In my (admittedly limited, I’m young) experience, people don’t disagree on whether that tradeoff is worth it. People disagree on whether the tradeoff exists. I’ve never seen people arguing about “the tradeoff is worth it” followed by “no it isn’t”. I’ve seen a lot of arguments about “We should decrease inequality with policy X!” followed by “But that will slow economic growth!” followed by “No it won’t! Inequality slows down economic growth!” followed by “Inequality is necessary for economic growth!” followed by “No it isn’t!” Like with Obamacare—I didn’t hear any Republicans saying “the tradeoff of raising my taxes in return for providing poor people with healthcare is an unacceptable tradeoff” (though I am sometimes uncharitable and think that some people are just selfish and want their taxes to stay low at any cost), I heard a lot of them saying “this policy won’t increase health and long life and happiness the way you think it will”.
“Is this tradeoff worth it?” is, indeed, a values question and not a scientific question. But scientific questions (or at least, factual questions that you could predict the answer to and be right/wrong about) could include: Will this policy actually definitely cause the X% decrease in inequality? Will this policy actually definitely cause the Y% slowdown in economic growth? Approximately how large is X? Approximately how much will a Y% slowdown affect the average household income? How high is inflation likely to be in the next few years? Taking that expected rate of inflation into account, what kind of things would the average family no longer be able to afford / not become able to afford, presuming the estimated decrease in average household income happens? What relation does income have to happiness anyway? How much unhappiness does inequality cause, and how much unhappiness do economic recessions cause? Does a third option (beyond implement this policy / don’t implement it) exist, like implementing the policy but also implementing another policy that helps speed economic growth, or implementing some other radical new idea? Is this third option feasible? Can we think up any better policies which we predict might decrease inequality without slowing economic growth? If we set a benchmark that would satisfy our values, like percentage of households able to afford Z valuable-and-life-improving item, then which policy is likely to better satisfy that benchmark—economic growth so that more people on average can afford Z, or inequality reduction so that more poor people become average enough to afford an Z?
But, of course, this is a factual question. We could resolve this by doing an experiment, maybe a survey of some kind. We could take a number of left-wing policies, and a number of right-wing policies, and survey members of the “other tribe” on “why do you disagree with this policy?” and give them options to choose between like “I think reducing inequality is more important than economic growth” and “I don’t think reducing inequality will decrease economic growth, I think it will speed it up”. I think there are a lot of issues where people disagree on facts.
Like prisons—you have people saying “prisons should be really nasty and horrid to deter people from offending”, and you have people saying “prisons should be quite nice and full of education and stuff so that prisoners are rehabilitated and become productive members of society and don’t reoffend”, and both of those people want to bring the crime rate down, but what is actually best at bringing crime rates down—nasty prisons or nice prisons? Isn’t that a factual question, and couldn’t we do some science (compare a nice prison, nasty prison, and average-kinda-prison control group, compare reoffending rates for ex-inmates of those prisons, maybe try an intervention where kids are deterred from committing crime by visiting nasty prison and seeing what it’s like versus kids who visit the nicer prison versus a control group who don’t visit a prison and then 10 years later see what percentage of each group ended up going to prison) to see who is right? And wouldn’t doing the science be way better than ideological arguments about “prisoners are evil people and deserve to suffer!” versus “making people suffer is really mean!” since what we actually all want and agree on is that we would like the crime rate to come down?
So we should ask the scientific question: “Which policies are most likely to lead to the biggest reductions in inequality and crime and the most economic growth, keep the most members of our population in good health for the longest, and provide the most cost-efficient and high-quality public services?” If we find the answer, and some of those policies seem to conflict, then we can consult our values to see what tradeoff we should make. But if we don’t do the science first, how do we even know what tradeoff we’re making? Are we sure the tradeoff is real / necessary / what we think it is?
In other words, a question of “do we try an intervention that costs £10,000 and is 100% effective, or do we do the 80% effective intervention that costs £80,000 and spend the money we saved on something else?” is a values question. But “given £10,000, what’s the most effective intervention we could try that will do the most good?” is a scientific question and one that I’d like to have good, evidence-based answers to. “Which intervention gives most improvement unit per money unit?” is a scientific question and you could argue that we should just ask that question and then do the optimal intervention.
In my (admittedly limited, I’m young) experience, people don’t disagree on whether that tradeoff is worth it. People disagree on whether the tradeoff exists.
The solution to this problem is to find smarter people to talk to.
We could resolve this by doing an experiment
Experiment? On live people? Cue in GlaDOS :-P
This was a triumph! I’m making a note here: ”Huge success!!” It’s hard to overstate My satisfaction. Aperture science: We do what me must Because we can. For the good of all of us. Except the ones who are dead. But there’s no sense crying Over every mistake. You just keep on trying Till you run out of cake. And the science gets done. And you make a neat gun For the people who are Still alive.
Surveys are not experiments and Acty is explicitly talking about science with control groups, etc. E.g.
compare a nice prison, nasty prison, and average-kinda-prison control group, compare reoffending rates for ex-inmates of those prisons, maybe try an intervention where kids are deterred from committing crime by visiting nasty prison and seeing what it’s like versus kids who visit the nicer prison versus a control group who don’t visit a prison and then 10 years later see what percentage of each group ended up going to prison
A survey can be a reasonably designed experiment that simply gives us a weaker result than lots of other kinds of experiments.
There are many questions about humans that I would expect to be correlated with the noises humans make when given a few choices and asked to answer honestly. In many cases, that correlation is complicated or not very strong. Nonetheless, it’s not nothing, and might be worth doing, especially in the absence of a more-correlated test we can do given our technology, resources, and ethics.
What I had in mind was the difference between passive observation and actively influencing the lives of subjects. I would consider “surveys” to be observation and “experiments” to be or contain active interventions. Since the context of the discussion is kinda-sorta ethical, this difference is meaningful.
I am not sure where is this question coming from. I am not suggesting any particular studies or ways of conducting them.
Maybe it’s worth going back to the post from which this subthread originated. Acty wrote:
If we set a benchmark that would satisfy our values … then which policy is likely to better satisfy that benchmark...? But, of course, this is a factual question. We could resolve this by doing an experiment, maybe a survey of some kind.
First, Acty is mistaken in thinking that a survey will settle the question of which policy will actually satisfy the value benchmark. We’re talking about real consequences of a policy and you don’t find out what they are by conducting a public poll.
And second, if you do want to find the real consequences of a policy, you do need to run an intervention (aka an experiment) -- implement the policy in some limited fashion and see what happens.
Oh, I guess I misunderstood. I read it as “We should survey to determine whether terminal values differ (e.g. ‘The tradeoff is not worth it’) or whether factual beliefs differ (e.g. ‘There is no tradeoff’)”
But if we’re talking about seeing whether policies actually work as intended, then yes, probably that would involve some kind of intervention. Then again, that kind of thing is done all the time, and properly run, can be low-impact and extremely informative.
In my (admittedly limited, I’m young) experience, people don’t disagree on whether that tradeoff is worth it. People disagree on whether the tradeoff exists. I’ve never seen people arguing about “the tradeoff is worth it” followed by “no it isn’t”. I’ve seen a lot of arguments about “We should decrease inequality with policy X!” followed by “But that will slow economic growth!” followed by “No it won’t! Inequality slows down economic growth!” followed by “Inequality is necessary for economic growth!” followed by “No it isn’t!” Like with Obamacare—I didn’t hear any Republicans saying “the tradeoff of raising my taxes in return for providing poor people with healthcare is an unacceptable tradeoff” (though I am sometimes uncharitable and think that some people are just selfish and want their taxes to stay low at any cost), I heard a lot of them saying “this policy won’t increase health and long life and happiness the way you think it will”.
“Is this tradeoff worth it?” is, indeed, a values question and not a scientific question. But scientific questions (or at least, factual questions that you could predict the answer to and be right/wrong about) could include: Will this policy actually definitely cause the X% decrease in inequality? Will this policy actually definitely cause the Y% slowdown in economic growth? Approximately how large is X? Approximately how much will a Y% slowdown affect the average household income? How high is inflation likely to be in the next few years? Taking that expected rate of inflation into account, what kind of things would the average family no longer be able to afford / not become able to afford, presuming the estimated decrease in average household income happens? What relation does income have to happiness anyway? How much unhappiness does inequality cause, and how much unhappiness do economic recessions cause? Does a third option (beyond implement this policy / don’t implement it) exist, like implementing the policy but also implementing another policy that helps speed economic growth, or implementing some other radical new idea? Is this third option feasible? Can we think up any better policies which we predict might decrease inequality without slowing economic growth? If we set a benchmark that would satisfy our values, like percentage of households able to afford Z valuable-and-life-improving item, then which policy is likely to better satisfy that benchmark—economic growth so that more people on average can afford Z, or inequality reduction so that more poor people become average enough to afford an Z?
But, of course, this is a factual question. We could resolve this by doing an experiment, maybe a survey of some kind. We could take a number of left-wing policies, and a number of right-wing policies, and survey members of the “other tribe” on “why do you disagree with this policy?” and give them options to choose between like “I think reducing inequality is more important than economic growth” and “I don’t think reducing inequality will decrease economic growth, I think it will speed it up”. I think there are a lot of issues where people disagree on facts.
Like prisons—you have people saying “prisons should be really nasty and horrid to deter people from offending”, and you have people saying “prisons should be quite nice and full of education and stuff so that prisoners are rehabilitated and become productive members of society and don’t reoffend”, and both of those people want to bring the crime rate down, but what is actually best at bringing crime rates down—nasty prisons or nice prisons? Isn’t that a factual question, and couldn’t we do some science (compare a nice prison, nasty prison, and average-kinda-prison control group, compare reoffending rates for ex-inmates of those prisons, maybe try an intervention where kids are deterred from committing crime by visiting nasty prison and seeing what it’s like versus kids who visit the nicer prison versus a control group who don’t visit a prison and then 10 years later see what percentage of each group ended up going to prison) to see who is right? And wouldn’t doing the science be way better than ideological arguments about “prisoners are evil people and deserve to suffer!” versus “making people suffer is really mean!” since what we actually all want and agree on is that we would like the crime rate to come down?
So we should ask the scientific question: “Which policies are most likely to lead to the biggest reductions in inequality and crime and the most economic growth, keep the most members of our population in good health for the longest, and provide the most cost-efficient and high-quality public services?” If we find the answer, and some of those policies seem to conflict, then we can consult our values to see what tradeoff we should make. But if we don’t do the science first, how do we even know what tradeoff we’re making? Are we sure the tradeoff is real / necessary / what we think it is?
In other words, a question of “do we try an intervention that costs £10,000 and is 100% effective, or do we do the 80% effective intervention that costs £80,000 and spend the money we saved on something else?” is a values question. But “given £10,000, what’s the most effective intervention we could try that will do the most good?” is a scientific question and one that I’d like to have good, evidence-based answers to. “Which intervention gives most improvement unit per money unit?” is a scientific question and you could argue that we should just ask that question and then do the optimal intervention.
The solution to this problem is to find smarter people to talk to.
Experiment? On live people? Cue in GlaDOS :-P
It sounded to me like she recommended a survey. Do you consider surveys problematic?
Surveys are not experiments and Acty is explicitly talking about science with control groups, etc. E.g.
According to every IRB I’ve been in contact with, they are. Here’s Cornell’s, for example.
I’m talking common sense, not IRB legalese.
According to the US Federal code, a home-made pipe bomb is a weapon of mass destruction.
A survey can be a reasonably designed experiment that simply gives us a weaker result than lots of other kinds of experiments.
There are many questions about humans that I would expect to be correlated with the noises humans make when given a few choices and asked to answer honestly. In many cases, that correlation is complicated or not very strong. Nonetheless, it’s not nothing, and might be worth doing, especially in the absence of a more-correlated test we can do given our technology, resources, and ethics.
What I had in mind was the difference between passive observation and actively influencing the lives of subjects. I would consider “surveys” to be observation and “experiments” to be or contain active interventions. Since the context of the discussion is kinda-sorta ethical, this difference is meaningful.
What intervention would you suggest to study the incidence of factual versus terminal-value disagreements in opposing sides of a policy decision?
I am not sure where is this question coming from. I am not suggesting any particular studies or ways of conducting them.
Maybe it’s worth going back to the post from which this subthread originated. Acty wrote:
First, Acty is mistaken in thinking that a survey will settle the question of which policy will actually satisfy the value benchmark. We’re talking about real consequences of a policy and you don’t find out what they are by conducting a public poll.
And second, if you do want to find the real consequences of a policy, you do need to run an intervention (aka an experiment) -- implement the policy in some limited fashion and see what happens.
Oh, I guess I misunderstood. I read it as “We should survey to determine whether terminal values differ (e.g. ‘The tradeoff is not worth it’) or whether factual beliefs differ (e.g. ‘There is no tradeoff’)”
But if we’re talking about seeing whether policies actually work as intended, then yes, probably that would involve some kind of intervention. Then again, that kind of thing is done all the time, and properly run, can be low-impact and extremely informative.
--
Yep :-) That’s why GlaDOS made an appearance in this thread :-D