Beware Trivial Inconveniences

And yet, it seems to me that those Chinese who don't know that it's safe to go around the government firewall may have no good way of finding out that it's safe.

Paranoia about how if they do they will get caught may be cultivated in them. How do they know what methods the government has.

Also, they may be made to think that there is something dirty or illicit, wrong or ugly about going outside official sources.

I am reminded of how effectively government propaganda in the US works on those teenagers who least need it and how ineffectively on those who most need it.

Manual moderation is a big unknown - risk aversion means that you don't want your time spent writing to be wasted by some moderator deciding not to publish. And delay between writing and publishing is a problem too - you want feedback as soon as you wrote it while it's still fresh in your mind.

If people thought moderators would be very friendly, and very fast, that would matter less, but it's unusual expectation to have, even when it turns out to be true.

These are two very rational reasons why people post on LW and not OB.

Most people, the theory goes, would remain in the pension scheme, because they understand they're better off with a pension and it was only laziness that prevented them from getting one before.

I've felt for a long time that the same solution should be implemented for organ donation.

(Actually, there's a case to be made for "screw your sentimental attachment to your meat parts -- we can save lives". But soft paternalism is a start.)

I don't think "Not sending in your $200 rebate" and "not writing in an article to Overcomingbias" are the same phenomena at all.

It's not that people who are now writing all these LW posts felt like it was too much of a hassle to send an email to Overcomingbias; it's that deliberately and unusually sticking your neck out to contribute has a different social connotation than simply participating in the expected community behavior.

Contributing to Overcomingbias is like getting on stage: walking up to the stage is a socially loaded act in and of itself. "Hey, everyone, I'm going to stand out here and say something." Lesswrong, since the entire site is built around community posting, practically invites you to post as you please. There's nothing out of the ordinary about it. How could there be? The tools to do so are right there, embedded into the infrastructure of the site. It must be expected for me to do that!

'I was reminded of this recently by Eliezer's Less Wrong Progress Report. He mentioned how surprised he was that so many people were posting so much stuff on Less Wrong, when very few people had ever taken advantage of Overcoming Bias' policy of accepting contributions if you emailed them to a moderator and the moderator approved. Apparently all us folk brimming with ideas for posts didn't want to deal with the aggravation.'

I don't really have a point here, but this shouldn't really be surprising at all, not at this moment in time.

I mean, has anyone here not used Wikipedia? (I'd also wager even odds that >=90% of you have edited WP at some point.)

EDIT: Looking back, it seems to me that what would not be surprising is, upon observing LW suddenly skyrocketing in contributors & contributed material, noticing that the sudden increase comes after a loosening of submission guidelines. When a site skyrockets, it's for one of a few reasons: being linked by a major site like Slashdot, for example. Loosening submission guidelines is one of those few reasons.

But that's not to say that Eliezer should have confidently expected a sudden increase just because he loosened submission criteria; the default prediction should have been that LW would continue on much as OB had been going. Lots of wikis never go anywhere, even if they let anyone edit.

"The Impact of Media Censorship: Evidence from a Randomized Field Experiment in China", Chen & Yang 2018:

Media censorship is a hallmark of authoritarian regimes. We conduct a field experiment in China to measure the effects of providing citizens with access to an uncensored Internet. We track subjects' media consumption, beliefs regarding the media, economic beliefs, political attitudes, and behaviors over 18 months. We find four main results:

1. free access alone does not induce subjects to acquire politically sensitive information;
2. temporary encouragement leads to a persistent increase in acquisition, indicating that demand is not permanently low;
3. acquisition brings broad, substantial, and persistent changes to knowledge, beliefs, attitudes, and intended behaviors; and
4. social transmission of information is statistically-significant but small in magnitude.

We calibrate a simple model to show that the combination of low demand for uncensored information and the moderate social transmission means China's censorship apparatus may remain robust to a large number of citizens receiving access to an uncensored Internet.

This also reminds me of Robin's IQ-gated, test-requiring would-have-been-banned store, which would discourage people from certain drugs without making it impossible for the true believers to get their hands on them. I suggest such a store be located way on the outskirts of town accessible only by a potholed road with a single traffic light that changes once per presidential administration, have a surly clerk who speaks heavily accented English, and be open between the hours of two and four on weekdays.

Something sort-of like that already exists.

This is basically a free $200 for filling out an annoying form, but companies can predict that customers will continually fail to complete it.

Another possible strategy is to just "lose" a small percentage (or a large percentage) of such forms submitted, on the grounds that the additional effort of remembering that you were supposed to get a rebate and calling them on it would push more people under the effort threshold.

I read an article on Cracked about suicide. It seems that even the smallest of inconveniences can make a big difference in numbers of suicides, which is why guns are a terrible ideas to have easily accessible in your house. Humans are lazy. The amount of times I've postponed something, like moving the stuff I constantly have to walk over to reach my room, is way too high. I'd rather walk over a big crate 20 times a day than moving the things

Rebate schemes are not merely betting on consumer laziness; they are also a means of price discrimination. If you really need that $200, you're more likely to fill out the form.

Have you read Nudge? Given that it's the major popular source on the subject, it somehow seems incongruous to have a post with a major section on soft paternalism (they use 'libertarian paternalism') which doesn't even mention it (or at least the name 'Richard Thaler'). Save More Tomorrow is a real-life version of the pension plan you suggest (private, rather than government-run) which has had great success.

Libertarian Paternalism is almost exactly why I started to read the biases literature in the first place - it's the application of knowledge about the way people think/behave to economics.

Near my house there is a car with a bumper sticker that reads “death before inconvenience.” Most people, most of the time, will take whatever choice requires least work.

Paul Graham, The Other Road Ahead

This is somewhat untimely, but I just StumbledUpon this relevant article.

Another example of this might be a deadbolt on your front door; it's sure not going to stop anyone hell bent on robbing you, but it makes it inconvenient enough that any 'opportunist' thieves won't bother.

At any given time, we have many conflicting desires and motivations, that are (generally) closely balanced. Desire to fit in socially and act moral (by not being a thief) vs the desire to maximise your own circumstances (by stealing someones stuff). Desire to maximise circumstances (by filling out the rebate form) vs desire to conserve energy (by being too lazy to do it). Perhaps trivial inconsistencies tip the balance of these motivations enough so that in most people, one will be favored over the other. Adding a rebate form makes tips it just enough so that your natural laziness wins out over your desire for money.

Since our natural desires tend to come from the dumb part of our brain, this has the effect of causing us to make non-optimal decisions.

I'm reminded of Slavoj Zizek's example of "soft" coercion of sophisticated nations vs the "hard" overt coercion of communist states. He compares it to a type of parenting. There's 2 types of ways parents might get children to visit their grandmother. The hard way is "Go visit your grandmother, it's your responsibility, or you'll get smacked." The soft way is "Go visit your grandmother, she loves you so much. You never know when it's too late and she misses you all the time. It's your choice in the end, but a good grandson would visit his loving grandmother in old age." It goes without saying that the latter has much more lasting power and a deep psychological impact. While the former might incite the outward action of visiting the grandmother, it does not actually attack the psychological state of the grandson (he will do it against his will because he doesn't want to get punished).

There's a gradual shading from "soft paternalist" solutions to bans. Making someone take an extra 5 seconds to get their choice would probably not be considered a ban by many people. What about a minute? An hour? A week? What if it takes an hour, and you're a poor person who can't afford to get child care for the hour, or pay the taxi fare to go to the banned store on the outskirts of town? What if buying and having the item increases your chance of being harassed by the police, without the item itself being a crime to buy or have? (This actually happens in some places with open carry of guns.) Or increases the chance of child services coming and requiring you to go through months of hearings to get your children back?

Also, "soft paternalist" solutions tend to slip. If you want to discourage people from doing something and forcing them to go out of their way to do it doesn't discourage them enough to satisfy you, it's very tempting and usually very politically feasible to say "well, that's not working, so we need stronger measures like a real ban".

See Jonah Lehrer's book How We Decide. In fact, do this anyway. It's very good.

His blog, The Frontal Cortex, is also interesting.

Trivial inconveniences are alive and kicking in digital piracy, where one always has to jump through hoops such as using obscure services, softwares, settings or procedures.

I suspect it is to fend off the least motivated users: numerous enough to bring attention, and most likely to expose the den in the wrong place.

Has there been any work done to quantify the effect as part of an overall cost calculation?

For example, let's say that certain object X is sold as a subscription (buy us for 1 week, pay A, buy it for 1 month, pay B, and buy it for a year and pay C where A per day>B per day>C per day). There is obviously a certain amount of inconvenience each time I have to go through the order page.

If having access to X is necessary 2 days per month, it's easy to calculate the best option (probably A) per year:

A/2 days * 12 months in a year

B/2 days * 12 months in a year

C /(2 days * 12 months)

Would adding the inconvenience cost be something like:

(A/2 days + transaction cost) * 12 months in a year+ cost of not having it on the days you want it because it's too troublesome and you're too tired * p(being too tired and exhausted) * 12

?

Examples with credit vs cash may not be quite relevant to "trivial inconveniences". It seems to me, that the key here is, when one uses cash, they are physically giving away something material. With credit card, you just type in pin code, or sign a receipt, or whatever, but that does not register in System 1 as giving away something. So, no cash -- no System 1 intervention, thus less regret on bigger numbers.

"I don't know of any unifying psychological theory that explains our problem with trivial inconveniences."

I suspect it is simply the combination of uncertain outcome and an opportunity cost. If I'm surfing the web and meet a wall, why would I go through even a trivial effort, when I can just hit back and click the next link? Perhaps most don't expect higher utility from reading a blocked page than another one.

Please don't comment.

Apparently all us folk brimming with ideas for posts didn't want to deal with the aggravation.

It's worse than that; I've thought of probably upward of a dozen article ideas that I felt momentary inspiration to write, and promptly decided not to because of the Omega-cursed post editor that takes so many more clicks to get to than a comment box and doesn't accept the same markup.

I feel like I've seen this (or something related) talked about elsewhere using the phrase "activation energy".

Also, without going into specific psychological forces, defaults matter a lot.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-04-09/check-here-to-tip-taxi-drivers-or-save-for-401-k-.html

http://danariely.com/2008/05/05/3-main-lessons-of-psychology/

Curious if the book is worth it after this http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/03/01/publisher-pulls-jonah-lehrer-s-how-we-decide-from-stores.html

Your comments, ever calling for downvoting, are like dust specks is everyone's eye, trivial inconveniences adding up towards the threshold, where a mob of rationalists precommited berserk will cash it out as a one-person torture.

I don't know of any unifying psychological theory that explains our problem with trivial inconveniences.

Ego-depletion? (Maybe not exactly right, but it seems to be in the ballpark at least...)

I don't think rebates are strictly added to bet on laziness. It's not always easy to change the price, so it offers some flexibility for later updates. Then there's quarterly earnings and other such stuff to muddy up the situation. Hi Eliezer. Hi everyone.

I see no reason for this comment other than as some sort of test to see if you get voted down no matter what you say, if that's the case then it's not a very good test. If you absolutely have to do that sort of thing, at least try a new account or something.