You’re right that this is an important thing to discuss, and so we’ll talk about this more explicitly when I get to micromorts, which are probably one of the more useful concepts that comes up in an introductory survey. (I think it’s better to establish this methodology and show that it applies to those situations too than argue it applies everywhere then establish what it actually is.)
A quick answer, though: my sense is that people feel like they have categorical preferences, but actually have tradeoff preferences. If you ask people about chicken vs. p cake or 1-p death, many will scoff at the idea of taking any chance at death to upgrade from chicken to cake. When you look at actual behavior, though, those same people do risk death to upgrade from chicken to cake- and so in some sense that’s “worth sacrificing your life for.” The difference between the cake > chicken preference and the family alive > family dead preference, for example, seems to be one of degree and not one of kind.
Are you prescribing a rational method of decision making or are you describing actual behavior (possibly not rational)?
Although Vaniver punted this by saying that you shouldn’t judge ultimate values on rationality, you’re right that this describes behaviour (and not values directly), and inferring values from behaviour assumes rationality.
However … it’s intuitively obvious to me that it’s perfectly rational to (in some circumstances) to go the store and get some cake when all that you have at home is chicken, even though leaving the house increases your risk of death (car crash etc). I assumed that this is the sort of behaviour that Vaniver was referring to; do you agree that it’s rational (and so we can infer values in line with the axiom of equivalence)?
Values are endogenous to this system, and so it’s not clear to me what it would mean to prescribe rational values. I think there is some risk of death small enough that accepting it in exchange for upgrading from chicken to cake is rational behavior for real people (who prefer cake to chicken), and difficulty in accepting that statement is generally caused by difficulty imagining small probabilities, not a value disagreement.
If you actually do have categorical preferences, you can implement them by multiple iterations of the method: “Minimize chance of dying, then maximize flavor on the optimal set.”
I have no problem with accepting the axiom of equivalence for a usefully large subset of all preferences. It just seems that there may be some preferences which are ‘priceless’ as compared to chicken vs. cake.
It just seems that there may be some preferences which are ‘priceless’ as compared to chicken vs. cake.
There are definitely signalling reasons to believe this is so. If I work at a factory where management has put a dollar value on my accidental death due to workplace hazards and uses that value in decision-making, I might feel less comfortable than if I worked at a factory where management insists that the lives of its employees are priceless, because at the first factory the risk of my death is now openly discussed (and management might be callous).
I’m not sure there are decision-making reasons to believe this is so. The management of the second factory continue to operate it, even though there is some risk of accidental death, suggesting that their “priceless” is not “infinity” but “we won’t say our price in public.” They might perform a two-step optimization: “ensure risk of death is below a reasonable threshold at lowest cost,” but it’s not clear that will result in a better solution.* It may be the risk of death could be profitably lowered below the reasonable threshold, and they don’t because there’s no incentive to, or they may be spending more on preventing deaths than the risk really justifies. (It might be better to spend that money, say, dissuading employees from smoking if you value their lifespans rather than not being complicit in their death.)
*For example, this is how the EPA manages a lot of pollutants, and it is widely criticized by economists for being a cap rather than a tax, because it doesn’t give polluters the right incentives. So long as you’re below the EPA standards, there’s no direct benefit to you for halving your pollution even though there is that benefit to the local environment.
You’re right that this is an important thing to discuss, and so we’ll talk about this more explicitly when I get to micromorts, which are probably one of the more useful concepts that comes up in an introductory survey. (I think it’s better to establish this methodology and show that it applies to those situations too than argue it applies everywhere then establish what it actually is.)
A quick answer, though: my sense is that people feel like they have categorical preferences, but actually have tradeoff preferences. If you ask people about chicken vs. p cake or 1-p death, many will scoff at the idea of taking any chance at death to upgrade from chicken to cake. When you look at actual behavior, though, those same people do risk death to upgrade from chicken to cake- and so in some sense that’s “worth sacrificing your life for.” The difference between the cake > chicken preference and the family alive > family dead preference, for example, seems to be one of degree and not one of kind.
Are you prescribing a rational method of decision making or are you describing actual behavior (possibly not rational)?
Although Vaniver punted this by saying that you shouldn’t judge ultimate values on rationality, you’re right that this describes behaviour (and not values directly), and inferring values from behaviour assumes rationality.
However … it’s intuitively obvious to me that it’s perfectly rational to (in some circumstances) to go the store and get some cake when all that you have at home is chicken, even though leaving the house increases your risk of death (car crash etc). I assumed that this is the sort of behaviour that Vaniver was referring to; do you agree that it’s rational (and so we can infer values in line with the axiom of equivalence)?
Values are endogenous to this system, and so it’s not clear to me what it would mean to prescribe rational values. I think there is some risk of death small enough that accepting it in exchange for upgrading from chicken to cake is rational behavior for real people (who prefer cake to chicken), and difficulty in accepting that statement is generally caused by difficulty imagining small probabilities, not a value disagreement.
If you actually do have categorical preferences, you can implement them by multiple iterations of the method: “Minimize chance of dying, then maximize flavor on the optimal set.”
Vaniver & Toby,
I have no problem with accepting the axiom of equivalence for a usefully large subset of all preferences. It just seems that there may be some preferences which are ‘priceless’ as compared to chicken vs. cake.
There are definitely signalling reasons to believe this is so. If I work at a factory where management has put a dollar value on my accidental death due to workplace hazards and uses that value in decision-making, I might feel less comfortable than if I worked at a factory where management insists that the lives of its employees are priceless, because at the first factory the risk of my death is now openly discussed (and management might be callous).
I’m not sure there are decision-making reasons to believe this is so. The management of the second factory continue to operate it, even though there is some risk of accidental death, suggesting that their “priceless” is not “infinity” but “we won’t say our price in public.” They might perform a two-step optimization: “ensure risk of death is below a reasonable threshold at lowest cost,” but it’s not clear that will result in a better solution.* It may be the risk of death could be profitably lowered below the reasonable threshold, and they don’t because there’s no incentive to, or they may be spending more on preventing deaths than the risk really justifies. (It might be better to spend that money, say, dissuading employees from smoking if you value their lifespans rather than not being complicit in their death.)
*For example, this is how the EPA manages a lot of pollutants, and it is widely criticized by economists for being a cap rather than a tax, because it doesn’t give polluters the right incentives. So long as you’re below the EPA standards, there’s no direct benefit to you for halving your pollution even though there is that benefit to the local environment.