Moral Mayhem

Hosted by real-life partners, @vaishsg7 and @arntzgray1, Moral Mayhem offers non-batshit-crazy, good-faith commentary from the center-right

[Vaish @Vaishsg7]

In the latest episode of @moral_mayhem , we were joined by @GSalmieri to discuss ethical egoism.

We discuss the function of morality, the individual as the relevant unit of moral patienthood, free will, the modern pronatalist movement and more...

https://t.co/lnkyA3uAj7

[Moral Mayhem @moral_mayhem]

Most political movements in the West based on group identity have an underlying fairness claim. @bryan_caplan 's definition of feminism extends this to feminism - which he defines as the view that our society generally treats men more fairly than women. We note a couple of things about fairness more generally:

Fairness itself is contingent on what metrics you choose to define it. Should we use average welfare or median welfare? Given we can’t usually agree on what constitutes welfare, should we use autonomy or freedom instead? These yield ostensibly different conclusions about which gender was treated "more fairly.".

There are infinite ways to slice and dice human experience. Grouping by gender is another arbitrary choice. People like compare relative power within categories or between couples in their category without accounting for how many people were in each category. For example, Bottom-decile men throughout history probably fared worse than any other group. A wealthy woman in 1900s Manhattan probably fared better on welfare, autonomy etc compared to most men in South Asia at the time.

Our conversation with Bryan covers related topics including the stereotyping of both genders (women as childlike, men as beast-like), the impact of gender politics on romantic relationships, the wage gap debate, household labor division. We also riff on arranged marriages for  a while. Tune in to the latest episode of Moral Mayhem with @arntzgray1 and @Vaishsg7

https://t.co/Eydu8TlJjm

[Vaish @Vaishsg7]

Love turns a finite series of repeated games — with a defect/defect equilibrium — into an infinite series of repeated games — allowing for a cooperate/cooperate equilibrium.

Between close kin, biology does most of this work. For example, most parents accept significant personal costs and risks in caring for their children without a clear expectation or certainty of payoff. Parents internalize the utility functions of their offspring as their own, such that incentives seem perfectly aligned. But the same hormone that mediates this process – oxytocin – also plays a role in romantic and sexual partnerships between two genetically unrelated partners.

If a couple were to treat their relationship as nothing more than a series of transactions (e.g., she brings the looks, I bring the money), the temptation to defect will inevitably rise as circumstances, status and payoffs change. Knowledge of this eventuality is itself anathema to the longevity of a relationship, since an expectation of defection in the future is met with a recursive set of mutual defections, ending the relationship. Cultivating and enhancing romantic love allows each partner to internalize the negative costs that such defection can be expected to cause their partner. In this way, love is to a modern relationship what rigid social norms and divorce stigma are to traditional marriages or what company culture is to organizational alignment – a psychological plug variable that solves the coordination problem.

If you want a less articulate but more fun version of this discussion, tune in to the latest episode of @moral_mayhem as @arntzgray1 I discuss the latest season of the reality show: Love is Blind.

[Regan Arntz-Gray @arntzgray1]

I've written before about why I think economic fertility incentives are most cost effective if they only kick in at the third baby. Since almost everyone has one baby and most people have two, if incentives only kick in at the third baby, a higher % of the babies triggering those incentives will be marginal (i.e. wouldn't have been born without the policy).

But as @robinhanson points out, given that each American is effectively responsible for a portion of our national debt and unfunded liabilities, each child is worth ~$300-$700 thousand dollars. And so a program that endows parents with a portion of their children's future tax revenue is self-funding*.

I still think that cost-effectiveness should be considered in terms of future tax revenues with and without the policy, and that holding off on giving parents this benefit until they have their third child would be more cost effective**, but as Robin points out this is essentially taxing a gift.

See part two of @Vaishsg7 and my @moral_mayhem interview with Robin Hanson (linked in replies) where we discuss the fine points of fertility policy, why people discount the degree to which economic incentives matter for fertility and Robin's career and approach to research.

*I'm definitely convinced that Robin's proposal is preferable to giving parents tax breaks, which is the policy proposal I'd explored before

**Having incentives kick in at the third baby would also allow you to give a much larger marginal benefit, and therefore could have a bigger incentivizing effect, since if only a minority of families get a portion of their kids future tax revenue you can make that portion much higher than you could if everyone gets it

[Robin Hanson @robinhanson]

I thought this convo went especially well. Still only 50 views on Youtube.

[Regan Arntz-Gray @arntzgray1]

As @robinhanson says in the latest @moral_mayhem episode: "It seems like... oh shit! Civilization has a fatal flaw... but what do we do? Do we go back?"

We discuss Robin's theories around cultural drift, potential solutions, and why people don't seem to be concerned about it.

[SNAFU @FritzPeasant]

Interesting thread. Themes echo the concerns that underlie my opposition to world government (and why I even think we need to revert a great deal of power to the states). Centralization and uniformity are very risky.

[Regan Arntz-Gray @arntzgray1]

If we think of cultural hegemony as analogous to a lack of genetic diversity, then, as is a risk with asexual reproduction, we’re collectively more vulnerable to environmental change. Basically, if culture is a set of adaptive tools and everyone globally is using the same set, we should overall expect to be less resilient to a wide array of contexts than we were before there was a global monoculture. With physical distance no longer forming a meaningful barrier between different cultural groups ideas can spread faster than ever. On the one hand, we should expect this to quicken the pace of cultural evolution, but it’s possible that this is more like quickening the pace of random mutations, and without harsh enough selective pressures this risks allowing the cultural equivalent of ‘mutation load’ to build up very quickly. 

In our latest Moral Mayhem episode, we explore the arguments from @robinhanson that the growth of a global monoculture, enabled by ease of travel, communication etc. has led to a reduction of cultural selection pressures, making it possible for culture to evolve in maladaptive directions.

We discuss Hanson’s concept of "deep multiculturalism" as contrasted with the “shallow multiculturalism” we currently valorize in the West, which promotes diverse values and norms on the surface (e.g. different foods, celebrations, languages) but requires agreement on the values which are considered deeper or sacred, like the importance of individual “human rights”, and of course valuing shallow multiculturalism! Deep multiculturalism on the other hand implies valuing the existence of diverse cultures which hold different values as sacred. 

Robin acknowledges that he doesn’t know how to promote deep multiculturalism, but I feel that the reason it’s hard to promote is because it isn’t a game-theoretically stable strategy. In order for deep multiculturalism to persist and resist tending towards monoculture, each of the diverse cultures has to value deep multiculturalism, or else has to have disregard for people from other cultures. When you’re invested in a culture, you think your cultural values are not only good but right, and if you care about people from other cultures you will want to convert them to holding these correct values too. And so it seems like any culture that doesn’t hold deep multiculturalism as a sacred value will attempt to evangelize or imperially dominate, inevitably pulling members from more permissive cultures. 

Check out the episode to hear us discuss the potential implications of cultural drift, such as declining fertility, and the uneasy balance between peace and progress.

[Regan Arntz-Gray @arntzgray1]

You can certainly argue that being willing to break the law to come to the US communicates desperation/need and is a good filter if we want our population to be risk taking etc, but I doubt that it correlates with nothing negative.

To be clear, I don’t think most unauthorized immigrants are bad people at all, and I certainly don’t want mass deportations accomplished through brutal means. But I also think that the default assumption should be that if we realize someone is an unauthorized immigrant our legal systems work together to begin a deportation.

If there’s no deportation under any circumstances then we don’t have an immigration policy that we can enforce. And we create the incentives for people to continue to come here illegally.

While I think most unauthorized immigrants came here for economic opportunity, there are also so so many people around the world who also want to come here for those reasons but can’t or don’t under the current system.

Since not everyone who would like to come here each year can, because there’s so much demand, we have to filter in some way. And I think we can do a better job of selection than filtering on willingness to come illegally does.

That said, many of my points in the latest @moral_mayhem podcast rest in part on the assumption that getting control of the southern border and reducing the incentives to come here illegally is a necessary step to opening up the conversation about what kind of legal immigration we want (and hopefully getting more great people immigrating here). If that’s not true, and there’s no link in the US between dealing with the illegal immigration issue and having a chance at expanding and making more sensible our legal immigration policy than I would see this somewhat differently. But at the end of the day I feel that we also need to get democratic support for whatever immigration policy we have, not force through the views of a minority by failing to enforce the law.

[Moral Mayhem @moral_mayhem]

Dating apps and job boards let us select from larger pools. The easiest traits to filter for (height, job title) often aren't the most important, but highly correlated, weak preferences on these leads to adverse selection.

More on the latest episode of Moral Mayhem, out now!!

[Garett Jones @GarettJones]

Self-recommending:

@maximlott talks with @moral_mayhem:

[Garett Jones @GarettJones]

Doing the math with @arntzgray1 of @moral_mayhem:

[Moral Mayhem @moral_mayhem]

There are few areas in which race is the best proxy for whatever it is you care about. Using race when you could use something else increases prediction error. It’s worth noting two exceptions.

1. ‘This person seems off to me’ exception: If there are scenarios in which you have to make snap decisions in the physical world about safety and security, use race or any other visual cue to inform your response. If someone looks to threatening to you and you want to move out of harm’s way, minimizing error is not of paramount importance and better information is unavailable.

2. The @nathancofnas exception: Guess what statistics about group differences are really good at doing? Predicting group differences. So in so far as the left has forced us into conversation about group differences (which one would have otherwise thought counter-productive), one has to be honest about the source of group differences. Notwithstanding the question of how much one should emphasize this as a public intellectual, if you resort to lying or even refuse to acknowledge what you know to be true, the burden of proof is on you to explain your choice to compromise epistemic integrity.

@arntzgray1 and @Vaishsg7 talk more about racism as prediction error in the latest episode of Moral Mayhem.

[Vaish @Vaishsg7]

It seems like when people accuse others of being in "transactional" relationships, what they're really saying is that they're optimizing too hard or only on externally legible metrics.

At base, most relationships are transactional in that both parties get something out of it, at least in the moment. But these choices can be misguided in at least two ways:

(1) Hyperbolic Discounting: Whatever has the highest short-term payoff may result in suboptimal long-term happiness (e.g., marrying someone who is hot but ethically bankrupt)

(2) The Goodharting of Mate Value: Someone's mate value - their score on 4, 5 or 6 dimensions that most people seem to care most about - is a proxy for someone's predicted attractiveness to the median market participant, not the actual value they will add to your life given your specific preferences and their actual personality. But many treat dating as the process of maximizing the proxy of mate value. This increases the likelihood of adverse selection - and the chance that you end up with someone who is quite terrible at something that's not legible on paper.

@kaschuta , @arntzgray1 and I discuss more on the latest episode of @moral_mayhem

[Regan Arntz-Gray @arntzgray1]

Are there more marriageable women than men?

@kaschuta rightly points out that as more women have entered the workforce and increasingly outperform men in educational qualifications the pool of men who would be most attractive to them on paper - men with equal or greater career and/or educational success - shrinks. She also notes that while women might be happy to brunch with their girlfriends and receive support and intimacy primarily through relationships with other women and family, men have a harder time completely opting out of the dating market, “plagued” as they are by “their demonic lust for the opposite sex”.

Still, most people, probably 90% of people, would like to find a partner of the opposite sex. Economic need used to be a primary reason for marriage and partnership, and women needed men in a way they no longer do. I think that we’re still adjusting to to this shift in the dynamic.

If you don’t need to find a man for reasons of financial need then the way we select a partner and what is considered an enviable partner should change as well. As I mention in the podcast, I know several couples where the woman either makes more money, is more educated, or has a higher status white collar job while their male partner has a more blue collar job. And many of these relationships are healthy and happy! The men in these relationships are bringing something to the table that women appreciate, whether that be being a handy guy, being in great shape, being a caring and supportive partner and an involved father or even more subjective things like having a great sense of humor or being charming etc.

There are many ways to attract women beyond on paper qualifications and if you focus too hard on gaining legible status markers to widen your pool rather than on finding someone who’s a good match for you you may end up “cornering yourself”, as Alex says, in the transactional part of the dating market anyways. I’m certainly not saying that legible status markers like money don’t matter, all else equal they are great! But both women and men probably need to update on what they should be looking for in a partner that they actually need and don’t already have and which will predict long term relationship happiness and success for them. Even though many women don’t need a man anymore most of us still want one!

[Regan Arntz-Gray @arntzgray1]

On the latest @moral_mayhem, Martin argues that adding an option to receive corporal punishment rather than jail time in certain situations would be ethically superior to the status quo. But, as we discuss, the severity that would be required to make such a punishment effective for deterrence would almost surely be too high for people to stomach. And this is despite the fact that prison conditions and the frequency of violence, sexual assault etc. can make jail time far more tortuous.

So I think the issue isn’t that the punishment is too brutal to allow but rather that people see acts of omission vs commission as significantly ethically different. We don’t intend for prison rape to be commonplace even though it is, and so we don’t feel as guilty about the assaults that take place as a result of placing people in jail. But we, as a society, will not condone violence of the same or even of a lower magnitude if it’s being done intentionally and on our behalf.

[Interintellect 🧭 @interintellect_]

The new episode of @arntzgray1's series about Sam Harris' body of work is coming soon! 

Tune in and discover the power of conversation! Make sure you join the series to get all the insights she has to offer! https://t.co/fxb8iWTv0i

[Regan Arntz-Gray @arntzgray1]

As @chrisbest pointed out in the latest episode of @moral_mayhem, Silicon Valley still has a cultural special sauce, one that celebrates ambition, risk-taking and originality.

A question we didn’t get a chance to ask Chris: Is there such a thing as too much risk-taking or desire for originality? What evidence would be synonymous with blowing past the optimal point?

One intuition @Vaishsg7 mentioned against observing this in practice: the special sauce in any subculture or ecosystem is still fighting a battle against inherent status quo bias and mimetic contagion of the current definition of “cool” and “successful”.

Listen more for Chris’ views on Canadian culture, remote work, Silicon Valley and how Substack’s revenue model avoids the most pernicious incentives.

[Vaish @Vaishsg7]

Once Biden announced his decision not to run, we saw people debate the appropriateness of bestowing President Biden with lavish praise for his decision. One argument that seemed persuasive at first glance is one about incentives- we should praise people who act in the public interest if we want to see more of such behavior. If we continued to deride him, what incentive would people in similar situations have to act righteously ?

But this analysis is incomplete in a few ways:

(1) This can’t be an absolute principle. if we are unrelenting in our praise for Biden , doesn’t that reward doing everything you can to resist acting in the public interest for months and then caving when it no longer looks feasible, since you still get all the glory? Clearly we need some gradation here - the elevation in status has to be commensurate with how virtuous they were relative to their opportunity cost

(2) it’s not clear that this incentives frame is even a good frame if we can attribute a large part of Biden’s personal decision making over the last year to his senility, since this won’t generalize to people who are not in this unique position

(3) Most importantly, in my opinion, Biden still hasn’t done what public interest would require him to do - step down immediately. He continues to put the country in jeopardy every day he stays on.

We discuss this and more in one of our shorter episode. @arntzgray1 also does a Kamala laugh which is worth catching.