http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/morality10/morality_consensus.html is a consensus statement of a few people invited to a meeting.
Near the bottom of
http://www.edge.org/discourse/morality.html
is my attempt to say everything I believe about moral judgment in 500 words.
Monday, September 20, 2010
Monday, June 28, 2010
World government
I keep reading about problems that are best solved at the world level, or at least at some level that involves many nations: climate change; overfishing; illegal drugs (if they are a problem); deforestation (which is related to the importation of wood); trade; protection of endangered species like whales; terrorism; and on and on. One of the lessons that Howard Raiffa, Max Bazerman and others have taught us is that negotiation about several issues at once allows log-rolling, that is, trade-offs in which each party gives up something it cares about less in return for something it cares about more. One way to prevent this kind of win-win strategy is to negotiate one issue at a time, but that is exactly what we do at the world level. We have organizations for fish, organizations for climate change, and so on, but no supra-national organization that permits nations to make trade-offs with all these issues on the table. The lack of this sort of world government is a serious impediment to world progress.
I was reminded of this issue this morning when I discovered a project called Democracy Unbound, which aims to study the prospects for supranational government from the perspective of several scholarly disciplines.
I was reminded of this issue this morning when I discovered a project called Democracy Unbound, which aims to study the prospects for supranational government from the perspective of several scholarly disciplines.
Friday, June 18, 2010
Action and omission in the U.S. Supreme Court
This interesting article shows how the Court accepted a distinction between action and omission as relevant. Harm caused by omission becomes a matter of "positive liberty", which is apparently not protected by the Constitution. In particular, even after a child welfare agency involved itself in a case, the agency cannot be sued for failing to protect the child from terrible harm. Of interest is that this is not the sort of omission that anyone can commit; the agency was already involved, hence, by everyday moral standards, "responsible".
Friday, May 14, 2010
Direct democracy
I was supposed to be in a video for a group that advocates direct democracy (initiative and referendum at the national level in the U.S., among other things). I said I had doubts. ("You see Switzerland. I see California.") But they wanted to do it anyway. In the end we couldn't schedule it. I had thought about what I would say, and here it is.
My first worry comes from my work (with Ed McCaffery) on the isolation effect. When people are asked about a given proposal by itself they isolate that proposal and ignore its side effects, its costs, and to some extent the alternatives to it. This leads to inconsistencies.
For example, majorities seem to favor lower government spending, lower taxes, a balanced budget, but more spending on health care, education, and social security. This happens when they are asked about these things one at a time. Yet the combination is impossible, even if we take into account their willingness to cut military spending and other parts of the U.S. budget.
Or, for a slightly more subtle case, they favor progressive taxation, couples neutrality, and marriage neutrality. Couples neutrality means that couples with the same income pay the same tax. Marriage neutrality means that marriage does not affect the total taxes paid by the couple. These three things are mathematically impossible to have at once.
The first problem is thus that referenda do not protect us against proposals that are incompatible with other things that we want.
The second problem is that, when we consider one proposal at a time, we prevent "log rolling". A better term might be mutual back scratching. This is what legislatures do, when they work as they are supposed to work. Each side gives in on something that it cares about less, in order to get something that it cares about more.
A recent example is the energy bill that the U.S. Senate almost got to debate. The idea was to get a price on carbon, for one side, in return for increased development of nuclear power, and increased off-short drilling, for the other side. It would still be a good deal, even without the off-shore drilling. This sort of thing could not happen unless someone happened to put together deals like this in an entire referendum proposal, which is unlikely, because most of these proposals come from interest groups on one side and they don't negotiate with their opponents.
I'm sure there are places where referenda can do some good, but we need to consider these problems too.
My first worry comes from my work (with Ed McCaffery) on the isolation effect. When people are asked about a given proposal by itself they isolate that proposal and ignore its side effects, its costs, and to some extent the alternatives to it. This leads to inconsistencies.
For example, majorities seem to favor lower government spending, lower taxes, a balanced budget, but more spending on health care, education, and social security. This happens when they are asked about these things one at a time. Yet the combination is impossible, even if we take into account their willingness to cut military spending and other parts of the U.S. budget.
Or, for a slightly more subtle case, they favor progressive taxation, couples neutrality, and marriage neutrality. Couples neutrality means that couples with the same income pay the same tax. Marriage neutrality means that marriage does not affect the total taxes paid by the couple. These three things are mathematically impossible to have at once.
The first problem is thus that referenda do not protect us against proposals that are incompatible with other things that we want.
The second problem is that, when we consider one proposal at a time, we prevent "log rolling". A better term might be mutual back scratching. This is what legislatures do, when they work as they are supposed to work. Each side gives in on something that it cares about less, in order to get something that it cares about more.
A recent example is the energy bill that the U.S. Senate almost got to debate. The idea was to get a price on carbon, for one side, in return for increased development of nuclear power, and increased off-short drilling, for the other side. It would still be a good deal, even without the off-shore drilling. This sort of thing could not happen unless someone happened to put together deals like this in an entire referendum proposal, which is unlikely, because most of these proposals come from interest groups on one side and they don't negotiate with their opponents.
I'm sure there are places where referenda can do some good, but we need to consider these problems too.
Friday, May 7, 2010
Presumed consent for research
Although presumed consent for organ donation
may not be a panacea, it does seem to help. (Showing that presumed consent is correlated with other determinants of high donation rates does not determine the direction of causality.) Why not do the same for certain kinds of research?
A case in point is the use DNA samples for research on the genetics of disease. In a recent case, the University of Arizona returned DNA samples to a Native American tribe, the Havasupai, and paid them $700,000, to settle a lawsuit about informed consent. The tribe members had donated DNA for what they thought was a study of diabetes, but the DNA was used for other purposes. (The dispute about what they were actually told was not settled. See the news article in Science, April 30, 2010, p. 558.)
The main issue here seems to me to be property rights. Some of my recent research has shown that people think of property rights as dictated by deontological (non-consequential) moral rules. But economic and utilitarian analyses of property argue that it exists because of its social value in terms of beneficial consequences, such as encouraging development of property, production, and innovation.
In the case of organs and DNA samples, it is hard to see how functions like these are relevant. The social value of not having property rights in these cases seems quite high, much higher than any benefit of property rights might be.
The idea of presumed consent does not completely remove property rights. It removes them unless they are positively asserted. This limitation allows people who want property rights an option to take them. In general, we might think of such desires as anti-social. However, some people might not trust others to look out for their welfare. They might believe that organ donors are allowed to die more quickly or that DNA donors will be found to have some condition that others can use against them. The option to assert property rights may help to make the users more trustworthy, lest they become more generally untrusted.
My hunch here is that perception of the violation of rights is highly dependent on social norms and conventions. For example, when we write in blogs we assume that our writing is in the public domain. It is polite to attribute quotations but not illegal not to do so, unlike other writing. I don't know the law on this, but this is what I assume, and I suspect that others do too. In another example, when I go to a tourist attraction I do not think I have the right to consent to being in someone's photograph of the scene. So long as we know what our rights are, these expectations are generally harmless.
More generally, in cases like these, people get upset when they think that social norms and conventions actually give them certain rights. If they did not think so, they would not get upset. This argument applies, of course, only to cases where there is little or no justification for providing a right in the first place, in terms of the social value of such provision.
may not be a panacea, it does seem to help. (Showing that presumed consent is correlated with other determinants of high donation rates does not determine the direction of causality.) Why not do the same for certain kinds of research?
A case in point is the use DNA samples for research on the genetics of disease. In a recent case, the University of Arizona returned DNA samples to a Native American tribe, the Havasupai, and paid them $700,000, to settle a lawsuit about informed consent. The tribe members had donated DNA for what they thought was a study of diabetes, but the DNA was used for other purposes. (The dispute about what they were actually told was not settled. See the news article in Science, April 30, 2010, p. 558.)
The main issue here seems to me to be property rights. Some of my recent research has shown that people think of property rights as dictated by deontological (non-consequential) moral rules. But economic and utilitarian analyses of property argue that it exists because of its social value in terms of beneficial consequences, such as encouraging development of property, production, and innovation.
In the case of organs and DNA samples, it is hard to see how functions like these are relevant. The social value of not having property rights in these cases seems quite high, much higher than any benefit of property rights might be.
The idea of presumed consent does not completely remove property rights. It removes them unless they are positively asserted. This limitation allows people who want property rights an option to take them. In general, we might think of such desires as anti-social. However, some people might not trust others to look out for their welfare. They might believe that organ donors are allowed to die more quickly or that DNA donors will be found to have some condition that others can use against them. The option to assert property rights may help to make the users more trustworthy, lest they become more generally untrusted.
My hunch here is that perception of the violation of rights is highly dependent on social norms and conventions. For example, when we write in blogs we assume that our writing is in the public domain. It is polite to attribute quotations but not illegal not to do so, unlike other writing. I don't know the law on this, but this is what I assume, and I suspect that others do too. In another example, when I go to a tourist attraction I do not think I have the right to consent to being in someone's photograph of the scene. So long as we know what our rights are, these expectations are generally harmless.
More generally, in cases like these, people get upset when they think that social norms and conventions actually give them certain rights. If they did not think so, they would not get upset. This argument applies, of course, only to cases where there is little or no justification for providing a right in the first place, in terms of the social value of such provision.
Tuesday, April 20, 2010
Judgments in the Goldman Sachs case
An article in today's (4/20/10) New York Times on-line edition ("A difficult path in Goldman case") discusses Goldman Sachs's likely defense against the fraud suit against it, outlined in two letters written by the company: "... The letters went on to argue that, contrary to the S.E.C.’s assertions, Goldman disclosed all information about the deal that was material. In particular, the letters drew a sharp distinction between information about the security, which the company said it provided in full, and information about Mr. Paulson’s role.
"The second letter said, 'It is this concrete information on the assets -- not the economic interest of the entity that selected them -- that investors could analyze and use to inform their decisions.'"
"To win its case, the S.E.C. must prove that Goldman was not merely silent about Mr. Paulson’s role but actually gave investors the wrong impression, experts in securities law said."
Implicit here is the idea that the investors' had access to everything that John Paulson knew when he chose the securities in question. Thus, they should be able to judge their value. But the investors did not know that Paulson had chosen the securities exactly because he thought that they were particularly overvalued, compared to other securities he might have chosen. Indeed, the investors did not know which securities Paulson rejected. The question is whether these things could have changed any investor's mind.
From a psychological (not necessarily legal) perspective, such missing information seems relevant. In cases of difficult judgment, people are known to be influenced by the judgments of others, and rightly so. Paying attention to others' judgments often increases accuracy. Thus, knowledge about why Paulson chose the securities should have, and probably would have, influenced the decisions of investors.
I know of no literature on the effect of someone else's rejected choices on judgment. Perhaps the S.E.C. should do (or fund) some psychology research on this point.
"The second letter said, 'It is this concrete information on the assets -- not the economic interest of the entity that selected them -- that investors could analyze and use to inform their decisions.'"
"To win its case, the S.E.C. must prove that Goldman was not merely silent about Mr. Paulson’s role but actually gave investors the wrong impression, experts in securities law said."
Implicit here is the idea that the investors' had access to everything that John Paulson knew when he chose the securities in question. Thus, they should be able to judge their value. But the investors did not know that Paulson had chosen the securities exactly because he thought that they were particularly overvalued, compared to other securities he might have chosen. Indeed, the investors did not know which securities Paulson rejected. The question is whether these things could have changed any investor's mind.
From a psychological (not necessarily legal) perspective, such missing information seems relevant. In cases of difficult judgment, people are known to be influenced by the judgments of others, and rightly so. Paying attention to others' judgments often increases accuracy. Thus, knowledge about why Paulson chose the securities should have, and probably would have, influenced the decisions of investors.
I know of no literature on the effect of someone else's rejected choices on judgment. Perhaps the S.E.C. should do (or fund) some psychology research on this point.
Saturday, February 27, 2010
Mammograms under 50
A recent news article in Science (2/19/2010, vol. 237, pp. 936-938) reviews the issues concerning breast-cancer screening for women between 40 and 50. What seems clear is that NOBODY involved in this controversy has done even the most rudimentary decision analysis, yet the question is obviously a good one for such analysis.
According to the article, the major issues are these:
1. Many cancers detected by mammograms in younger women will be detected anyway, even without mammograms. Of the cancers detected without mammograms, most will be cured. The upshot is that, while mammograms do detect cancers (and many women who have had cancers cured after detection with mammograms think that the mammograms saved them), they do not reduce deaths from cancer very much.
2. Still, mammograms do prevent cancer deaths. The effect is small, and its size varies from study to study. The lowest figure seems to be that cancer deaths (which are rare anyway) are reduced by 15%. Or, conservatively (it seems), one death is prevented for every 1900 women screened routinely between ages 40 and 50. (The article is a little unclear about this.) Screening at age 50 prevents one death for roughly every 1300 women screened.
3. So why not? The article puts aside the cost. Let's say the cost is $100. This comes to $100 times 1900, which comes to $190,000 to prevent one death. A very good deal if you ask me. (I suspect that standard insurance policies cover treatments that cost $100,000 to save one year of life. Surely prevention of cancer death in a 45-year-old will save many years of life.) So cost does not seem to be the problem.
4. The article also puts aside the increased risk from x-rays from repeated screening. I'll take their word for it that this is a small factor. (Wikipedia agrees, and cites a reference. Someone correct me if I'm wrong.)
5. The big trade-off according to the article is the risk of false positives. And the big problem with false positives is anxiety. Note that a biopsy is typically not immediate after a positive mammogram, so the anxiety can go on for some time, possibly weeks. The article gives a ratio of 5 biopsies for every case of cancer detected, which means that 4 are false positives. If 10% of these cancers would be fatal if undetected, then this means that the risk of a false positive is about 40 times the risk of death from undetected cancer. (I'm guessing at the fatality rate. It may be much lower.)
It is conceivable that some women would rather take the risk of undetected cancer than the much higher risk of anxiety from a false positive. I would think that research is needed that compares the relative utilities of death from cancer and anxiety from false positives. It may turn out that women differ enough so that they differ in the option that would maximize utility for each patient.
It seems likely to me that very few women would have a sufficiently high disutility for anxiety as to tilt the decision toward no screening after age 40. But the research remains to be done.
Again, what strikes me here is the total absence, so far as I can tell, of analysis of this question in terms of expected utility. Why is this idea so distant from even scholarly discourse?
I welcome comments by email, and I may post a follow-up: baron@psych.upenn.edu.
According to the article, the major issues are these:
1. Many cancers detected by mammograms in younger women will be detected anyway, even without mammograms. Of the cancers detected without mammograms, most will be cured. The upshot is that, while mammograms do detect cancers (and many women who have had cancers cured after detection with mammograms think that the mammograms saved them), they do not reduce deaths from cancer very much.
2. Still, mammograms do prevent cancer deaths. The effect is small, and its size varies from study to study. The lowest figure seems to be that cancer deaths (which are rare anyway) are reduced by 15%. Or, conservatively (it seems), one death is prevented for every 1900 women screened routinely between ages 40 and 50. (The article is a little unclear about this.) Screening at age 50 prevents one death for roughly every 1300 women screened.
3. So why not? The article puts aside the cost. Let's say the cost is $100. This comes to $100 times 1900, which comes to $190,000 to prevent one death. A very good deal if you ask me. (I suspect that standard insurance policies cover treatments that cost $100,000 to save one year of life. Surely prevention of cancer death in a 45-year-old will save many years of life.) So cost does not seem to be the problem.
4. The article also puts aside the increased risk from x-rays from repeated screening. I'll take their word for it that this is a small factor. (Wikipedia agrees, and cites a reference. Someone correct me if I'm wrong.)
5. The big trade-off according to the article is the risk of false positives. And the big problem with false positives is anxiety. Note that a biopsy is typically not immediate after a positive mammogram, so the anxiety can go on for some time, possibly weeks. The article gives a ratio of 5 biopsies for every case of cancer detected, which means that 4 are false positives. If 10% of these cancers would be fatal if undetected, then this means that the risk of a false positive is about 40 times the risk of death from undetected cancer. (I'm guessing at the fatality rate. It may be much lower.)
It is conceivable that some women would rather take the risk of undetected cancer than the much higher risk of anxiety from a false positive. I would think that research is needed that compares the relative utilities of death from cancer and anxiety from false positives. It may turn out that women differ enough so that they differ in the option that would maximize utility for each patient.
It seems likely to me that very few women would have a sufficiently high disutility for anxiety as to tilt the decision toward no screening after age 40. But the research remains to be done.
Again, what strikes me here is the total absence, so far as I can tell, of analysis of this question in terms of expected utility. Why is this idea so distant from even scholarly discourse?
I welcome comments by email, and I may post a follow-up: baron@psych.upenn.edu.
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