Tag Archives: society

On journalistic privilege

Journalists have certain privileges over the average citizen – they get access to inside information, public figures and press conferences. An attack against a journalist creates more outrage, because it is seen as damaging the free press. These advantages are not given so that journalists could make money or satisfy their curiosity. The privileges are provided to help journalists serve the public interest, similarly to the delegation of decision power to politicians. People being people, some journalists abuse the privileges. They do not inform the public, only entertain to make money. This takes the form of sensationalism: covering frivolous topics that sell well, but do not provide useful knowledge. For example celebrity gossip, funny animals, manufactured controversy.

It would be fair to remove journalistic privileges from tabloid reporters and stop calling them journalists. They are just nosy people. The problem is that whoever decides on giving or taking privileges, gets power over the media. Therefore this authority should not be the government, but an independent organization. However, some rights and protections of the media are legislated, so a non-governmental body cannot change them. The legislature would have to delegate its authority in this sphere to the hypothetical independent regulator first. Given how much politicians wish to influence journalists, this decision seems unlikely.

Why taxes hit the middle class

Leave a reply

The poor don’t have much wealth or income, so not much to tax. The rich find it worthwhile to hire accountants and lawyers to find loopholes useful for avoiding taxes. Optimizing one’s taxes is almost a fixed cost (does not depend much on the wealth or income), but the benefit is proportional to what is taxed. In other words, there are economies of scale in tax evasion. The middle class is not rich enough for professional loophole-seeking to be profitable, but has enough to tax.
This is only theoretical reasoning. Empirically, the average tax rate increases in income, as far as I know. Whether the rate of increase should be higher or lower than at present is a matter of political preference.
To avoid the unequal treatment based on the ability to hire tax advisors, the tax system should be simple. Changing income from one form to another (salary to dividends for self-employed for example), or changing the source (foreign corporation vs its domestic subsidiary) should not change the tax rate. Minimizing loopholes means no special deductions for belonging to select groups (farmers, pensioners, veterans, parents).
The existence of a profession for providing tax advice to ordinary people is a sign that the tax code is too complex. Those in a common salaried job should be able to understand and file their taxes themselves.

On Trump and strategic voting

Leave a reply

Edit 9 Nov 2016: I was wrong. To avoid publication bias, I will leave this post up. It will teach people not to trust my political judgement.

Commenting on Trump is fashionable lately, so let me jump on the bandwagon. Probably these points have all been made before.
It seems the people most against Trump are the Democrat supporters, which suggests they are ignoring strategic voting. A famous voting example is that if A is preferred to B by the majority, B to C and C to A by different majorities (1/3 of people prefer A to B to C, 1/3 prefer B to C to A and 1/3 C to A to B), then with naive voters the order of votes matters. If first the A vs B vote is held and the winner goes against C, then A wins against B, after which C wins against A. But if B and C are voted first, then B wins, after which it loses to A.
One possibility is that Trump is preferred to other Republican candidates, who in turn are preferred to Democrats, who are preferred to Trump. In this case the Democrats should strategically support Trump against other Republicans and be happy that the primary vote between Republicans happens before the general election, not after. A conspiracy theorist might even suspect collusion between Trump and the Democrats or at least secret Democrat support for Trump to split the Republicans, like in the plot of All the King’s Men.
What if the polls show swing voters to favour Trump over the Democrats? Who people claim to support in elections is not necessarily who they actually support (the Bradley effect). Voters may claim to support Trump as a joke, or actually favour him now, but reconsider closer to elections. Putting Trump in power is like a dangerous adventure – there is a thrill at the possibility and many (claim to) want to do it when it is in the distant future. When the opportunity actually arrives, it may look too scary and people may get cold feet.
In the end, if Trump actually becomes President, he has antagonized many Republicans. There is a good chance of a bypartisan effort to block all his initiatives. The crazy and illegal things Trump has promised to do are just election promises – politicians break those all the time. Even reasonable promises are broken – radical ones are even more likely to be ignored. If Trump tries to do the unconstitutional lunacies, both parties have an incentive to impeach him. The enemy of my enemy is my friend, so taking down Trump may be just the thing to make Republicans and Democrats strange bedfellows and narrow the political polarization in the US.

Signalling by encouraging good decisionmaking

Leave a reply

Con artists pressure people into quick decisions. Marketing mentions that the offer is for a limited time only, so buy now, no time to read the small print. Date rapists try to get victims drunk or drugged. In all these cases, the goal is to prevent careful reasoning about what is happening and the decisions to be made. Also to prevent the victim from consulting others. Being pressured, confused or bullied while deciding is a danger sign, so one way for honest sellers to distinguish themselves is by encouraging good decisionmaking. Giving people time, referring them to neutral sources of info, asking them to think things over before deciding are all ways to make decisions more accurate.
More accurate decisions distinguish between good and bad deals better, which benefits honest sellers and harms con artists. This differential effect of information on good and bad types enables signalling by precision of information, where good types want to reveal as much as possible and bad types want to obfuscate. Information unravelling results – the best type has an incentive to reveal itself, then the second best type, then the third best etc. By not revealing, one is pooled with the average of the remaining types. In the end, the only type who does not strictly prefer to reveal itself is the worst type.

Why messages of attraction are ambiguous

Leave a reply

There are many behaviours by which one human shows being sexually attracted to another – staring at them, running fingers through one’s hair, standing close, smiling at them, etc. Most of these are ambiguous, meaning they can be explained away by nonsexual reasons. Staring may be due to being lost in thought and looking absently at a single point, which happens to contain a person. Adjusting the hair could happen because the hair feels messy. One could randomly stand close to someone, smile because one is happy for unrelated reasons and so on.
There are obvious benefits of clear messages – no wasted effort chasing someone not interested, no awkward situations, no false accusations that one’s partner was sending signals of interest to someone else. Why has evolution led to messages of attraction that create doubt in the observers?
If someone’s sexual advances are unsuccessful, this is interpreted as a negative signal about the rejected person and lowers their chances in the future. Rejection makes one wonder what the rejecter knew about their admirer that is unattractive. If a person has characteristics that makes others reject them, the offspring of that person are likely to inherit these and also be unsuccessful in mating. Unsuccessful offspring mean the fitness of the rejected person is low, justifying rejecting them. This evolutionary mechanism is called Fisherian sexual selection. Because of it, nobody wants to be seen to be rejected. One way to hide rejections is to hide the wooing and if rejected, pretend to be uninterested anyway (sour grapes).
Someone attempting to cheat on their partner obviously does not want others to see their advances on another person. People gossip, so hidden signals with plausible deniability are useful.
Some people take advantage of those attracted to them (the advantage may differ for men and women), so it is good to send messages of attraction only to those who are attracted in return. Someone who is interested pays more attention to a person, so is more likely to notice ambiguous messages from them. Wishful thinking makes an interested recipient interpret mixed messages favourably. Of course there is a positive probability of a mistake, but the difference between the probability of interested people versus unintended recipients noticing a signal is greater for ambiguous than clear messages. This is like encryption – there is a positive probability of friendlies having lost the encryption key, but the difference between the probability of friendlies versus hostiles understanding the message is greater for encrypted text.
Dating websites have probably figured this out, because they allow private messages. An additional improvement may be self-destructing messages that can only be viewed once. This makes it harder for the recipient of a message to prove someone’s interest to others and thus lower their admirer’s reputation after rejecting them. Randomly generating messages of attraction and sending them to people would give plausible deniability to those who are rejected. The benefit of deniability must be weighed against the loss to the recipients of false signals.

Politeness levels transformed in translation

Leave a reply

Different languages use different phrasing to express the same level of politeness, formality or familiarity. Directly translating the words from one language to another may result in a sentence at a different (usually unintended) level. This creates the impression that the speakers of a language (usually coinciding with people from a particular country and culture) are all polite or all rude. They simply translate their thought to another language, where the phrasing is above or below the intended level of politeness. This is one way that stereotypes about a nationality’s modesty, assertiveness or formality are created.
As an Estonian in the UK, I was considered rude, because I answered “yes” or “no” instead of “yes, please” or “no, thanks.” In Estonian at the time, “no, thank you” would have been formal or ironic (mockingly formal) and I just translated my ordinary reply to English.
The level of formality in a language changes over time and with social class. A good example is TV series about 19th century Britain, where people say things like “you are too kind, Sir”. In modern times, this would sound strange.

Raising grandchildren, not children

Leave a reply

Currently in all species I know of, each generation raises its children, who in turn raise their children, etc. This can be described as an overlapping generations model where each generation lives 2 periods, receives resources from the old of the previous generation in its youth and transfers resources to the young of the next generation when old. There is another equilibrium: each generation raises its grandchildren, has its children raised by its parents, and the children in turn raise their grandchildren. Instead of transferring resources to the next generation and receiving them from the previous, transfer resources two generations forward and receive them from two generations back. There are an infinite number of such equilibria: for each n, transfer resources n generations forward and receive them from n generations back. There are of course practical problems with large n, because the organisms do not live long enough to meet their level-n offspring.

There are complaints in developed countries that childbirth is postponed in life to acquire education and start a career. A possible solution is transitioning to an equilibrium of taking care of grandchildren, together with having children at a young age so that the grandparents are still alive to see the teenage years of their grandchildren. However, the equilibrium transition from taking care of children to taking care of grandchildren means that one generation must raise both children and grandchildren. The equilibrium transition in the other direction is easy – one generation does not raise its children or grandchildren, because its children are raised by its parents and its grandchildren by its children. Any other equilibrium is less stable than the raising-children one, because it is difficult to transition to it and easy to transition away.

The equilibrium stability comparision is similar to the social security equilibria in overlapping generations. In one equilibrium, everyone saves for their own retirement and consumes their savings when old. In another, every generation when young pays the social security costs of the previous generation who is old at the same time. The transition from the saving equilibrium to the equilibrium of paying the previous generation is easy, because one generation gets its savings and the contribution from the young, while the young do not save and receive the contribution of the next generation. The reverse transition is difficult, because one generation does not get a contribution from the young in its old age, but has to finance the retirement of the previous generation when young.