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Author Archives: kevin
Quote of the day, things that sound obvious edition
Besides Mississippi, every one of the 17 states with the lowest state and local tax levels had positive net internal migration from 2000 to 2007. Except for Wyoming, Maine, and Delaware, every one of the 17 highest-tax states had negative net internal migration over the same period.From an article about California's dysfunction.
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Two good, recent videos
The 70-minute critique of Star Wars: The Phantom Menace (it's amazing how when you break down these things, they make less and less sense), and Richard Sapolsky on depression. Sapolsky, a biologist, argues that depression is a physical disease - you would never tell someone with diabetes to "snap out of it" yet we try to tell depressed people this all the time.
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Feeling moral makes you act worse
Ryan Sager had a good post a few weeks ago discussing how if people do things that make them feel like a moral, good person, they are more likely to behave immorally. For example, white people who voted for Obama felt they had more license to be racist in other parts of their lives. Thus it makes good sense that the most shoplifted book in America is the Bible:
I asked Steve Bercu, BookPeople’s owner, what the most frequently stolen title was. “The Bible,” he said, without pausing. Apparently the thieves have not yet read the “Thou shalt not steal” part — or maybe they believe that Bibles don’t need to be paid for. “Some people think the word of God should be free,” Bercu said. As it turns out, Bibles are snatched even at the Parable Christian Store in Springfield, Ore., the manager told me, despite the fact that if a person asks for a Bible, they’ll be given a copy without charge.I recommend your library. Most local churches also would be happy to give you a copy of the Bible, for free.
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Game theory
I am taking my game theory final exam in three hours. Here are two videos that explain everything you need to know about game theory.
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Dean Huang to stay at CMC
In an email to the student body, beloved Dean of Students Jeff Huang announced that he is going to stay at CMC. Jeff is a good guy and we've talked a lot, and as far as I know he does his job well, both as Dean of Students and as a philosophy professor, with some of the highest ratings in the evaluations book.
This is a little silly to say now, and obviously it's sad to see anyone with whom you've developed a close relationship leave for greener pastures, but is it unreasonable to assume that CMC would hire a replacement dean that's just as good? CMC would probably solicit close to two hundred applications for a replacement; surely one of two hundred is qualified, friendly, and understanding enough to take his place.
A similar neuron fires when I hear people discuss how going to CMC was the best decision they ever made. Was it really CMC that was the good decision, or was it going to college in general? Unless you've transferred, studied abroad or have significant reason to believe that CMC is special, you've got to assume that you would have had just as good an experience anywhere.
Another similar neuron fires when sports teams overpay for local heroes when their contracts have expired, something the Oakland A's have chosen not to do probably twenty times over the past decade. Surely fans can fall in love with other great players, who are cheaper.
"Refusing to overpay for local heroes" is also a good way to describe my dating life for the past three years.
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Designing user-friendly hospitals
Alison Arieff has a good article describing Kaiser's attempts to make the hospital experience better for their patients. Here's a shot of a sample hospital room:
Brighter, more colorful hospitals (and rooms) have been linked to improved health outcomes. Makes sense.
Brighter, more colorful hospitals (and rooms) have been linked to improved health outcomes. Makes sense. Liked what you read? I am available for hire.
The terrifying new Psychoaster
Good marketing for a new rollercoaster in England:
The £15million ride will be restricted to 16 to 55-year-olds only and visitors limited to one ride per day "due to concerns about emotional maturity and physical health", resort bosses said.If you want to prove your new ride is scary, what better way to do so than to act concerned about the rider's health? Ultimately this will probably make people want to sue operators of roller coasters without waivers and the practice will spread to other amusement parks.
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The environmental movement as a signaling mechanism
David Roberts writes:
The most puzzling behavioral phenomenon to understand when it comes to building efficiency is that Most People Won’t Do Sh*t (MPWDS). “Most people” includes people who could make money by doing sh*t, people who say they will do sh*t, even people who have promised to do sh*t. I’ve heard from people who write about energy efficiency for a living, know exactly what to do to make their homes more efficient, and still don’t do sh*t. It’s hard to disentangle the reasons why—some mix of status quo bias, hyperbolic discounting, and loss aversion to begin with—but it’s clear that public surveys and polls about this tend to be misleading. What people say they’re willing to do and what they demonstrate they’re willing to do are very different things. Attitudes don’t translate into actions.We care much more about what others think than we do about the environment. Case in point: when homes in California were outfitted with special devices, showing a happy face if energy consumption was lower than the neighbors, or a red sad face if it was higher than the neighbors, overall energy consumption dropped 40%.
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Profiting from irrationality
My friend Charlie Sprague wrote an article about “The Birther Madness,” about how a select group of Republicans refuses to believe that Barack Obama was born in Hawaii. A few birthers found the article and have let everyone know how they feel about the issue.
Finance theory says that whenever a large group of people has a significantly wrong valuation of something, in this case, a nonzero estimate of the probability that Barack Obama was born in Kenya, there’s an opportunity for arbitrage. If the birthers truly believe that Obama was born elsewhere, surely they’d be willing to put money on the line, and surely I would be able to rake in the dough. I would also be doing a public service, by making people more likely to hold beliefs that are true.
The problem is that we’re not betting on an event that will occur, but an event that already occurred, the truth of which has already been settled. For anyone to be willing to enter into a bet with me, we would have to be betting on some event that’s going to occur in the future, not some event which already happened and on the specifics of which we disagree. I would have to pick some future event that birthers would be willing to bet on (Barack Obama becomes President of Kenya? Reveals himself as the Antichrist before December 31, 2014?) It’s not enough to say, “Obama will be judged not a citizen, and removed from office,” because if you’re predisposed to believe Obama’s in Kenya, you probably also believe there’s a shadowy cabal behind Obama that’s preventing the truth from getting out.
People have far too little incentive to hold truthful political beliefs. If I can induce (and fleece) a few irrational voters I stand to gain a lot. If I challenge people to bet with me and they refuse, then that says a lot about their beliefs, too.
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