The devil is in the details. We almost never do a good job of predicting how people will act. People are quite stubborn in their efforts to not act like the theories say that they should.

The bright people are generally not up to the task either. They can be worse because they are highly convincing.

I think we can safely assume that we are going to do something. Going with what has worked out seems quite a bit better than going with things that have not worked out.

Letting both sides look at the data and argue about it largely fixes this problem.

They are also silly people.

I mean that it (not being able to rely on the authorities to settle disputes and punish people) is the main problem with the drug war.

I don't trust the smart ones particularly much to predict how policy changes will turn out.

Partially, it is a starting point to get rid of bad ideas. "Drug decriminalization would lead to increased drug use" makes very good sense until you check what has happened where drug decriminalization (and decriminalization or legalization of other things) has happened. From what I understand it didn't increase drug use in CA either.

It is also a jumping off point for considering "what will happen if" sorts of questions. Obviously you also do a bit of thinking about how things might be different on a Tuesday afternoon from your data that is all about what happened on a Sunday morning.

In other words, you do use those reasoning skills thingies to figure out what has happened, why it has happened, and under what conditions it is likely or unlikely to happen again.

There is no such thing as a Nash equilibrium. External events can always alter the game parameters. (Se how you are talking nonsense?)

You are rambling....

I'm not sure you think in scientific terms for existence of an evolutionary stable strategy (ESS) or you are thinking I came up with that expression. If second, wiki that **** up.

People bend their environment - irrelevant. Bcs. they bend their behavior to the external factors far far (double far for emphasis) often then not. It's called adaptation. And the ones that don't are long dead.

zzzzzzzz....

Pitty, I value second place far more then first place. That's the reason I'm still hanging out in this corner of the Internet. But nice to know you are implying I'm winning.

I cannot see the positive benefits of littering. You must be strange....

agree

Temporary, this is bcs. you are so far from 1 billion dollars you can't comprehend the growth. But if you think about it smart people that have 1 billion dollars fing good way to invest and grow money + our society.

common sense for "smart" people

wanna explain required value on example? interested to hear...

The problem is that dumb people demand prediction of stuff that cant be predicted or demand a level of precision that is unattainable. They do the same with science, they demand answers that dont yet exists and certainty beyond that available. (I will refer to this mistake again, does it have a nice pithy name?)

Its rare to see such a good defense of dumbing down. Lets foillow the dumb people, they may be talking rubbish but at least they aren't so convincing.

Of course. But insisting on that approach when we have ~no data on whether what is being proposed will work out or not is the same mistake yet again.

Not if we then still insist on concluding stuff from the data when ~ no data exists. Its that same mistake yet again.


It seems you are saying all people are silly, some not quite as silly as others. Then yes these are silly people but at the lessor end of the sillyness scale.

Maybe, not sure. So many bad problems I hadn't really considered what was worst. The high level of damage done to many lives from minor drug conviction is a pretty serious problem. I wonder if the damage done to justice isn't the worst.

The smart ones make very limited and vague predictions.


this is a great example. Smart people would be very unsure whether drug use will go up or down (it may also depend on the definition which itself is pretty nonsensical).

The data you site though is totally hopeless in this regard. End prohibition on a large scale basis and unpredictable changes will occur. The development cycle will change, new drugs that might not otherwise have been developed might prove highly popular. More significantly imo new drug related cultures analogous to the drinking culture or smoking culture (or snuff, remember snuff who could ever have predicted that) may arise. No one knows and it sure aint in some data from CA.

Performance enhancing drugs might be huge.


but the question we would first need to consider to reach conclusions vitally includes how the conditions will be significantly different. Insert your point about nash equilibriums here.

You didn't take a stab at chezlaw at his best/worse

Sorry for jumping into a long thread without reading any of it but this caught my eye. By good expected outcomes you mean good for the agent? If you just mean good generally I don't know what that means because it seems tautologous.

If you mean good for the agent that's probably practically true, but it's only because of feedback. A lot more people have made bread for profit so we have a lot more information on what happens when they do. If more people acted with good intentions they'd accumulate more info on what happens and get better at assessing the outcome. I'm pretty sure the latter method would win from an equal starting point.

^ its means good outcomes as in making the world a better place.

As in would the world be better place if we simple ceased prohibition.

The baseline bit means its still +ev even if they're are better things we could do.

Then what is the point of the discussion? It seems clear that best possible outcome is going to be more +EV than fallible attempts at achieving best possible outcome, but it doesn't say anything about virtue vs consequence which is what I imagined was lurking in there somwhere.

^ no offense but correct this first

Geez next you'll be asking me to think about what I post also.

tnx for maninahat for pointing out your post, I somehow skipped it....

the correct conclusion from your post is that "good intentions" group does not add any value to our utility or ev and should be irrelevant..

I agree partly, but object on the grounds that good intentions group has less -ev or 0 ev then the whole space of ev options. For people that can't calculate ev, or don't comprehend the term, good intentions are a good substitute to use as a tool for having a higher ev in the long run. Variance in good intentions group is still pretty large vs the good expected outcomes.

That's too strong. there's the group with bad intentions to consider and the set of actions with good intentions and bad expected outcomes.

I think that's agrees with the above in a way but its northing to with actual ev calculations, that's a framework to understand the discussion. Anyone making decisions( in our example of the drugs war) using a calculator is a nutter but that's no excuse for not considering the problems caused by prohibition.

I leave the prohibition part to you and BTM to figure it out.

As long as you've accounted for the drug I have awaiting the law change that is awesome in its ability to provide sustainable happiness but causes dyscalculia.

I know building pyramids and bridges is hard and we need slaves in debt (ups I wanted to say workers) delusional and happy but still fairly productive. I highly praise substances that bring happiness to people sitting on a roadside - who knows what would happen if they become all rational all of a sudden. Nothing good...

This drug is designed for you. You have no choice but to abandon your ev calculator either before or after you take the drug.

pesky FDA

is this one of those penny stocks schemes...

Have now read thread and still have this question. The only point I'm taking from this is that people suck at predicting good outcomes. That's clearly the case, but I feel like you're implying that people could instead just choose good outcomes directly, which they can't.

Is the suggestion that people will achieve a better net result by not trying to achieve good outcomes?

I suggested yoju read the thread but not that it would help

BTM is claiming all people suck so badly at predicting good outcomes that its pointless to do it*
.
I disagree that all people suck that extremely.

No-one is suggesting you can pick good outcomes directly. All you can do is pick actions, the debate is about people who have good intentions when they pick those actions but dont consider the consequences of those actions (i.e someone who goes no further than 'drugs are bad we should ban them') and people who consider the outcomes of actions (what will the consequences of that ban be). All this is done in the context that BTM is wrong about *, if BTM is right then the disticntion remains but its just a waste of time to consider consequences.

I might mis-state BTMs position a bit.

Okay, well BTM is nuts then

With regards to people who pick actions but don't consider the consequences I'd argue those people don't exist. Someone who says 'drugs are bad so we should ban them,' is just especially bad at envisaging consequences, if they weren't looking at consequences at all it'd just be 'drugs are bad.' It's not surprising that smarter people are better at examining consequences and less prone to choose actions that produce bad results, but you'd expect even very limited predictive capability like that example to be +EV overall given some decisions are simple and there's no reason to think they will perform worse than chance the rest of the time.

Maybe but it doesn't matter. Think about it in terms of time spent considering the consequences. One extreme is 0 time (maybe no-one is that extreme) the other extreme is have to consider everything before acting (I'll call that 1 unit of time, you can nit about this as its not clear wthat that means in wh=ich case lets just call it 'lots')

For simplicity its worth considering just 0 or 1. Neither may exist but the spectrum does.

How good they are at thinking is a related but different issue

What is your point about that spectrum though? You'll improve predictive capability the more time you spend examining consequences (up to the point you know everything relevant) but in all cases will be better off predicting than not predicting. I don't see any reason to think a typical progression wouldn't be linear either.

The main thing was to make explicit the difference between good intentions and expected good outcomes. Then such glorious things can follow such as:

pat people on the head for good intentions but take little notice of them. Do not let them control the agenda.

The danger to democracy from politicians that appeal to the good intentions end of the spectrum. We need to consider a move away from being so partisan and offer more support to those who think things through even if they're not out flavour (unless they are too extreme obv)

The consumer advantage in buying based on good expected outcomes rather than good intentions

Maybe education should try to help people to the more optimal part of the spectrum

Then there was a partial defense of Adam Smith. More interesting here imo is that not all capitalist cultures/systems are the same, and a consideration is to align good intentions with good expected outcomes i.e. make people think education is good rather than praying and the expected outcomes for the world of the actions of those low in the spectrum will rise.

Following is all the neccesary data

If the argument is that we should encourage better analytic judgment in public discourse, then no disagreement here. May be a nitpick I'm not sure but it's just this point you made earlier and restated in your last that I'm picking up on:

I don't think anybody does anything based on good intentions alone. I don't know what would even mean, it seems like the causal link with the world is severed in that case. Everyone aims for good outcomes it's just some people are worse than others at assessing them.

Also, good intentions are rare enough that it's still a characteristic we should praise quite a bit. Good intentions alone may not be enough to do good but they are a prerequisite if attempting to improve results.

My reading (he may want to jump in and correct) of BTM invoking Smith is the notion that society is structured such that we do some amount of good by acting with self interest, and more than we would by acting randomly. I'm sure that's correct, but the flawed leap from there IMO is that we're more likely to damage than improve our success rate by deliberately attempting to improve on that.

Didn't we deal with that. its a spectrum from little to lots.

It would mean doing something without thinking (or little thought) because of an emotional reaction to the situation.

I agree. It's seems commonplace, have you visited the politics forum?

That may be the aim but this is about how much they contemplate the consequences.

Not if neutral intentions are better (that's the invisible hand bit). I dont know but I'm willing to assume good intentions are better than bad intentions.

Maybe they aren't, Adam Smith (or something similar) may be right. But its besides the point. I'm not arguing against good intentions.

^ Okay, I'm just wary because I feel like you're hinting at a false dichotomy, which is why I'm stressing the distinction between zero and a little.

I also feel like you're hinting at a problem in society I don't see any evidence of. It's true that we applaud good intentions, and don't applaud good results in the absence of good intentions, but we applaud both together the most, and that's how it should be. Good results in the absence of good intentions present a useful strategy for the good intentioned to copy, but they certainly don't make the original agent worthy of moral praise, it'd be like applauding me for losing my wallet in Oxfam.

With regards to Smith, it's been a while but I'm more or less certain his argument was only that society is pretty well shaped to work well if people look after their own interests. That says nothing at all about whether we can improve our moral lot or how we'd do it, only that our starting point isn't zero.

We live in different worlds. in the one I live in people go crazy with applause for good results fullstop, and woe betide people with good intentions who get bad results. I also fear you're confusing good results with good expected results.

I din't mean to hint at a problem, thought I ws waving a big flag.

It sounds like you're saying it would be a problem but it doesn't happen - I think you're very wrong and its a huge problem but I'm content if you agree it would be a problem.


I agree with that whether it was Smith's view or not.