they are considerably more “unclear” in their definitions by your standard. And surely, you are not “forced” to any conclusion - you may select your conclusion and views on this subject, right?
Both studies disagree with you. That you are, now, restating your arguments, stepping back from your previous overstatements, and attempting to focus on whether they disagree with you on one issue alone as opposed to the entirety of your posts, does not mean they do not disagree with you. And yes, you most certainly have denied that;
It seems like a pretty clear-cut denial to me. And most certainly they do say that those genes affect choices, personal preferences, and responses to situations, since they claim genes affect the structure of the brain and that the brain in turn affects our choices, and so on. Spefically, the first cite suggests that neural plasticity is determined by our genes, and that that plasticity in turn affects our ability to learn and our memory, which it seems reasonable to me to say affect our choices and so on to me. The second cite makes a similar claim, and in fact specifies a particular gene in affecting memory and learning. The two cites most certainly disagree with you.
Yeah, I can. Companies that go overseas are sellouts and should be cruelly taxed for each job shipped overseas. We have people in America that can do these jobs. Perhaps I’m too patriotic but I think we should worry about Americans first and rest of the muggles after we have our fill. Yeah, yeah, go ahead and flame me <shrug>. True Story: I called Microsoft a few days ago regarding a product key snafu; the woman’s accent was so thick and broken that I had to stop her and ask, “Where are you from?” The chick was from India. That burned me up. Microsoft is so fucking lazy, so cheap that they get INDIANS to talk customer service calls from the U.S in ENGLISH. WTF is that?
The poverty in India or China is the concern of their own government not ours. If these countries require monetary assistance, there are mechanisms in place in both the U.N and the U.S State Department to help them, if they so desire it. The fact that these corporations are shipping jobs overseas with an unemployment rate at 10% is ridiculous; if they like the the country so much, then perhaps they should move the entire corporation there and be done with it.
You do realize that those INDIANS are not charity cases, right? That Microsoft hires them because it keeps costs lower and allows them to charge less for their products?
If you want to keep all jobs at home for Americans, are you prepared to pay $50 for a T-Shirt and $300 for a pair of shoes? Are you willing to see your food costs go up by 50%, and go completely without many fruits and vegetables, such as coffee? Or are you willing to make an exception to your “no non-American labor” policy when it personally inconveniences you?
I don’t think you have any idea of how much America depends on foreign imports, and how much of your economic growth and low inflation is the result of outsourcing. I also don’t think you understand economics very well.
Here’s something to ponder: Why is it that the period of rapid globalization from the 1980’s onward was accompanied by below-average unemployment in the U.S. and other countries?
Why would the U.S dry up of coffee when we have South American countries that exports it to us? If I remember correctly, fruits and vegetables are already subsidized by the government in the form of handouts to farmers. Even if prices spike, the government will clamp down on prices by increasing subsidies.
If I were God-King, I would make a “soft cap” of 5% of non-American, overseas workers for each corporation. Each worker over 5% would cost the employer$40,000 per foreigner in federal taxes. On the flip side, businesses that keep jobs in America (under the 5% cap) would pay no federal taxes.
because the developing economies hadn’t yet developed an advanced service sector to accommodate their advancing economic needs? No lawyers, no bankers, no advertisers, etc. So they had to buy them from advanced economies.
Now they have (or at least are a lot farther along in developing) their own native capacities for this, and the result isn’t going to be pretty for the US.
Now this is an honest question: what is the effect on wages, inflation, price levels, and affordability if the wealth in this economy is massively re-oriented towards greater equal distribution? I don’t know if you’re an economist, but if you are i’d like some info
Do you realize that if you did that, it would just cause an exodus of corporations from the U.S. to places that actually allowed them to compete globally? I can think of nothing that would kill U.S. jobs faster than imposing a regulation like the one you suggest.
Your idea about taxing companies is exactly what’s wrong with ‘liberal economics’. You want to tax and punish companies for taking steps that keep them competitive. Yes, that will create jobs for sure…
Let me ask you - do you feel the same way about automation? In what way is a company that replaces 5% of its workforce with robots any different than one that moves 5% of its jobs overseas? In both cases, they are laying off American workers in favor of more productive alternatives. Are both equally bad?
Why would the U.S. dry up of coffee? I thought you didn’t want American resources going out of the country? So you’re still okay with imports? Is that only if the things being imported can’t be made in the U.S? Where are you drawing your lines?
Value estimates in the absence of a free market, sure.
Yes.
Because sellers nearly always want to get as much as they can for their goods. In the absence of any information about demand, one tends to set price as high as possible, and then negotiate down.
If I am selling, and my first offer is the lowest I will accept, I lose out on all the profit I could have gained from a seller who was willing to offer more.
Because no negotiations were to be done. Negotiation is one of the ways that buyers and sellers communicate with one another.
Both sides had incomplete information. Buyers had no idea what sellers were going to ask, and sellers did not know how much buyers were willing to pay.
I am not sure what your example is meant to show, other than another reason why communistic economic systems don’t work. Under communism, the government picks one side, generally the ones with no mugs, and tells the mug owners that they are evil oppressive capitalist running dog exploiters, and they have to share their mugs with the exploited masses and sell for much less than they might otherwise get. Since in the real world coffee mugs don’t lie around for the taking, the ones owning mugs tended to have made the mugs, or bought them at some price.
If the government-set price is less than the replacement cost of mugs, that is the end of the coffee mug market. “Buy high, sell low” is not a sustainable business model. If the government-set price is lower than what the mug owners could have gotten, then the mug market is still going to disappear - mug sellers tend to gravitate away from the regulated mug market and towards other markets with better profit margins. Hence the rise of black markets na levo in the old Soviet Union, even if by law the producers had to make some token efforts to produce whatever they were supposed to do. Taken to the extreme, one got the kinds of distortions that led pig farmers in the USSR to feed their pigs bread rather than raw grain - bread was so subsidized that the price of the finished product was less than its raw materials.
It might be, by sheerest coincidence, that the government-set price was exactly what might otherwise be fetched in the open market. Well and good - that one time. Then there is a rise in prices for the fuel for the kilns that make coffee mugs, or a drop in price in coffee. Now demand is different, and therefore the price is different. Maybe the government will get lucky and guess correctly again. In order for a communistic system like that to succeed in the long run, it has to be lucky billions of times a day.
What are the odds?
I am not sure what you think this is supposed to prove. Opportunity costs for donating organs is lower in countries where doing nothing results in donation. So?
They are shown the products. The contestants then mentally compare the products they see, and compare them to what they remember of other products offered for sale in the open market.
Your theory of the way contestants think on “The Price Is Right” would seem to indicate that the contestants should always guess way too high. They don’t - IIRC, if they go over the price they lose.
Absent such a rule, it seems you expect that a contestant presented with a gallon of milk, is just as likely to guess that it costs $75 as $2.79. IIRC, that is not the case. Successful contestants succeed because they can remember more accurately than their competitors what the products they see go for on the open market. All the negotiation, in other words, has already taken place. They just have to remember (roughly) the results.
So what would you say if I were to tell you that the US more or less tried what you suggested in 1930?. It was called the Smoot–Hawley Tariff Act and it was basically designed to do what you said - protect American jobs and markets from foreign imports. By most accounts it ended up exacerbating the Great Depression.
Really what you are saying is that jobs should go to Americans, even when they are not competetive. Ultimately this just results in higher prices and a lower standard of living for everyone. Doesn’t sound very patriotic to me.
You have a cite for that? And were you aware that the U.S. manufacturing sector has actually been growing over the past two decades? I know it’s a left-wing trope to believe that the only jobs Americans make are in financial services and law and advertising and all the other ‘bad’ jobs, and that manufacturing and other hard goods related jobs are all going away. It’s not the case. The United States’ manufacturing sector has grown in every year since the 1980’s except for a couple of short blips. The U.S.'s percentage of world manufactured goods has increased in that time. The hourly wage of manufacturing workers has gone up in real dollars.
Manufacturing employment has declined, but manufacturing productivity has increased. But the decline in manufacturing employment isn’t due to globalization, but to factory automation and the decline of jobs in the agricultural industries - again, mostly due to large scale factory farms that are highly automated.
There is no evidence for this. The mix of trade goods will change, but there’s no sign that American manufacturing is in decline. The decline in the American dollar is good for the manufacturing sector and will make American goods less expensive on world markets. So manufacturing is under no threat from globalization. However, if the left gets its way and starts saddling American manufacturers with carbon taxes, more unions and higher overall taxes, that will change.
I’m not an economist. But I can tell you generally what will happen - as you move resources away from the most productive elements of society to the least productive, productivity will decline, and with it the standard of living. If you economically punish wealth and reward poverty, you’ll get more of the former and less of the latter. As you hobble businesses with more regulations and try to help employees by passing onerous employment regulations on business as France did, you’ll wind up with higher structural unemployment.
I believe the repeated confusion is caused by a drop in high-wage manufacturing jobs.
The total sum of manufacturing output (products) increase (because of automation and/or population growth) but that economic fact is little consolation to the folks that see high income blue-collar jobs being lost.
And total manufacturing jobs (low wage and/or high wage) go up but it’s the lack of high-wage jobs available for adults with only high-school education that grabs the attention.
It would be similar to concluding that since America has seen a decline in telegraph and telephone switchboard operators, it must mean the telecommunications industry is in decline. Presumably, that means we’ve outsourced all tele-comm capability to India, Canada, and Mexico and nobody in the USA makes telephone calls anymore.
I wasn’t bemoaning the loss of blue collar jobs in my post. You asked why unemployment remained low domestically during periods of globalization. A significant portion of that is the greatly expanded worldwide demand for advanced business services, of which the US is (was) a disproportionate global supplier. I mean at least that’s my take - I don’t have any cites, no.
The experiment was not about negotiation - the question was only about what the person would accept for selling/buying the mug or the pen. The actual value of the mug is of course set by the market - no one is disputing that. There is no negotiation, or expectation of negotiation, involved. In any case, it is unlikely that the average buyer/seller gap is so great for such a standard item.
Now it is true that in general no one knew the exact value of the mug before hand. The null hypothesis is that the possession of the mug should not affect the value to the people with them. That hypothesis was falsified to a very high level of confidence. Classical economics says that both buyers and sellers have the same basic idea of the value of something, though the exact value will be set by negotiation. Negotiations may fail when the players are very far apart. This is also tied into loss aversion, and studies have shown that a loss is considered roughly twice as painful as an equal gain is considered good. There have been other studies showing that people respond to various games that are the same mathematically very differently depending on how the game is phrased.
If you don’t like the way this experiment was done, don’t complain to me, complain to the Nobel Prize committee, since Kahnemann got one for this kind of work.
Please resign from the John Birch Society immediately; not everyone disagreeing with you on economics is either a Communist or even someone who doesn’t think that Communism isn’t a steaming pile of crap. We could both have a wonderful time vying with each other to give reasons why Communism doesn’t work, but I don’t think it would be very productive.
The cost of filling out a card is trivial compared to the “cost” or benefit of donating the organ, or the importance of it. That is especially true for 401Ks. Are you actually claiming that the cost of filling out a simple piece of paper is in any way comparable to the benefit of getting free money from one’s company for matching?
You’re not getting what the endowment effect. The contestants don’t own a product, and so the effect does not kick in. So this game has nothing to do with the case.
Another fun effect is anchoring. It has been shown that if you ask people to write down the last four digits of their social security number, and then estimate something, the estimates of those with higher numbers are significantly above those with lower numbers. This even happens for absurd anchors, such as asking if the temperature in San Francisco is above or below 800 degrees F.
I am afraid I don’t believe you. Please provide a cite that says that classical, free-market economics teaches that the gap between what sellers want to charge and what buyers want to pay is never more than 100% in nominal terms.
I have no problems with how the experiment was done. I have problems with whatever it is that you are alleging it proves.
Because as Sam Stone points out -
I am not a member of any such organization. No one called you a Communist.
Keep your insults in the Pit where they belong.
The person donating the organs does not bear any of the costs of donation (or reap any direct benefit). He does bear the cost of filling out the form to opt out (or opt in, the case of the United States). IOW, those who never give the matter a thought, or who are otherwise unwilling to go to the trouble of filling out a form, get the default.
I can’t imagine that this is not clear to you.
Same here. I don’t believe that you don’t understand.
It makes no difference if they own the products or not. It only matters if they remember how similar products are priced in the open market. The effect is quite real - indeed, it is key to success in bidding on The Price is Right.