‘Not a zero sum game’ != ‘Everybody will be better off’

[warning: long rambling rant about politics, I've already regretted writing it, really shouldn't post it, might take it down again soon. Stupid, stupid, stupid waste of time]

You sometimes see people who argue in favor of ie. free markets using two somewhat related if still quite different sentences together. The first sentence is ‘it’s not a zero sum game’. The second sentence is ‘everybody will be better off’. There are some people who, it seems to me, use them as if they mean pretty much the same thing. Here’s the thing: They don’t. Those two sentences don’t mean the same thing at all. Take if from a guy you know to be relatively free market: It’s dishonest to claim that they do and it tends to make you look bad to do that.

Here’s a classic zero sum game:

1:
A’s utility: 10
B’s utility: 10
C’s utility 10
Total utility: 30

2:
A’s utility: 15
B’s utility: 15
C’s utility: 0
Total utility: 30

Going from 1 to 2 makes A and B better off, but it also makes C worse off and total utility does not change.

To contrast, here’s a positive sum game:

1:
A’s utility: 10
B’s utility: 10
C’s utility 10
Total utility: 30

2:
A’s utility: 15
B’s utility: 15
C’s utility: 8
Total utility: 38

Going from 1 to 2 increases total utility by 8 but it still makes C worse off. That doesn’t change the fact that this is not a zero sum game.

People of a free market bent sometimes use the argument that it’s usually possible to set up some sort of transfer system to compensate the loser(s) so that everybody will be better off if a game is a positive sum game, it’s a well known argument and it’s been around for a long time. If you play the positive sum game and if it is somehow possible to compensate the losers, ie. by making A and B each give C 2 ‘utility units’ (money, whatever) each – then by playing the positive sum game, all three will be better off. Sometimes people miss this step about compensating losers. If you don’t compensate the losers in the game, some people, the Cs, will be worse off even if it’s not a zero sum game. It’s by no means certain that A and B will compensate C if they are left with a choice – indeed there are good reasons to assume they will not.

Now assume that the utility units in the examples are money equivalents, that no compensation takes place and that you play the positive sum game above. Now that game looks remarkably like a wealth transfer from the Cs to the As and Bs.

Sometimes the positive sum game will have pay-offs of say 15, 15 and 11 and everybody will be better off – but that’s not always the case, and in that case, even though everybody is better off, maybe they’re still not ‘equally better off’, however one might define that term, making the outcome look unfair to Cs. Sometimes a game that A and B think is a 15, 15, 11 game, say because they evaluate the utility parameters primarily in terms of the monetary gains alone, actually looks like, say, a 15, 15, 8 game to C, because C values equality highly, and the game caused (perceived?) inequality to go up.

…

Most free market reforms, like all other kinds of reforms, will cause some people to be better off and some people to be worse off. If one of the main goals of a specific reform proposal is less government, as a proponent of such a reform you’ll probably not be all that keen on combining your reform proposals with new (‘temporary’) government programs to compensate the losers. Maybe the distributional effects related to your proposal is part of why you like the proposal in the first place – maybe you think it’s a good thing that there’s less to the Cs because they don’t work, whereas As and Bs do; maybe you want the reform because you want less Cs and more As and Bs.

But to repeat the main thing here: No matter what other things you might do when arguing, at least be honest. Don’t lie, not even by omission. Don’t make claims that are untrue, don’t claim everybody will be better off if they won’t, and make it clear what it takes for everyone to be better off. If not, it’ll just look like wishful thinking, magic that never gets explained and makes you look untrustworthy. Either that or something even worse. Argue why you want less Cs, if that’s what you want, and why you like a specific reform proposal. Ideally, you should work hard not to miss any important steps in the argument process, no matter if you think people know them already or you consider them obvious. If you do, it can easily make you come off as a really unpleasant person. Even to people like me.

Hæhæ…

Link.

Surprising facts of the day

According to USA Today, the average age of a House member this term will be 57 — which is a day nursery compared to the Senate, where the average age now stands at 63.

More here, via instapundit.

…

Incidentally, I recently stumbled upon this article “on theory and practice in fighting new terrorism in Israel”. Very much worth a read.

‘Interesting times’ ahead

The day before yesterday Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy. In case you’d missed it, yesterday things took a turn from bad to worse.

Follow the finance/economics blogs closely for the next few days…

Sidste post herfra

Som jeg tidligere har bemærket det i kommentarsektionen her på bloggen, har jeg besluttet mig for at lægge bloggen død. Dette vil være sidste post herfra, om ikke ‘for altid’ så i hvert fald for en periode. Jeg sletter ikke bloggen, så de gamle posts og arkiverne vil blive liggende.

Der er mange grunde, men jo flere jeg nævner, jo mere vil det ligne undskyldninger, fremfor en forklaring. Så det skal gøres kort: Der har grundlæggende været alt for få (faste) læsere til at forsvare mit tidsforbrug i blogregi, og interaktionen mellem mig og bloggens læsere, såvel som læserne imellem, har slet ikke antaget det omfang, jeg – naivt – havde håbet på. Især på det seneste har jeg vel nok primært drevet bloggen for min egen skyld, derfor de mange skak-posts o.l., og selvom det da også har været sjovt, var udviklingen væk fra læserne og ind i mig selv vel nok et signal om, at tiden nu kan, og bør, bruges bedre andetsteds. Jeg slutter ikke på toppen, men ved at stoppe nu når jeg trods alt at bremse, før jeg når brøndens bund.

There we are.

Det burde ikke være nødvendigt at påpege, men jeg vil nu gøre det alligevel: Der ligger ikke i beslutningen på nogen måde en kritik af dem, der trods alt har fulgt med på bloggen, det er svært at bebrejde de relativt trofaste læsere for det fravær af netværkseffekter, jeg selv havde til opgave at, men fejlede at, danne basis for. Tværtimod en stor tak til de læsere, der i forløbet stillede spørgsmål, udfordrede mig, præsenterede nye ideer og fik mig til at tænke ud af boksen – eller bare gav udtryk for, at de fandt det, jeg skrev, interessant (ja, jeg er tilpas selvglad til, at den slags gør en forskel). Også en tak til de ‘tavse’ læsere, der blev ved at finde tilbage til denne side, på trods af bloggens svingende kvalitet og de til tider excentriske emnevalg eller tilgangsvinkler.

Mulige bud på hvordan jeg kunne gøre det bedre, i fald jeg ved senere lejlighed vælger at genoptage bloggen, modtages gerne herunder. Min beslutning står dog ikke til diskussion, og jeg er ret sikker på, at opdateringshastigheden og #posts/tidsenhed vil falde betydeligt, ifald jeg vælger at genoplive bloggen senere hen, et forhold man bør tage med i betragtningerne, når det kommer til de eventuelle råd. At jeg ikke på nuværende tidspunkt nøjes med at mindske opdateringshastigheden skyldes primært, at jeg har et klart indtryk af, at blogs som opdateres sjældent i de fleste sammenhænge er, eller hurtigt vil blive, komplet ligegyldige, og dette er naturligvis også baggrunden for, at jeg på nuværende tidspunkt stærkt hælder til beslutningen om at stoppe både helt og permanent.

Til dem der ved hvem jeg er: At bloggen dør(/går i lang dvale?) er ikke et argument for at ‘oute’ mig. Jeg ville stærkt foretrække at I undlader at gøre det, og den der gør det, mister en betydelig del af den respekt jeg måtte have for vedkommende. Hvem ‘US’ var, og er, komplet ligegyldigt. Det er bare et navn.

Hvis man har fulgt denne blog tæt siden den startede for næsten 3 år siden, ved man formodentligt mere om personen bag US, end flertallet af dem, der kender mit rigtige navn, gør.

Modelling the argument

I recently posted a comment over at overcomingbias, where Robin Hanson quoted from a bloggingheads episode where Tyler Cowen and Will Wilkinson talk about different stuff like Japan, children and humility (link here). The comment related to Tyler’s view that “if you ask people who believe in God or are atheists, what’s the chance you’re wrong – I’ve asked atheists what’s the chance you’re wrong and they’ll say something like a trillion to one, and that to me is absurd, that even if you think all of the strongest arguments for atheism are correct, your estimate that atheism is in fact the correct point of view shouldn’t be that high, maybe you know 90-10 or 95 to 5, at most.“

My comment was this:

I’d like to know how likely Tyler finds that the existence of the Flying Spaghetti Monster and Russell’s Teapot are.

I find that both are at least two orders of magnitude more likely to exist than the popular Gods.

I find now that there is a problem with this comment, which I shall delve into here. The problem is that I should have limited myself to Russell’s Teapot. The ‘Flying Spaghetti Monster’ was originally meant to ridicule ID, Bobby Henderson’s argument was that the existence of an intelligent designer named God with or without a long beard was just as likely as the existence of an intelligent designer named the Flying Spaghetti Monster. That is, The Flying Spaghetti Monster shares some of christianity’s claims, as what it’s meant to do is to mock these claims (in particular claims related to ID), whereas the only claim related to ‘Russell’s teapot’ is the existence claim.

Where’s the problem you ask? Well, here’s the model:

1. The sum of all possibilities is normalized to 1. ‘All possibilities’ includes both the possibility that the specific entity ‘God X’ exists and its counterclaim, thus:
2. The likelihood of the existence of ‘God X’ is smaller than 1.
3. The more claims you make about (God) X, all else equal the less likely X becomes.

This kind of model is pretty standard in probability theory. 3 is the critical assumption. If you doubt it holds, here’s the argument: If 3 isn’t true, I would be able to make up a God that’s more likely than yours by adding an extra claim about X, ie. by making my God more specific than yours. That’s not how it’s supposed to work! The existence of ‘God X’ initially has to have a higher likelihood than the existence of ‘male God X’, as the latter group is a subset of the former. There will always be more ‘potential Gods’ than there will be ‘potential Gods with long white beards’.

Now, the argument I intended to make was that the number of claims put forth in the case of Russell’s Teapot is very limited. Actually, there is only one: The claim of existence, which was the whole point of Russell’s exercise. In the starting point, it’s actually clear that ‘God’ and Russell’s Teapot are equally likely: Neither can be seen, but both are claimed to exist. The very moment you add another trait besides existence to your God entity, your God becomes less likely than Russell’s Teapot. And as most religious people don’t limit themselves to believe in an entity they can’t see, but also ascribe certain other traits to their God, their God is less likely, all else equal, than Russell’s Teapot. This was my point. It would be pure coincidence if religious people’s claims about their personal God were correct, and Russell’s claim about the existence of the Teapot is initially far more likely to be correct; I estimated this difference in likelihoods to be approximately in the order of two magnitudes. The problem with the comment of course is that if you also look at The Flying Spaghetti Monster, the likelihood-difference decreases rapidly, as The Flying Spaghetti Monster is a much more detailed entity than Russell’s Teapot, and because it shares quite a few of the attributes normally associated with the personal gods.

However, even if it was a bad idea to include TFSM, I hold on to ‘my original argument as intended’. Another argument that follows naturally from my choice of ‘alternative Gods’ is this: For every God you can make up, I can think of a hundred others. There’s an infinite amount of potential gods out there. If each of them has a positive likelihood of existence, the model breaks down. It’s an old argument, but it deserves repeating: Everybody are atheists. Those that we call atheists just believe in one less god than most others.

As it is, as you might have guessed I don’t really like Tyler Cowen’s question. I wouldn’t want to answer it. Wrong about what? What Tyler would need to do would be to show me a specific religious claim and be very careful to define his terms – then I would deal with it. But he really shouldn’t ask me to implicitly evaluate all religious claims at once. They are far from equivalent.

Some are downright ludicrous. A lot of them are just a waste of breath.

Hmm…

Jeg følte mig på usikker grund da jeg kommenterede ovre hos Hvidberg, så jeg legede lidt med nogle ligninger og grafer, for at få en mere systematiseret model sat op, indtil jeg så hans svar. Dette var første etape af, hvad jeg nåede frem til (jeg havde også skrevet ligninger ned og forklaret antagelser og sådan, men ‘you get the picture’), før jeg blev opmærksom på hans kommentar:

Tale om forskellige tilgangsvinkler…

Ja, jeg ved det godt…

…youtube er en slem tidsrøver. Men somme tider finder man noget rigtig godt:

En af mine undervisere i folkeskolen anbefalede faktisk lige netop Lipatti’s indspilning af (bl.a.) opus 27b – ikke fordi jeg var ved at lære den, men som mere generel ‘inspiration’ – men jeg fik aldrig anskaffet mig den. Fortryder jeg det en lille smule i dag? Ja. Men kun en lille smule. Jeg fik Maria Joâo Pirez’ fortolkning i stedet, og den er heller ikke at kimse ad.

New development in the Ezra Levant case

Ezra Levant and several other conservative bloggers have been sued by Richard Warman. The lawsuit is available here, Ezra’s comments here.

From xkcd.

The Kareem-case revisited

The Free Kareem campaign has organized world-wide rallies for Kareem Friday. Rallies will take place in Washington, New York, London, Brussels, Rome, Stockholm, Prague, Bucharest, Berlin, Amsterdam, Athens, Mexico City, São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro.

No events in Denmark, something for which I am partly to blame. I have not followed the campaign very carefully the last months, and thus I have not made any attempt to organize anything as I didn’t know about the rallies before now. As it is, I don’t have time to participate in anything Friday, and I certainly have no chance to go to Copenhagen (where the Egyptian embassy in Denmark is located – the address, if you don’t already know it, can be found here).

If you feel like organizing something in Copenhagen, I’m not sure it’s too late though: Contact the free-kareem people here, as well as friends and people you know who might be interested, ASAP – and remember to tell the police (and perhaps a few local medias) beforehand.

Ingen posts i et stykke tid

Jeg har det rigtig skidt.

Nej, det har ikke noget med valget at gøre.

Quote of the day

Young people are saving now. As a self-described “young person,” I assure you I do not expect to get a single dime out of the social security taxes I’m paying. Unlike today’s seniors, I don’t expect to support myself when I’m old by stealing out of the pockets of my grandchildren.

From a comment here. Well, it is a less than polite way to state it, but I feel the same way. However, I’m not sure this is the way most young people think of the situation. If it was, I think it would be a bit harder for the young and middle aged to accept the current tax rates.

The Longevity Game

I know a lot of people don’t like to think about this, but if you want to know how long you can expect to live, here is a handy estimation tool (HT: Tyler Cowen).

It suffers from major omitted-variables bias, and the estimate should, needless to say, not be taken too seriously. According to the longevity game, I can expect to live to the age of 83, and well, let’s just say that this is not very likely to happen. I set the possibility that I should live that long to less than 10% (no, I’m not going to explain why or elaborate further. “Omitted variables” shall have to suffice).

Btw. I think it is a little strange that most people seem not to like this question. No, it’s not nice to think about the fact that you have to die someday, but you have to do it sooner or later, and if the goal is to maximize utility over time, then it is hardly irrelevant to figure out how much of it you have left.

Historien om den danske utopi

Henning Fonsmark oplevede det lange sigt personligt sent sidste år, og jeg besluttede mig i den anledning for at genlæse hans mesterværk, Historien om den danske utopi – det har jeg så endeligt fået taget mig sammen til nu. Første gang jeg læste bogen er et halvt årti siden, og anden gennemlæsning var bestemt umagen værd – mange ting står mere klart nu end de gjorde dengang, og en hel del af det kan jeg i øvrigt heller ikke sige mig fri for at have fuldstændig glemt i den mellemliggende periode. Bogen som helhed gør et uforglemmeligt indtryk – men den er samtidig så nuanceret og detaljerig, at den tåler både en anden og formodentlig også en tredje gennemlæsning.

Bogen er kort sagt et must read, ingen tvivl om det. Hvis man ikke har læst bogen, eller har glemt hvad den handler om, skal man selvfølgelig (gen)læse den. Men til de dovne slamberter ( ) der ikke får det gjort (kun 2/3 af de læsere, som læste posten om Flemming Roses nye blog, fulgte linket til bloggen…), følger her et længere citat fra siderne 196-97, hvor bogens ide og formål fremgår klart og tydeligt:

“Hvis man nærer den opfattelse, at næsten al dårligdom er ‘samfundets skyld’, så må dette samfund, organiseret i nutidens stærke stat, også som gode forældre tage sig kærligt af hvert eneste barn.
Det er muligt, at de pædagoger, økonomer, kriminologer og politikere, der docerer dette synspunkt, har ret. Jeg håber det ikke, for jeg tror ikke det kan forenes med drømmen om et nyt frit samfund. Dette må vel tværtimod forudsætte, at de mennesker, man ved stemmesedlen har givet magt til at bestemme over sig selv og andre, er ansvarlige for deres gerninger, er modne nok til at kunne foretage såvel de daglige økonomiske som de politiske valg og er oplyste nok til at forstå valgets konsekvenser.
Folkestyret må og kan derfor kun baseres på tilliden til menneskets fornuft og på et ansvarsgrundlag, der klart fastslår, at det enkelte menneske mere end noget andet er ansvarligt for sin skæbne.
Det lader sig simpelthen ikke gøre at bygge et retssamfund og et demokrati på et andet ansvarsgrundlag end dette, der af mange kaldes primitivt og af andre endog reaktionært. Et hvilketsomhelst andet grundlag vil – om ikke formelt – så reelt føre frem til en enevælde, hvor den politiske magthavers ‘Vi alene vide, hvad der tjener folket bedst’ bliver folkestyrets svanesang.”

Dette er gengivet så udførligt, fordi det – i al sin gribende enkelhed – fortæller næsten alt om, hvad der er baggrunden for denne bogs fremstilling af demokratiets vilkår i Danmark efter 1945. Det enkle, for alle forståelige budskab om folkestyrets væsen i forhold til sit folk kan formuleres i det antal linjer, som Poul Møller [en konservativ politiker og forfatteren af citatet herover. Lidt mere om ham her] her har brugt. Resten af bogens hundredevis af sider er en løbende, glædesløs dokumentation for, at denne enkelthed forblev uforstået, og for mange gode formåls skyld i stor stil forvansket i et par generationer af danske velfærdsdemokratiske politikere i efterhånden alle partimæssige afskygninger.

This is interesting…

Apparently firstborn kids are just plain smarter, on average. At least according to a new Norwegian study.

Incidentally, I quite like counterpoint #5 in the article: I’ll take confort in the fact that even though I’m more stupid than my smart big brother (and this I am, no matter what the study says…), at least I’m “interesting”.

…remind me again: Just how do you measure how “interesting” someone is … and make an objective interpersonal comparison on this variable?

This point is (fortunately) not put forth by any of the researchers in the article that slate links to. The only thing slightly resembling this point is the last part of the article:

Sulloway also cautioned against defining firstborns as winners and everyone else as losers.

The author of “Born to Rebel,” a 1996 book examining birth order, he said younger siblings develop talents and abilities not demonstrated by older siblings.

Revolutionary thinkers, such as Charles Darwin and Isaac Newton, had older siblings, he said.

These considerations has very little to do with point #5 of course. #5 is only in the slate article because the article is a case study on popular science mixed up with mediocre journalism, even if the latter is well hidden. How did the journalist come from Darwin and Newton and “talents and abilities not demonstrated by older siblings” to “the young ones are more interesting”? Inquiring minds want to know…

Come to think of it, I’m not quite sure if the study is all that interesting after having read the LA-times article. This sentence in particular is a bit annoying if you want to believe that what the Norwegian study has found is true (I assume it is mr. Turkheimer’s opinion, not the journalist’s, even if I can’t be sure about it):

After years of research, there is no consensus on the effect — or that it even exists.

The move is complete

Given that I have imported all posts and comments from the old blogger account and have by now given even the very casual readers time to figure out that the blog has moved, I found that it was about time I deleted the old blogger site. The internet is crowded enough as it is, and there’s no reason why two sites should display the same content – one will do. I have left one post linking to this site, but that’s it.

I know that some of the people who have me on their blogroll still links to the blogspot site. If you have not yet changed the link, now would be a good time to do so.

Despair.com

From the other Megan (non-McArdle) I learn about this site.

I guess this site gives me a couple more things to add to my birthday wish list – along with some of these. I love being a student – or maybe it’s being single?

Probably both.

First post

At least in the WordPress format. Actually it is post #169.

I have, as some of you people very well know, been blogging on a blogger account for some time. I have now, because of peer pressure (Damn you Whiteberg and Terminalfrost!) decided to shift to wordpress. As a lot of old links still link to the blogger site, I shall keep it open for at least a couple of weeks, in order to redirect readers to this blog, before I close it down.

I have had to change my nom-de-blog because of this shift, as wordpress do not allow nicknames with less than 4 letters. I liked my old blogger-nickname, so I’m rather pissed right now. The shift to wordpress better double both the amount of readers and the amount of insightful comments, or I shall have to reconsider my decision

Oh no…

This is just horrible.