wedrifid comments on Against picking up pennies - Less Wrong

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Tags: opportunity_costs standard_biases scope_insensitivity principles risk

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Comment author: wedrifid 14 December 2009 03:02:59PM *  1 point [-]

But it's strange to object to the statement that of the two plans {X, X+pick up penny}, the latter is more complicated.

I suggest that for people with a habit of picking up currency that they come across the plans, as implemented by their brains would be better described as {Y, Y + suppress pick-up-valued-item impulse in the case of pennies}. This sort of change is (a trivial instance of) the complexity that most matters to humans. Until the habit is entrenched the stimulus of a penny will have a transient but measurable deleterious effect on concentration. The risk of, for example, stumbling is also increased, with a well practised visual stimulus to motor action coupling interrupted by executive override.

I argue that the optimisation of literal penny grabbing protocols is an instance of metaphorical penny grabbing that does, in fact, waste more than it saves, as measured by complexity

Comment author: Daniel_Burfoot 15 December 2009 02:17:00PM 0 points [-]

I suggest that for people with a habit of picking up currency that they come across the plans, as implemented by their brains would be better described as {Y, Y + suppress pick-up-valued-item impulse in the case of pennies}.

I buy this point, but it seems like we're talking about different issues.

Penny grabbing is probably not a good example of the problem I am really concerned with. This is the situation where there is some action X that we have to decide whether or not to do, and we have relatively little information to bring to bear. A good example came up in the financial crisis: "should we bail out the banks?" Well, some people think we should, others disagree. There are all these hard-to-evaluate pros and cons in the outcome-prediction process, but at the end of the day the pros seem to add up to a bit more than the cons.

The problem is that some people see the question as symmetric: either we bail out the banks or we don't. No reason to prefer a priori one course of action over the other. But my whole point is that we should prefer the simpler action a priori, and require much more concrete evidence in favor of the complex plan before we choose it.

Comment author: wedrifid 15 December 2009 02:38:50PM 0 points [-]

There are all these hard-to-evaluate pros and cons in the outcome-prediction process, but at the end of the day the pros seem to add up to a bit more than the cons.

An interesting topic and I disagree.

The problem is that some people see the question as symmetric: either we bail out the banks or we don't. No reason to prefer a priori one course of action over the other. But my whole point is that we should prefer the simpler action a priori, and require much more concrete evidence in favor of the complex plan before we choose it.

I read your example and thought {X, X + bail out banks}. But since you are a bailout advocate I suppose you wouldn't have brought up the example if you thought the complexity weighed in against your position. So I infer that you mean {bail out banks, do a more complex thing Y}. For many instances of Y that people are likely to propose I expect I would agree with your judgement, with the complexity being a significant factor.

Comment author: Daniel_Burfoot 15 December 2009 03:53:26PM 0 points [-]

But since you are a bailout advocate I suppose you wouldn't have brought up the example if you thought the complexity weighed in against your position. So I infer that you mean {bail out banks, do a more complex thing Y}.

No, I'm against the bailout! My point is that the bailout is complex, therefore it should be penalized even if it seems to have a good predicted outcome. I see the choice as {X=no intervention, Y=bail out banks}; the former is far simpler, so it should be preferred.

Comment author: wedrifid 15 December 2009 03:57:55PM 0 points [-]

No, I'm against the bailout! My point is that the bailout is complex, therefore it should be penalized even if it seems to have a good predicted outcome. I see the choice as {X=no intervention, Y=bail out banks}; the former is far simpler, so it should be preferred.

Ahh, ok. I read the "the pros seem to add up to a bit more than the cons" part and assumed the reverse.

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