[SEQ RERUN] "Can't Say No" Spending
post by MinibearRex · 2011-09-30T03:30:21.603Z · LW · GW · Legacy · 17 commentsContents
17 comments
Today's post, "Can't Say No" Spending was originally published on 18 October 2007. A summary (taken from the LW wiki):
Medical spending and aid to Africa have no net effect (or worse). But it's heartbreaking to just say no...
Discuss the post here (rather than in the comments to the original post).
This post is part of the Rerunning the Sequences series, where we'll be going through Eliezer Yudkowsky's old posts in order so that people who are interested can (re-)read and discuss them. The previous post was Hold Off On Proposing Solutions, and you can use the sequence_reruns tag or rss feed to follow the rest of the series.
Sequence reruns are a community-driven effort. You can participate by re-reading the sequence post, discussing it here, posting the next day's sequence reruns post, or summarizing forthcoming articles on the wiki. Go here for more details, or to have meta discussions about the Rerunning the Sequences series.
17 comments
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comment by Prismattic · 2011-10-01T01:53:57.792Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
I get the impression that an unstated definition of "aid to Africa" that implicitly excludes the kinds of things that actually work makes this into something of a tautology. For example, the campaign to eradicate Guinea worm, which mostly affects people in Africa, appears to have been quite successful. And if the correlation between rates of parasitic infestation and IQ actually turns out to be a causal relationship, this would be an even bigger deal. To me, this campaign would intuitively qualify as "aid to Africa."
[This post has been edited for spelling and grammar]
Replies from: satt↑ comment by satt · 2011-10-01T12:31:02.973Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
For example, the campaign to eradicate Guinea worm, which mostly affects people in Africa, appears to have been quite successful.
I'll go one better and point to two campaigns that have been practically 100% successful: the eradication of smallpox and the eradication of rinderpest.
Of course, the simple fact that these worked doesn't mean their costs outweighed their benefits. But the US seems to have saved its contribution to smallpox eradication multiple times over. And I'm unaware of any complete cost-benefit analyses for rinderpest eradication, but this paper on rinderpest control programmes in 10 African countries from 1989 to 1997 suggests that even then they were having a net economic benefit.
comment by Viliam_Bur · 2011-09-30T16:57:00.216Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
If you donate money to Africa, you are a very good person.
If you don't donate money to Africa, but you are silent about it, usually no one will notice.
If you don't donate money to Africa and you say that you wouldn't donate money to Africa, you are a very bad person.
If you don't donate money to Africa and you say that you wouldn't donate money to Africa and you explain logical reasons for not donating money to Africa, you are a shameless evil person with twisted morality and you deserve to be hit.
This problem is complicated on multiple levels. There is not only a difference between "give" and "not give", but also between "not give silently" and "not give and explain". On one level, people in the "give" group are exchanging money for good feelings. On other level, people in both "give" and "not give silently" group have some kind of tacit agreement -- you don't have to join the game, but you shouldn't ruin the game for others.
By analogy, it is OK if you don't believe in Santa Claus, but making a big poster "Sant Claus does not exist" would be considered rude. If you replace Santa Claus with a deity, some people may become hostile, but others may "agree to disagree". Now if you add logical arguments (thus suggesting that your opponents are kind of stupid) that's even worse.
If you don't care about consequences for Africa, only about our social circle, then "not give silently" is the win-win solution; you keep both your money and your image. And that's exactly what most people do! That means that lack of rationality is not the problem. The real problem is that for most people their image is much more important than any suffering caused by their actions or inactions in Africa. If you try to explain it to them... of course they will become angry at you, because you are trying to damage their image, and that is much worse for them than anything that happens in Africa.
Replies from: Logos01↑ comment by Logos01 · 2011-09-30T19:48:13.424Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
If you don't donate money to Africa and you say that you wouldn't donate money to Africa and you explain logical reasons for not donating money to Africa, you are a shameless evil person with twisted morality and you deserve to be hit.
Funny thing about that. James Shikwati, an economist from Kenya, once said of foreign aid to Africa: "for God's sake, just stop."
According to him (same article), "Development aid is one of the reasons for Africa's problems. If the West were to cancel these payments, normal Africans wouldn't even notice. Only the functionaries would be hard hit. Which is why they maintain that the world would stop turning without this development aid."
And yet, despite the fact that yes giving money to Africa as foreign aid is directly damaging to them, we who try to point this out are still the villains of the piece. C'est la vie.
Replies from: Viliam_Bur↑ comment by Viliam_Bur · 2011-09-30T20:37:18.985Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Well, truth is important only if you care about truth. Most non-Asperger people don't. Duh.
To an average person that article simply means that James Shikwati is heartless, or at least blinded by cynicism. He cannot possibly be right, because Bono says otherwise. Outside scientific circles, conflict of opinions is always resolved by social status and feelings. Bono has higher status. Bono provides warm fuzzies. End of discussion.
Replies from: printing-spoon, Prismattic↑ comment by printing-spoon · 2011-10-02T20:38:53.014Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
The average person probably supports foreign aid because they haven't heard of James Shikwati.
↑ comment by Prismattic · 2011-10-01T01:57:37.052Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
While the average person isn't particularly rational, this is a fairly ridiculous caricature. How many times have you actually encountered someone who made a claim (implicit or explicit) of the form "X cannot be true because nonexpert celebrity says !X"?
Replies from: Viliam_Bur↑ comment by Viliam_Bur · 2011-10-01T09:23:10.719Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
You are right, in that part I turned around the causality. It is not "it is popular, because Bono says so", but rather "Bono says so, because it is popular". Even Bono probably couldn't afford to say "don't give money to Africa" without harm to his image. (Some celebrity with bad-boy image could say that, but only because they would be supposed to say controversial things.)
I guess an average person's decision algorithm is something like a weighted vote between reason and feelings. That means whenever reason says "it's complicated", feelings win by default. (A rationalist is trying to give more weight to reason, so when reason says "it's complicated", the whole algorithm returns "it's complicated".) Thinking about long-term consequences of foreign aid to Africa is complicated.
If an average person has no opinions on a non-trivial topic, then when asked, their reason will say "it's complicated". But if they have a cached answer, then they will give the cached answer.
So the problem is, how exactly are the cached answers created in the society? More specifically, what could we do to make these cached answers more rational? Perhaps this is what schools are for -- to provide cached answers on a wide range of topics to the whole population. And this is why so many people are trying to get their opinions into curriculum -- because that is a great leverage on public opinion. So is it also what rationalists should try to do?
Schools are not the only leverage, a successful TV would also work. But a pro-rationalist TV couldn't be rational, at least not during the first years, because it wouldn't become popular. It should be mostly entertaining, and only insert some rationalist memes frequently, so they gradually become a common opinion.
Replies from: lessdazed, Emile↑ comment by Emile · 2011-10-02T16:37:29.415Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Schools are not the only leverage, a successful TV would also work. But a pro-rationalist TV couldn't be rational, at least not during the first years, because it wouldn't become popular. It should be mostly entertaining, and only insert some rationalist memes frequently, so they gradually become a common opinion.
Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality is the living proof that something can be both engaging and "pro-rationalist". "Rationality" doesn't imply boring or Spock-like.
Replies from: pedanterrific↑ comment by pedanterrific · 2011-10-02T16:58:02.896Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
"Rationality" doesn't imply boring or Spock-like.
- Rationality implies awesome
- Spock is awesome
- Rationality implies Spock-like.
\V/_
comment by DanielLC · 2011-09-30T05:07:02.379Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
I find it unlikely that people just can't say no to foreign aid. People seem very good at justifying not donating to charity. I think the real problem is that people don't do enough research on the effects of what they do.
Replies from: MixedNuts↑ comment by MixedNuts · 2011-09-30T09:32:23.753Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
No, they get offended when you tell them it doesn't help.
Replies from: Manfred↑ comment by Manfred · 2011-09-30T19:36:03.496Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Do they get offended, or do they just not believe you, and perhaps rationalize heavily? Did we, perhaps, frame the issue in the most sensational way possible, i.e. "aid to Africa is actively harmful" as a generalization, rather than "aid in the form of free food and well-drilling and money to dictatorships has been shown to be harmful, there are other much better things we should be doing to help Africa?"
If neither side actually benefits from communication breaking down, a communication breakdown usually means both sides made mistakes. This is one of Eliezer's posts I guess I disagree with most.
Replies from: MixedNuts, Giles↑ comment by Giles · 2011-10-03T19:15:26.004Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
My anecdotal evidence is that I wasn't offended, I just didn't believe it. The issue seemed to be framed incorrectly - discussion on this issue seemed to be saying "aid doesn't work; just don't bother" rather than "hey you want to do the aid thing? Here's how to do it properly".
Accepting that conventional wisdom is wrong was really hard for me. I think if you're asking people to do that, you need to go in gently and show people that you're on their side.