Ear Bites and Broken Brains

In 1997 Mike Tyson did the unthinkable to Evander Holyfield in a boxing match:

Suddenly, with 40 seconds left in the round, the fight takes an ugly and ghastly turn: Tyson gets Holyfield in a clinch, rolls his head above Holyfield’s shoulder, spits out his mouthpiece, and then in an inexplicable and gruesome move, crunches down hard with his teeth on Holyfield’s right ear and bites off a chunk.

Everyone in the stadium is mortified, unable to grasp what they have just witnessed. As Tyson spits out the chunk of Holyfield’s ear, a bewildered and perplexed Holyfield pushes Tyson away, then hops up and down in a frenzied pain, and spins around in a circle in stinging agony.

Gruesome yes and very much against the rules of boxing. The irony, for me, is that losing part of an ear is non-consequential compared to the permanent brain damage boxing can cause. Imagine you are in a hypothetical torturer’s chair, he gives you the option of having part of your ear painfully bitten off or receiving multiple severe blows to the head that will cause your brain to impact the inside of your skull so violently that it will swell and eventually cause permanent brain damage. Hmmmm…. sounds like a no-brainer to me (no pun intended).

Now this is not a rant against boxing but an observation of the power of feeling someone’s pain. The problem with brain damage in boxing is that there are no obvious signs of discomfort, no hopping around the ring, no open wounds gushing blood. We empathize with the chomped ear. Long term brain damage is something we can understand but it does not have the same visceral impact.

This kind of visceral empathy is the mainstay of the nightly news and is used by humanitarian organizations in their plea for donations. Carnage and suffering. Visceral imagery rules.

Libertarian Interventionists

Bryan Caplan at EconLog asks Why Did So Many Libertarians Support the [Iraq] War and tries to put the apparent contradiction into historical context.

Plenty of libertarians were against it, of course. But if you remember how integral isolationist/ non-interventionist foreign policy was to the libertarian idea back in the ’70s and ’80s, the libertarian reaction to the Iraq War (and the War on Terror generally) has been quite astonishing.

You might say that libertarians changed their mind because Islamic fundamentalism is such a serious threat. But it’s a lot less serious than the Soviet threat. And back when the Soviets still ruled eastern Europe, the standard libertarian foreign policy prescription was to pull out of NATO, Korea, and Japan. Similarly, you might say that Islamic fundamentalism is so ideologically repugnant to libertarians that they were willing to make an exception. But from a libertarian perspective, Marxism-Leninism is even worse, isn’t it?

In my view, libertarian thought does not lean to either an isolationist (anti-Iraq War) or interventionist (pro-Iraq War) side. Libertarians generally believe in a kind of Golden Rule: an individual has the right to do whatever they like as long as their actions do not impinge on the rights of others. What we often forget is that the Golden Rule does not specify the appropriate action to take when an individual breaks the rule.

How to deal with individuals, or groups of individuals, that break the Golden Rule is at the heart of the issue. As a libertarian, do you ignore or confront individuals that deny others their individual rights and freedoms. What about despotic rulers of sovereign nations? What about despotic rulers that commit genocide within the borders of their sovereign nations.

Iraq was a “problem from hell” (to borrow terminology from Samantha Power) before 9/11. Libertarian interventionists believed that bringing liberty to an oppressed people was a good thing. Libertarian isolationists believed that such pursuits were pure folly.

I think all libertarians believe that people around the world will benefit from an increase in individual rights and freedoms. The hard part is determining the best course of action/inaction required to increase liberty and that is the root cause of the apparent libertarian dilemma.

Repugnant Transplants

Alex Tabarrok at Marginal Revolution has an emotional post about Repugnant Repugnance.

Many people find the idea of selling human organs for transplant to be repugnant which is why Roth argues that we should focus more on improving efficiency through kidney swaps. I’m all in favor of swaps and have also suggested that one argument in favor of no-give, no-take rules is that they are ethically acceptable to more people than organ sales.

Nevertheless, I think Roth assumes too quickly that repugnance is a constraint to be respected rather than an outrage to be denounced and quashed. People’s repugnance at inter-racial dating or homosexual sex is no reason to prevent free exchange – the same is true for organ donations. Repugnance itself can be repugnant.

Is it not repugnant that some people are willing to let others die so that their stomachs won’t become queasy at the thought that someone, somewhere is selling a kidney?

I think Alex’s posts are some of my favorites as he is not shy about wearing his repugnance on his sleeve :-) Nonetheless, organ transplant policies and irrational biases (repugnance being one form) are complicated.

For a long summary of organ transplants (yet succinct given the complexity of the issue) see Tom Slee’s post Juicy Kidneys and his review of Kieran Healy book Last Best Gifts where he concludes:

Healy convinced me that the big issue is not the economists’ issue — of markets versus altruism — but is the sociologists’ issue of coping with complex incentives in large-scale industrial organizations, and that alone was worth the price of the book.

I agree with Tom on this one. Well not the “large-scale industrial organizations” part . Hopefully Tom doesn’t mind my mental paraphrase substituting “overcoming innate biases” for the Chomsky-esque stuff :-) I believe it is important to recognize our innate biases and sometimes in rare situations it is appropriate to create incentive systems to overcome these biases.

As another altruistic health example consider the practice of fecal transplants as a superbug treatment. I think its hard to argue that the repugnance in this case is an “outrage to be denounced and quashed” especially since I’m positive that some (most?) of the repugnance comes from the recipients who benefit from the altruism. I’m guessing that a funny commercial or even mainstream media coverage like the CBC’s will do more to overcome the repugnance than heavy-handed approaches.

Developing Smokers

There are 350 million smokers in China (vs. 540 million non-smokers). After years of hearing public health warnings against smoking and the legal fights against big tobacco companies it makes you wonder why people in developing countries take up smoking in the first place.

I think there is a common belief in the west that smoking is caused by 1) misinformation, and 2) companies that exploit this misinformation. The misinformation/exploitation explanation may very well explain the smoking numbers in China but I have some reservations.

My skepticism has its roots in anecdotal evidence from a couple of scuba trips to Indonesia. A high number of the dive masters in Indonesia smoke. Misinformation does not seem to apply. These young men (all have been men) have a good grasp of health issues dealing with the risk of decompression sickness and poisonous stings (rarely lethal but painful) for themselves and the divers in their charge. They speak English and are exposed to westerners who preach the evils of smoking to them daily. Yet they smoke in droves.

There seems to be some kind of psychological bias in place that accounts for this behavior.

Stress Free Pricing

One of Pogue’s Imponderables is the following question:

Why doesn’t someone start a cellphone company that bills you only for what you use? That model works O.K. for the electricity, gas and water companies —and people would beat a path to its door. [And I don’t mean prepaid phones, where once again you’re paying for calls you haven’t even made yet.]

Economist Tyler Cowen says the most likely answer combines price discrimination with consumer misjudgment.

I think the answer is that people try to maximize their preferences while minimizing the amount of stress induced by thinking about it. Stress free brain cycles is the goal. A fixed monthly plan that fits most of your calling needs reduces stress when the monthly fee does not impact your cash flow. If you have problems paying your monthly bill then prepaid cards will reduce your stress. The service provider also tries to minimize stress in their organization (meeting payroll and/or shareholder expectations).

People prefer stress free pricing.

Us vs. Them

Paul Krugman, op-ed columnist for the New York Times wishes he said that.

Ezra Klein on the McCain health care plan, which — like all the other health care plans being proposed on the Republican side — basically says that the problem is that people have too much insurance, so they get too much Lhealth care:

It’s like if I tried to make food cheaper by encouraging you to diet.

I’m not exaggerating. Here’s what Mitt Romney said about what ails American health care, in his slide show:

-The tax code creates an incentive for over-insurance and over-use of the health care system
-Individuals don’t get the value they would otherwise prefer
-Leads to excessive, unnecessary health care spending

Actually, it is more like making people more selective at a buffet by charging them for what they eat vs. charging them an all-you-can-eat price. I don’t think the principle is as far fetched as Krugman’s “I’m not exaggerating” comment might make you believe.

Regardless, this is not a post about U.S. health care reform. When an economist uses “Us vs. Them” arguments rather than rational discussion what hope is there for the rest of us? Where are all the on-the-other-hand economists that we hear the jokes about?

When Bridges Collapse

It is interesting to watch/read/hear the response to the Minneapolis 35W bridge collapse. Most of the talk has been about the crumbling infrastructure and lack of funds for maintenance. A built-in assumption is that, because the 35W bridge was old, that it collapsed because of corrosion/decay/neglect.

The security camera video shown on CNN starts when the collapse is underway and it does not show one critical section of the collapse but I have a tough time jumping to any conclusions. Maybe it is because structural collapse is not normally caught on video (Tacoma Narrows Bridge and WTC Twin Towers being exceptions) but man I didn’t expect to see the middle span go like that.

Are the calls for action a type of prescient Wisdom of the Crowds or just a symptom of our impatience?

I feel like we need a Getting Things Done system for news/events that impact public safety/health/security. We need a collective WaitingFor item for the analysis of the failure. Once the final analysis is complete a TakeAction item may be needed but until then the discussion about the best response seems a bit speculative.

When politicians hold press conferences in the days following a shooting, calling for extra gun control or other speculative measures, I wonder about their motivation and whether they have information that I missed. Did the police release information about the gun/shooter/victim that may help understand/prevent future shootings? Maybe its just a tickler, an early reminder that we are WaitingFor details and we may need to TakeAction.

I dunno.

Brainstorming and Lightbulb Jokes

Marc Andreessen’s quote of the week says brainstorming is a bad idea. David Sloan Wilson addresses the scientific claim that brainstorming is ineffective in his book Evolution for Everyone (Ch 26: How Many Inventors Does it Take to Make a Lightbulb).

Amazingly, the entire scientific literature on brainstorming might have reached a false conclusion about the advantages of thinking in groups by confining itself to mental tasks comparable to changing a lightbulb, as opposed to moving a piano.

In David Sloan Wilson’s research, brainstorming is effective when the mental task is challenging. Moving a piano, for instance, is best done by a group while a simple task like changing a lightbulb is best done by a single individual (or a group of lawyers if humor is your goal). Brainstorming, therefore, is a good idea for non-trivial mental tasks.

Identity and the SUV

With the progress of the green movement it seems that gas guzzling SUV’s are demonized more and more. My goal of this post is not to take a stand on the relative evil of the SUV but to propose a theory of why this category of vehicle became so popular to begin with. The theory is simple, people bought SUV’s because they thought they needed a mini-van but wouldn’t be caught dead in one.

VHS vs. Betamax

I love the VHS vs. Betamax story. Both technologies are effectively dead but the fact that Betamax died much sooner is the interesting part. Actually, the interesting part of this story is that it is a wonderful case study of how the mind works (or perhaps doesn’t work).

One reoccurring meme that comes up in various articles I have read goes like this: “VHS won the video tape war despite Betamax being a superior technology”.

WHAT IS BEST  – Our minds have a funny way of determining what is best when multiple variables are involved. In the video tape wars, some of the competing variables were 1) video quality, 2) tape length, 3) vendor choice, and 4) cost. But here we are years later and a large number of commentators on the “video tape war” can’t get beyond Video Quality. Ultimately, tape length proved to be a more important factor because of an unforseen emergent property; movie rentals. A Hollywood movie can fit on a single 120 minute VHS tape but not a 60 minute Betamax tape.

WHAT WE WANT –  the funny thing about the VHS/Betamax machines is that they were designed first and foremost as “recorders”. When people imagined using the technology they always thought about recording. Recording TV shows, TV movies, and football games. Its what we THINK WE WANT. We never figured out that it didn’t work all that well. So all VHS/Betamax machines included a TV Tuner and write heads and a clock and a really bad interface to start recording at a certain time.

LESSONS LEARNED – VHS won because of its 120 minute tape length and Blockbuster Video (maybe porn). We paid for and lived with extra recording technology junk because that is how we saw ourselves using it.

NOTE: I know the proprietary nature of Betamax was a big part too but that aspect says more about how the minds at Sony work rather than how our minds work.

How Many Did Chernobyl Kill?

A report in the Globe and Mail says the Canadian federal government is supporting the plan to bury nuclear waste. The most interesting statement comes from Gord Edwards who is the director of the Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility.

“In the face of a growing nuclear industry or even a static nuclear industry, this is not really a solution to the catastrophe problem at the surface,” Mr. Edwards said. He said any kind of major explosion – such as a terrorist attack – at a surface storage site would release radioactive clouds as deadly as those at the Chernobyl reactor that melted down in the former Soviet Union in 1986.

So how many people died due to the Chernobyl accident?

Paper Backs Nurture Assumption

A paper (pdf) was published that backs Judith Harris’ Nurture Assumption hypothesis.

This paper studies whether prosocial values are transmitted from parents to their children. We do so through an economic experiment, in which a group of families play a standard public goods game. The experimental data presents us with a surprising result. We find no significant correlation between the degree of cooperation of a child and that of his or her parents. Such lack of cooperation is robust across age groups, sex, family size and different estimation strategies. This contrasts with the typical assumption made by the theoretical economic literature on the inter-generational transmission of values. The absence of correlation between parents’ and children’s behavior, however, is consistent with part of the psychological literature, which emphasizes the importance of peer effects in the socialization process.

The Nurture Assumption states says that children’s personalities are 50% genetic and 50% social, however, the 50% social is from peers and 0% is from parents (i.e. the family environment).

Hat tip: Tyler Cowen

The Language of Images

Michael Reichmann has a new article up on his site The Luminous Landscape named Learning the Language of our Art which begins by describing a documentary about a remote tribe found on the Amazon.

They had no experience of seeing flat two dimensional representations of realty. Their culture had no experience with painting, and not even drawing existed in their society. So, when shown the film they simply could not figure out what it was they were looking at. It was light and colour and shapes and patterns, but that’s all.

And concludes the following.

What this addresses is that the comprehension of visual images is a form of language, and just like all human language it needs to be learned.

I think the interpretation of the remote tribe’s reaction to the movie projector was wrong. What they had issue with was this strange technology and trying to determine if it posed any kind of new danger. The idea that they had to learn to recognize two-dimensional images is wrong.

I think what we have learned most about our study of remote hunter-gatherer tribes is that the conclusions drawn by the observers is just as whacked as the native’s interpretation of the unknown technology (probably more so).

So is the comprehension of visual images something that has to be learned? No way (in my opinion).