Unnamed comments on What Cost for Irrationality? - Less Wrong

59 Post author: Kaj_Sotala 01 July 2010 06:25PM

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Comment author: Kaj_Sotala 02 July 2010 12:10:05AM 0 points [-]

Fixed the sentence. Is there anything else that's unclear in it?

Comment author: Unnamed 02 July 2010 01:04:13AM *  3 points [-]

There are a lot of numbers, and they aren't given in a way that makes the important ones prominent and the parallelism between the two framings transparent. You're switching between a $500 increment and a $1,000 increment, varying the number of children between 0, 1, and 2, and repeating the $35k and $100k numbers (which are distracting labels for the groups, not relevant numbers). Was the setup:

Option 1

  • rich 2-child pays $26,000
  • rich 0-child pays $27,000
  • poor 2-child pays $3,000
  • poor 0-child pays $4,000

Option 2

  • rich 2-child pays $25,000
  • rich 0-child pays $27,000
  • poor 2-child pays $3,000
  • poor 0-child pays $4,000

with Option 1 preferred when it's a tax reduction (0-child is the baseline) and Option 2 preferred when it's a tax penalty (2-child is the baseline)?

I might get rid of the numbers entirely, and just say something like: Another study explored the idea that families with more children should pay less in taxes, framing the tax difference as either a reduction or a penalty, and tested whether people thought the amount of the reduction/penalty should vary depending on the family's income. In one version, two-child families pay less than families without children because of a tax reduction, and in the other families without children pay more than two-child families because of a tax penalty. Of course, the two versions are equivalent, but when it was framed as a tax penalty most people wanted the size of the penalty to increase as the family's income increased, but when it was framed as a tax reduction most wanted the size of the reduction to be the same regardless of the family's income.

Maybe you could add a sentence or two at the end with the relevant numbers.

Comment author: Kaj_Sotala 02 July 2010 06:40:22PM 0 points [-]

Thanks, this is good feedback. I'll make those changes shortly.