Is Discounting the Future Due to a Defect in Impulse Control, Or a Rational Adaptation?

Many people are familiar with the Mischel marshmallow experiment. Kids who delayed gratification had better life outcomes.* The concept of varying ability to delay gratification is quite critical to discussions of public policy, since clearly we do not all have identical agency in every situation, by reason of variation of our nervous systems.

The received wisdom in the informed public is that not delaying gratification - that is, discounting the future - is a negative, a deficit in impulse control. The experiment has been run in multiple settings with the discount rate quantified: do you accept a ten dollar payment at the conclusion of your participation, or $11 a month later? (If you take the $10 right now, your future discounting rate is 10% per month.) It's been pointed out repeatedly since then that there are many other plausibly influential factors, including the predictability of the environment. Run this study in Singapore, and you can count on the experimenter being in their office when you go back. In Somalia, after a month, who knows if the building will be there anymore? Whether it's war or just low trust that makes it less likely you'll actually get your payoff, the direction of the impact on your discount rate is going to be the same.

Celeste Kidd created a model of this in children, and sure enough, kids who were disappointed by not receiving a promised reward, later on discounted the future significantly more. This relates to future discount rates in politically unstable parts of the world, as well as in children raised by inconsistent parents. It's a vicious cycle, because increasing your discounting is actual the rational choice.

I would have expected this result to be much better known, so I'm doing my small part in making that happen.

Kidd C, Palmeri H, Aslin RN. Rational snacking: Young children’s decision-making on the marshmallow task is moderated by beliefs about environmental reliability. Cognition. Volume 126, Issue 1, January 2013, Pages 109-114.


*It's worth pointing out that, so far as I know, there's no research showing that low future discounting increases happiness - in fact, there's research strongly suggesting that the curve is U-shaped, and beyond a certain point, good impulse control makes us less happy! Isn't that why we care? Essentially longitudinal studies here and here; writeup of both in Washington Post. Of course, your country is affected by the level of impulse control of your countrymen, so the ideal situation might be to be a person with low impulse control in a country of people with high impulse control, a classic free-rider problem.

Classifying Humans Is Not Inherently Bad. In Fact It's Often Good.

When I was a psychiatry resident one of my supervisors told me her classification scheme for her fellow psychiatrists: there are fuzzies, and there are techies. Fuzzies are more the stereotype you might hold of people in the mental health field - people who are innate nurturers and speak in a soothing voice, and enjoy a holistic instinctual approach to helping people. They might have ethnic vases in their office. In contrast, techies are psychiatrists who like to think about neurotransmitters and circuits and diagnostic classifications, and use explicit reasoning processes about those to help patients. They read science fiction and dress like engineers.

I think there is indeed a spectrum of this sort, and I think it exists not just in humans, but in the world at large. And I see an increasing moral disgust on the part of fuzzies against techies.

Classifying humans is not bad. Humans are fascinating. Why wouldn't you pay attention to the endless ways in which they vary? (Have I given myself away as a techie yet?) But to fuzzies, an urge to assign humans to abstract categories of any sort can seem bad - creepy, even - a gateway to dehumanizing and harming them. "You should just care about about people!", they say. "Why is that so hard?"

These two urges - to care and to classify - are not mutually exclusive. In fact are mutually reinforcing to the important outcome, namely, people getting better. They should both be present in any healthy cognitively diverse group of humans. They're just not usually present to the same degree within each individual brain.

There are a lot of us who want to help people, but don't have that innate nurturing instinct. So we make an end run around that, and we think in explicit categories: person #1 has trait A, and might benefit from X (and it doesn't matter whether we're talking about psychiatric treatment, public policy, or understanding why someone is feeling a certain emotion right now.) To a nurturer, this might sound abhorrent. But if it helps, does it matter what cognitive process we use to accomplish it?

Because we humans do vary in this dimension, this ironically means we vary in our ability to understand people at the other end of the spectrum. To us techies, when we encounter fuzzies' offense, it's surprising and baffling. "No no no, you've got it all wrong. I like this person! I find her interesting! She is the first native speaker of a Nilotic language I've met and that makes her cognitively unique among people I know and capable of contributing uniquely!" From many fuzzies' perspectives, this kind of classification seems almost "racism-adjacent" - indeed, a stone's throw from phrenology.

A fair criticism of techies is that classification can be wrong, and can be used for bad purposes, e.g. phrenology (a dead horse which has been dead for a long time but which people love to bring up - until someone can find us a living phrenologist, let's all retire this cliche.) And yes, it is possible that thinking of people only in terms of their abstract traits and membership in various groups can dehumanize them, if it is done with no real interest in the individual, by reducing their identity to membership in collectives.* It can feel intrusive and "script"-reinforcing. On the other hand, a defense of techies is that their interest is a genuine interest in humans, their makeup is generally such that this is the most natural way of relating, and this is all an effort to connect and understand other people. The very abstractness of these categories means that they are universal - to a techie, the fact we can all be classified in along the same dimensions actually feels quite equalizing!

An also-fair criticism of fuzzies is that often, the self-image and need to signal tribal identity with certain kinds of statements overwhelms consideration of others' actual needs. ("Did you actually measure the outcome of your caring act?") And nurturing does not always help. Some people, for example, are indifferent to (or even enjoy) the suffering of others (i.e., antisocial personality disorder) and no amount of nurturing will change that; thus, the blind eye often turned to this population in mental health care, because the cognitive dissonance their existence causes to nurturers is extreme. It should also be pointed out that the neurochemical basis of nurturers' behavior, oxytocin, is not a love hormone so much as an ingroup hormone. All that nurturing ultimately requires an outgroup, and many a techie can tell stories of deliberate censure and exclusion by fuzzies for some poorly understood offense. A defense of fuzzies is that they are more genuinely motivated by the positive affect of the recipients of their caring attention, and therefore, probably better at taking care of people in the short-run.


*Speaking as a techie: intersectionality seems quite deliberately dehumanizing, in that it explicitly argues the most important thing about each of us the various racial and gender groups we're part of - and since our membership in these groups is involuntary, this strips identity of any aspect of agency.

Physical Topography (of the American West) Associated with Human Personality

You can find the paper here. I have only read the abstract since there's a paywall. Questions: how does this correlate with the settlement patterns discussed in Albion's Seed, in this genetic analysis, or the Bad Stripe? (The Bad Stripe roughly correlates with Greater Appalachia in the former article, or the Border Reavers in Albion's Seed.)

Götz, F.M., Stieger, S., Gosling, S.D. et al. Physical topography is associated with human personality. Nat Hum Behav (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-020-0930-x

Economist Bryan Caplan on 80,000 Hours: Thinking Through Your Real Reasons for Going to College

Caplan is an economist most famous for advancing the theory (held by many) that education in its current instantiation in the US is more about sigaling (in particular, credentialing) than learning. But that's not what I'm including in the large excerpt below - this is more advice for young people who are sacrificing their happiness worrying about/trying to get into college. 

I don't endorse his specific conclusions, but I strongly endorse his way of thinking about it, which broadly comes down to: ask yourself what you actually want out of life, look at the empirical reality of what your choices might get you, and don't just go along with the crowd. The full interview is here. (Previous posts on this here and here.)

Robert Wiblin: Yeah I’m thinking, so now we’re talking to the listeners, and we’re hoping to give them some advice on how they could actually do better in their lives.

Bryan Caplan: Right, right. But selfishly speaking?

Robert Wiblin: Selfishly speaking, yeah-

Bryan Caplan: Yeah. So right, I mean honestly where I always start is gaming the system. I don’t start with learning, because the system doesn’t seem very interested in learning. I would just start with … Right, so what do you want to do and how can you do that with the least suffering to yourself. Basically sort of going through the inventory and finding out which things you can cut corners on and which things you can’t cut corners on. Some obvious things are, if it’s way outside your nature, if you’re just doing it for requirement than just find the easiest person. Most Americans will never use foreign language on the job, so find the easiest foreign language teachers that are around, go and do that.

Like for college actually for most people my advice is just be an econ major. Because I often tell my students economics is the highest paid of all the easy majors. And there’s a lot … Like these aren’t easy. Like come on people it’s not computer science, it’s not engineering. You know you can do really well in econ major and still have a great social life in college. It doesn’t mean that you’ll be like vitamin D deprived, like you would be if you were a CS major.

Economics is not the highest paid major, but it’s not that far from the winner. So winners are usually electrical engineering, computer science, mechanical engineering, finance, then econ. But it’s not that big of a difference. A lot of it, as I say, major in econ because it is the highest paid of all the easy majors, so do that. I say, whatever else you’re interested in you can do that to, but the econ major will just get you a better job and open more doors for you. So I advise people to do that.

In terms of other numbers. General result, this I not primarily me, I’m just reporting what the researchers find. Your majors more important than the selectivity of your school. Better to go to a state school and be an engineering major than go to Harvard and be a literature major. For most purposes, at least for your career purposes, maybe not for dating purposes, or for marriage purposes. But in least of terms of your career it seems like a hard major at a low cheap state school better deal than going to a private school.

Then I’ve also got stuff on is it worth going to an expensive private school. Like the marriage … Like improving your marital options, that seems like the best argument for. In terms of your career, what I’m saying is unless they’re giving you a lot of scholarship money, probably don’t go. Or, the only other reason I would consider going to a top school is if you have a special career that is even snobbier than other careers. Like say professor. If your career goal is to be a professor, then I encourage you to go to a top school because graduate schools are super snobby. And then schools hire professors who are super snobby. So even though it may not affect your earnings, it may affect whether you’re allowed to enter in to your desired occupation at all. So I think about that.

And the other big thing to think about, this probably won’t matter very much for your listeners specifically, but maybe for their kids, you should think about whether it’s worth going to college at all. I say there, the main underappreciated variable is just completion probability. There were got this classic saying of the best predictor of future performance is past performance. Best predictor of whether you’re gonna graduate college is whether you did well in high school. If you struggle to get through high school, or if you know someone who is struggling to get through high school. Those are the people it is not at all clear that it’s a good idea for them to go to college even selfishly speaking. Because they’re so unlikely to get that big bag of gold over the finish line.

Robert Wiblin: Yeah. The reason this issue of people who are unlikely to finish, it seems like the very most low hanging fruit here is to convince people who are losing out personally because they go to college for a year or two and spend a bunch of money and time, but are very unlikely to ever actually graduate. Just to convince them to stop going to university, I mean that’s something you can maybe even get the government on. You don’t have to tell anyone to sacrifice for the greater good, you just have to tell them “Well you’re gonna lose yourself.”

Bryan Caplan: Yes, I mean, funny thing, the government used to have a whole program to go do this. It was called guidance counselors. So back in the old days, the guidance counselor would bring you in, and they’d say “You are or you are not college material.” This was hard to hear … And of course sometimes they made mistakes. Sometimes there’s someone who is really good and they told them they’re not college material and they’re late bloomers. But you know better than to put too much weight on that scenario. There’s also a lot of people who were told not to go, they would fail, and so they didn’t go, so they didn’t fail.

There’s been a big change in the United States towards the college role model. Now I think one of the best ways to get fired as a high school guidance counselor is start using, throwing around that phrase “You’re not college material” and I think that will get big complaints from parents. Like, “Do you know what your guidance counselor told my kid, said he’s not college material.” So the government used to do this, now there’s more of, whether you tell them to go to community college or four-year college. It’s sort of the main division right now. And you say well of course college is for everyone, everyone’s college material but you should probably go to community college to get your grades up and then that kind of thing.

Then go and tell about how great community college is for those who do well in it. Without ever giving them any idea if they’re ever statistically likely to do well. But yeah, in terms of what I’m trying to I do actually try to give this advice. Honestly I don’t think the kids that are struggling in high school are going to be listening anything I say. So I do try to direct this to the parents. Who I think are the … They’re sort of the last line of defense of people who won’t get fired as parents if they level with their kid.

It’s really hard, especially parent’s pride is at stake. This is where my best appeal is look, what’s more important your kid’s future or your friend’s pity? Like “Oh my god, your kid isn’t going to college that’s so terrible. Oh my god.” Right, and I mean know parents, I think their pride is so strong they’d rather send their kid on this academic suicide mission rather than endure the pity of their friends, but I think there’s a lot of parents who have mixed motives, and I just like go and give them some moral support for advice to kids to go and try something else. I mean, I try to frame it more positively as can we find something else your kid likes and is good at, other than academics.

Like can you do that, have you tried? Why not try? You know if your kid just really doesn’t like school, why keep assuming they’re gonna turn over a new leaf and blossom in college rather than say here’s ten jobs that give you a good life and don’t require college.

Robert Wiblin: So as you say, most listeners on the show aren’t trying to decide whether to try to do an undergraduate degree or not. But many of them are trying to decide whether to go to grad school. So what do you have for advice for students who did well in undergrad and they’re considering doing an economics PhD or some other PhD? Who should do it and who shouldn’t and what courses should they consider and what courses shouldn’t they consider?

Bryan Caplan: Yeah that’s a great question. Just to preface data on graduate education is much mushier than data on high school or college. So here I’m just building on a much shakier ground, and I just think everyone should know that I’m doing that. The main thing to know is that grad school completion is even lower than regular college graduation. Remember that people go to grad to school are generally well above average for college, for undergraduate. So when you’re thinking about whether to go, again, the best predictor is how good were you as an undergraduate.

So if you were doing very well as an undergraduate, then probably you would be about average for grad school, and remember average doesn’t do that well. So were you stellar for an undergraduate, those are the people where they’re likely to actually gain from graduate education. Furthermore, you have to consider what you’re majoring in. I’m not sure that I found a single paper that measured the payoff for graduate programs as a function of major. It certainly seems that the pattern for undergraduate holds up for graduate as well with CS and engineering and economics paying well. History and philosophy and fine arts paying poorly.

So you gotta factor that in, and again as usual if you know what occupation you’re training for than just see what does the job market for that occupation actually look like. There are many graduate programs where almost the only thing you do with is to become a professor of that subject. Or you just don’t use it. So in that case, well you wanna be an English professor, well look at the jobs prospects for the people who are currently coming out with English PhDs and see how they’re doing.

Don’t ask yourself are you as good as those people. Ask what someone who didn’t know you, only knew what you were like on paper, would think whether you’re better than those people. Because the world doesn’t tell you … We don’t even need to go and get into overconfidence and self-centered bias. Let’s just say the world’s not fair and even if you’re awesome the world rewards being awesome on paper, not intrinsic awesomeness. Just accept this as a flaw in the world, and then consider that when you’re deciding whether or not you wanna try what you’re gonna do.

Another sort of general piece of advice that I offer people is if you wanna do almost anything in social science, and a lot of humanities, and you are dismayed but the crummy job prospects of people that major in the subjects. Then, my question … Can you do math? If so, why not just go and get an econ PhD and call what you’re doing economics X. I’m not even being flippant here. So I am baffled by people who like history and can do math, who do a history PhD. Why not just do econ and become a economic historian?

It is literally true that you will probably have tenure as an economist, before you would have your first assistant professor job as a historian. That’s how the world works. And then, once you have that tenure, you can work on anything you want. You never get another raise in your whole career, you probably have a better income stream than a historian would. So this is of course selfishly speaking. This is the kind of strategy that if everybody did it, it wouldn’t work anymore. But everybody’s not gonna do it are they Rob. So why don’t you go and do it?

Robert Wiblin: Well we’ve got the special tricks for you there. Just not too many of you do it-

Bryan Caplan: Economic philosophy of course. You can either go and try to become a philosophy PhD and try to be a philosophy professor, or you can go in economics and then do economic philosophy. Probably get tenure before you get your first job as a philosophy prof. And then, yes you’ll have to go and do some stuff you don’t like to get tenure probably, but then afterwards it’s clear sailing. So why not?

Robert Wiblin: It’s a shame that the evidence on postgraduate courses isn’t better. I recall one thing you said was that Master’s degrees don’t tend to do very well. Is that right?

Bryan Caplan: Yes. So we … Of course they still do have higher earnings, but basically when you combine the low completion probability with the modest gain and the high opportunity cost, because you know … The opportunity costs of high school is really low. Basically it’s like a high school dropouts wage. The further along you go, the bigger your opportunity cost is. And also, you’re starting to cut off some of your peak earning years too. And this it what winds up giving the bad result. But I’m not gonna say the master’s degree data is any good either, it’s very sparse.

In a way, the good news is the people are studying are putting more into studying decisions that more people face. So I suppose that’s good. But at the same time, given the sheer volume, you think there would be 20 good papers on it, and it’s very hard to find anything that I really thought was compelling

Reflections from Fire Country: Scale Inversely Correlates with Actionability (the SICA Doctrine)

 

England no longer existed. He’d got that—somehow he’d got it. He tried again. America, he thought, has gone. He couldn’t grasp it. He decided to start smaller again. New York has gone. No reaction. He’d never seriously believed it existed anyway. The dollar, he thought, has sunk for ever. Slight tremor there. Every Bogart movie has been wiped, he said to himself, and that gave him a nasty knock. McDonald’s, he thought. There is no longer any such thing as a McDonald’s hamburger. He passed out.

- Douglas Adams, Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

Don't let me catch anyone talking about the Universe in my department.

- Ernest Rutherford

I've noticed, recently with some urgency, that the more local the media content*, the more actionable and concrete it is.

For the last week I've been hiding from the smoke in my house in Sonoma County California, deciding hour-to-hour whether it's time to go. (I got my things ready weeks back instead of waiting for this year's fire.)

Rather than just waiting for an emergency alert to come through from an agency, I scroll through Twitter. Those agencies are on there, along with people on the ground, linking to the agencies and to recently updated maps (within hours.)

The #LNULightningcomplex is now about 500 square miles. A fire that big (#LNULightningComplex) has multiple parts (like the #WalbridgeFire and #HennesseyFire.) What I care about is how the fire closest to my house (the #Walbridgefire) is acting, where the local winds are pushing it, whether there is air support available to try to hold them back. I recognize now more than ever that, regarding (for example) the parts of the fire south and east of Lake Berryessa which have all merged with the #HennesseyFire, my interest is an idle one. There is no immediate life-and-property decision I have to make based on that information.

So it was with interest that I noticed that when I searched on the #Walbridgefire, the mix of Tweets included more actionable, concrete (though often dry) facts-and-figures - as opposed to the gigantic #LNULightningComplex in its totality, which has a much higher proportion of news stations (both national and local), people making political statements or otherwise connecting the existence of the fire to their own interest, or people making emotional statements (granted, often supportive ones.)

But more than that, it shows that the more concrete, immediate, and specific something is, the more likely statements about it are going to be useful ones, that we can actually employ to help us make decisions. Likewise, the broader, the more general, the more abstract something is, the more likely statements about it will be vague, not actionable, more about the nervous system that's making the statements, than about the external world the nervous system is trying to model. In fact this is something of a tautology, since the more abstract something is, the more it exists in the nervous system rather than as an external empirical entity.

To boil it down, Scale Inversely Correlates with Actionability, or SICA (pronounced "seek-uh"). Here, "scale" doesn't just mean physical dimension as with the fires, but rather broadness of definition. And actionability doesn't mean whether you are able to do it right now; it means whether you can come up with a clear plan of action afterward. As an example: "they should fix the houses in my state so they can withstand an earthquake." As opposed to, "my brother should fix his house so it can withstand an earthquake." One of those is more obviously broad, and less clearly actionable. In fact, in this sense, "actionable" implies that a claim is both falsifiable and meaningful

SICA is quite closely related to the old saw in American local politics, that "there is only one way to pave a road, not a Republican way or a Democratic way." A country is an abstract enough place that you can spend a lot of time arguing about "things" which seem to be important, but in a city, at some point someone has to move dirt, in a specific way, from one place to another to build something. This is why it's a good idea to, as much as possible, keep discussions on the object- vs meta-level. Human skills and problem-solving are not nearly as generalizeable as we would like to think. (This is why for example I stopped trying to improve at chess.)

It's also related to the idea of operationalizing definitions. You don't need to operationalize concrete entities that can be simultaneously directly experienced on the scale of one meter and one second. The more abstract, the more rigorous the definition must be. Our built-in sense of "folk physics" is good enough to meaningfully make predictions about the behavior of fist-sized rocks. But E=mc^2 is one of the most general statements ever made, and in order to be actionable, it must be in a rigorous formalism. Because "broader" entities do trend away from actionability, it's exactly these statements about broad entities ("matter", "energy") that need to be formalized and defined operationally the most. Otherwise, when we talk about such things we're probably just barking at each other.

more concrete	more abstract, broader
actionable	idle speculation
specific	general
clear	vague
true or false	"not even wrong"
falsifiable	not testable
meaningful	pointless
effortlessly rule-bound (event itself follows obvious logic)	Must be grounded in rigid formalism to have a chance of being meaningful

*As a side observation, news organizations are in the business of keeping you watching so you see commercials, than public service agencies and individuals motivated by their missions. It's probably for this reason that I c an't think of a single instance of media reporting that I have used for decision-making during this time. I make this observation even as someone not particularly predisposed to dislike media institutions.

**The astute reader will note that I've made a big jump from concrete to abstract right here, starting from the very humble "news about my fire is more actionable the more local it is" to a conclusion about the nature of belief statements and psychology in general. All non-imitative learning involves generalization; the key is knowing when you're more likely to be doing it to try to scrutinize it better.

The Roots of Universal Moral Authority in Medieval European Christendom - Benefits to States and Individuals

Reading about many conflicts in medieval European history - especially bitter protracted ones - you're often struck by the appeal to legal proceedings. Take this example about Joan of Arc's experience after being captured during the Hundred Years War:

The trial for heresy was politically motivated. The tribunal was composed entirely of pro-English and Burgundian clerics, and overseen by English commanders including the Duke of Bedford and the Earl of Warwick. In the words of the British medievalist Beverly Boyd, the trial was meant by the English Crown to be "a ploy to get rid of a bizarre prisoner of war with maximum embarrassment to their enemies". Legal proceedings commenced on 9 January 1431 at Rouen, the seat of the English occupation government. The procedure was suspect on a number of points, which would later provoke criticism of the tribunal by the chief inquisitor who investigated the trial after the war.

Under ecclesiastical law, Bishop Cauchon lacked jurisdiction over the case. Cauchon owed his appointment to his partisan support of the English Crown, which financed the trial. The low standard of evidence used in the trial also violated inquisitorial rules. Clerical notary Nicolas Bailly, who was commissioned to collect testimony against Joan, could find no adverse evidence. Without such evidence the court lacked grounds to initiate a trial. Opening a trial anyway, the court also violated ecclesiastical law by denying Joan the right to a legal adviser. In addition, stacking the tribunal entirely with pro-English clergy violated the medieval Church's requirement that heresy trials be judged by an impartial or balanced group of clerics.

From this excerpt you can clearly see that her trial was hardly a model of justice and impartiality. But the very idea of a trial, and an appeal to fairness and an authority beyond the people with the most swords, is what is remarkable. Yes, the English bent rules, but there were rules to follow and they had to give at least a minimal appearance of following them. They didn't just immediately and gleefully execute her with no explanation beyond "she frustrated our goals and we don't like her."

Compare: confronted with the victorious army of Kublai Khan, the last Song emperor jumped to his death along with other high-ranking officials, rightly fearing their fates should they fall into the Mongols' hands. Was there a court they could appeal to for release or at least better treatment? An argument they could make to Kublai from universal moral authority, about what was the right and fair principle to obey? How could these concepts even make sense? For China and the Mongols, there could be no appeal, indeed no idea of an appeal beyond either's physical authority as it stemmed from each mans' desires - that is to say, force.

The benefit of an organization whose authority was mostly moral is something that those of us who are secular-minded may ignore, as it stemmed from supernatural claims. We are often tempted to write off medieval Europe as a thousand-year failure mode, an Iron Age Orwellianism, or a Mad Max dystopia from the standpoint of ancient Roman citizens. While it was all those things, the seeds of Europe's positive divergence were being sown, and having a superimposed moral authority, separate and acknowledged by all as above Earthly concerns, was a unique arrangement and seems likely to have been part of it. There are many ways to think about this - two might be that warring parties both respecting the Church's authority created an in-theory neutral arbiter; another is just that more players makes a richer political ecosystem that is less zero-sum. This ultimately made possible rule of law and not of men, the possibility of service to principle rather than person. The destructiveness of rational warfare in eg East Asia was possibly part of why Europe was able to pull ahead.

It may have been quite fortunate that the church was based in one city that fell to barbarians (Rome) and another that saw its territory shrink until it was overwhelmed by infidels. The Western Church then was a kind of virtual state that could coexist with the others fighting for survival in Western Europe. It was a fortunate accident of timing, with Europe's isolating geography (mountains near the coast and indented coastlines) favoring continued separation. In an alternate history where Belisarius succeeded in reuniting the Roman Empire, European religious history might look much more similar to that of the Middle East, where religious and political authority were inseparable (or Chinese history where it was clearly peripheral) and there was no chance for mediation to calm wars and allow the concept of rule of law to emerge.

This 2018 paper by Hill, recently covered on MR argues in more detail about why the concept of the rule of law emerged when it did, though I disagree that it's the ideology itself that was more disposed to resulting in such a concept, rather than the geographical, political and military context of each. That is to say, if we re-ran history with the holy books switched, eg Mohammed in a cave writing the Bible, and the Qu'ran getting vetted and adopted at the Council of Nicea, I think the result would have been largely the same.

In the twentieth century, the U.N. has clearly appealed to a sense of universal rights much more than previous international forums did - the League of Nations and the Concert of Europe before it were both practical negotiation venues, but the U.N. makes claims to mediating universal morality. I can't help but wonder to what extent that has been intentional, and can't help but worry even as an atheist that it's easy to for states and peoples to reject non-supernatural moral claims as being made up by human beings, only and always for pragmatic self-interest.

"What Do We Want?" "Not That" "When Do We Want It" "Now"

An as-ever prescient Orwell, on modern protest movements both left and right:

"[Nationalism] can attach itself to a church or a class, or it may work in a merely negative sense, against something or other and without the need for any positive object of loyalty."

- George Orwell, Notes on Nationalism

Trust and Progress

Tyler Cowen talks with Paul Romer about social norms that encourage scientific advancement, or don't. Romer refers to the actually very puzzling question about why the industrial revolution didn't happen in China and (embellishing) it was one of this cacophony of squabbling medieval kingdoms that eventually did it. Romer says,

One of my predecessors at the World Bank as chief economist, Justin Lin, has a very interesting paper on this puzzle of why didn’t China develop the industrial revolution. His argument is basically that China — because there were so many people looking and discovering; they discovered a lot of things, like gunpowder, steel, printing, and so forth — but what China didn’t do was invent the social system we call science. They had some knowledge and some technology. They didn’t invent science. And what was different in Europe was the invention of science.

I found that argument really compelling, and I’ve taken it one step further and think that part of what the West benefited from were notions about integrity and individual responsibility for what we say that fostered trust, and that science indirectly gave us those things.

For any country around the world, it’s worth thinking about — if you’re short on that, if there’s a tendency for a lot of people to cheat on their taxes, to lie about what’s true, if there’s norms that hold a society back in those ways, I think it would be good to think about, how do we rebuild a system where we respect and admire people who consistently tell the truth, and where we look down on, disapprove of people who are found to have intentionally misled us?

There's a section near the beginning of Kim Stanley Robinson's Years of Rice and Salt (the best alternate history book ever written hands-down) where an alchemist - actually a shady huckster who is aware that what he is doing is just a con - gets caught "transmuting" lead into gold in a demonstration for a local potentate in some Persianate Central Asian state when his hollow, gold-containing ladle is discovered.

He gets his hands cut off in punishment, then swears that he will only work to advance knowledge from then on. This ends up being the start of something like what we recognize as science. Of note, the divergence point in this world is that the Black Plague wiped out all of Europe, turning history into a zero-sum contest between the Islamic world and China)* Because of the reformed con man, science advances much as it did in our history, except with different names (ie, qi for electricity.)

That said, while many hucksters have been caught at their game, few have so dramatically changed their internal incentive structure in response - though this passage highlights the importance of trust and an earnest search for knowledge that may better the world in general. The importance of developing a general background of trust is difficult to overstate.


*Interestingly enough, in Stirling's Conquistador, Alexander the Great lives to a ripe old age and succeeds in his dream of uniting the lands from Europe to the Indus into a macro-state; the resulting world is one of unity and stability, therefore stagnancy, where by what would have been the 20th century of the Christian era they are barely medieval, and China appears to have been overrun by the Tocharians.

The Beginnings of a Voluntary State Free From the Tyranny of Territory

States are inefficient, with governments subject to severe free-riding (at the best of times) and exploitation by violent psychopaths (at the worst.) They are involuntary - you are in a state, usually, because of an accident of your birth. As animals that take up space and as modern humans dependent on agriculture, we occupy a territory that belongs to us, as does our state. The central job of the state is to maintain a monopoly on violence, in order to protect us from violence. (This is why the Somali "government" is a joke, because they can only protect you if you're within about four blocks of their office. You can emigrate, but at a massive price (learning a new language, new customs, new social network, etc. - ask people who are trained as physicians and leave their home country due to a civil war or persecution of their ethnic group, and end up driving a cab or running a shop somewhere safer.)

Consequently this lack of competition means there is a high barrier to emigration, and states often drag in perpetual suboptimality until invasion, civil war, or economic disaster brings about a fundamental transformation. (More on this here.) Much potential human flourishing is left on the table, so to speak. Charter cities are a partial attempt to free us from the tyranny of territories - if you can go across a bridge and be subject to the courts and business laws of a more sensible successful country than the one that governs your home, that minimizes emigration cost (you don't even have to, you just commute.) The end-goal of such arrangements would be that, if (for example) the DMV sucks in your state, you could announce you were subject to the DMV rules of another state. Of course this sounds absurd, and the tyranny of physical territory overrules this. The political scientist that could solve this problem would go down in history.

Of course there are supranational cultural entities that serve some of these functions somewhat - religions and corporations immediately come to mind - but there's a new attempt to get past this: Safetywing, which aims to become no less than a virtual country. It is starting as a safety net (of the sort that wealthy welfare states already provide.) Read more about this idea here. Of course this will cost money, and if you're already paying into your own country's safety net based on the tyranny of territory, you might not have money for a second one. This is why wealthy (or at least upper middle class) people from developed countries should buy into this early, both to make it sustainable, and also to give it prestige value.

I expect that should this actually take off, there will be massive resistance to it from the mutual-recognition cartel of the legacy states; see here for an example of the kind of reaction one might expect if you have physical territory to attack. The virtualness of the project may protect it in this regard, but I hope that Safetywing has anticipated that. Note that nation states are often openly hostile to supranational entities (see: Islamic states and other religions; China and any religion.) It could be that this virtual state could be the next supranational level of social organization, like religions and corporations, but it should expect to be identified as a threat in the same way that China sees Falun Gong.

I will be joining this, and I strongly encourage you to consider it.

Addiction Has Three Types: To Pleasure, Flow, or Meaning

Positive psychology research models happiness as reducing to three components: pleasure (chocolate, sunsets and orgasm), flow (losing yourself in an activity; "action meditation") and meaning - feelings of value and connection and identity within a community. My fellow Americans and I have a tendency to reduce the pursuit of happiness to the pursuit of pleasure. Pleasure is important, but it's not the whole game, and modern consumer society may have specialized in that component and lost the other two.

We commonly think of addiction as a problem of pleasure and pain: pleasure when you consume the addictive substance (or perform the addictive activity), and suffering when you do not, after you're hooked. It's not hard to see how it's not just meth, but sex or food, that could be the subject of addictive behavior. Humans have continued to get better at creating goods and services that cause repetitive behavior in their targets - think brand loyalty, processed drugs (think coca leaves to cocaine; increasing the sugar in everything.) We have probably become better at identifying avoiding these addictive goods and services. Still, I'd bet good money that over time, they're becoming more addictive faster than we're getting better at resisting them.

Through the lens of positive psychology, this starts to look too narrow. It's not just the pleasure component of happiness that has been exploited. Addiction to flow and meaning exist too.

Probably the best example of addiction to flow is video games. They are designed for this purpose, and there is evidence that they are damaging the productivity of young people, particularly young males.

Then there is community addiction. The most harmless form is what Facebook exploits to get you to keep checking whether your friends have liked your post. The more concerning form is that of religious cults, or small ingroup-vs-outgroup communities (often based on unearned, non-opt-outable qualities like race or religion.) This is actually the one that has the most potential for harm. Postwar Japan and late 60s America both featured a shock to the automatic meaning-generating aspect of national community. This is happening in a second wave in the West. It pains me as a staunch atheist to say this, but it's becoming clearer that the disappearance of religion as a community-builder has not been a boon for everyone. If you're also an atheist and that sentence made you squirm, then here's a thought: a substantial part, maybe even the majority, of young American males who support Donald Trump are not religious.

I have enough confidence that these three types are legitimate subtypes that I think it would be appropriate to have them DSM as specifiers. Indeed, the discussion over video game addiction has been ongoing for some time.

The 200 to 250 Year Life Cycle Of Great Powers

Any theory of cycles of 200 to 250 years in the life of empires or nations immediately brings to mind China. If such a phenomenon exists, it would be China where it first became apparent, and where in fact it did first become apparent to historians. In successive states established in the same physical territory (dictated by the geography of a fertile wet agricultural plain united by waterways) with basically the same people, many other variables are taken out of the equation. This was noticed at least by the Ming Dynasty by Persian travelers observing China; again by Tytler and/or Detoqueville in the nineteenth century; and most recently by John Glubb in Fate of Empires.

It's often instructive to swap out the lenses we use to view various regions of the world's history. In this way, China might have followed Europe's path (of a single empire followed by splintered states that never quite regained the same territory.) Or conversely, China is a Europe where the Roman Empire fell only to be replaced by a continent-wide Frankish Empire, then a Norse Empire, then a Habsburg Empire. In fact, what we think of as the Roman Empire is regarded by historians as having two periods that are almost like separate civilizations, the earlier Principate and the later Dominate, separated by the Crisis of the Third Century. Each of those two periods was around 250 years.

The Ottoman Empire was once viewed as having reached its peak under Suleiman and then declined, but more recent scholarship has reached the consensus that the Empire underwent a partly-intentional transformation (starting prior to Suleiman's death, and not entirely a negative one.) This divides the Ottoman Empire's history into two halves. The second is roughly 300 years but extends well into the period when the Ottoman Empire was regarded as "the sick man of Europe."

If we take the Byzantine Empire as starting with the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476, then the first three dynasties take it to 711 (235 years) - the Leonid, Justinian and Heraclian families. (I avoid the use of "dynasty" because what we call a dynasty in Western empires is different than the way we use this word in Chinese history. In the Chinese sense, the Roman Principate and Dominate were dynasties, as was the Byzantine entity spanning the Leonid, Justinian and Heraclian periods.) You could argue reasonably for an earlier start to the Leonid dynasty in 457, to make this period 254 years.) This was followed by the Twenty Years Anarchy. During that period the proto-medieval structures which appeared going in the Roman Dominate matured into a smaller fully medieval state which emerged from the anarchy a very different civilization. In Western Europe, we find it a bit comical that the Pope and Charlemagne thought they were still Romans, even superficially. But just as with China's dynasties, we shouldn't take medieval Byzantium's claims to being the same political entity, just because it happened to still occupy some of the same territory.

It's very easy to cherry-pick history, once you have a Great Theory. And it's always easy to draw parallels between periods in history (here are five to the modern day), but a 200-250 year cycle is of obvious interest to American readers.

Why Is Pursuit of Pleasure a "Third Rail" in Central Authoritarian Agricultural Societies?

A friend related the following to me. While she was an undergraduate, her grandparents came to visit and took her out to lunch. At the time she was dating a man of Middle Eastern descent. During the meal it became clear that her grandparents' true mission was not to buy her lunch, but to warn her about Middle Eastern men. They didn’t seem to be disturbed by her being with a non-Christian or ethnically different partner, so much as they were worried about her being in danger of abduction. "You know, when you get married and go back to their countries with them, you have no rights," her grandfather said. "Oh Grandpa," my friend responded somewhat innocently, "I really have no intention of marrying this guy." Her grandparents’ faces drained of color, and the conversation ended, and the rest of the meal was spent in icy silence.

To put it plainly: they were horrified that their granddaughter basically just told them that she was in this relationship for the sex, with no intention of commitment to marriage or reproduction. For them, this was far more serious than the prospect that she would be kidnapped and effectively enslaved! Why? Because she was acknowledging that she was making decisions in the pursuit of sexual pleasure. Of course in American culture and in most places, there is a double standard between men and women, but men are not immune to such attitudes either, though the social consequences are rarely as severe.

This may be part of why homosexual relationships have produced negative reactions across so many cultures - certainly not in all, but in enough for it to be a pattern. At least as often as they are accepted, they are either ignored or reviled. Why? Because gay sex can only result in pleasure. By these standards, an abomination if ever there was one!

But it's not just sex; it's the discussion of pursuit of pleasure in general. In very formal settings, any acknowledgement that you do something just because you like it feels very inappropriate. At a morbidity and mortality conference (where surgical residents stand up and accept blame for bad outcomes of cases - few settings are more formal or tense) I noted with some surprise that a physician even noting that he enjoyed his breakfast was met with uncomfortable laughter, eye-rolling or shifting in seats. The acknowledgement of enjoying any sort of physical pleasure seems to decrease, the more formal the setting, and this was an excellent example.[1] This is so basic to social reality that we don't notice or question it. Why is this?

Allan Tate said that civilization is an agreement to ignore the abyss. This is actually too limited. More to the point, civilization is an agreement to ignore affect - to ignore the primary drives in our basic animal code, and the reactions they cause in us, and the abyss causes anxiety. So it's not just the pursuit of pleasure we avoid, but the recognition of and response to affect in general - because affect can be dangerous. In social animals, affect is contagious, which is very effective for cohesion in hunter-gatherer groups below the Dunbar number (150 people.) But in any large civilization where we're constantly interacting with strangers in (necessarily) formalized settings, paying attention to and reacting to the affect on others' faces would seem to be inherently destabilizing. Try it when you go for a walk in a busy city some time - at best, you'll quickly be exhausted, and at worst you'll get into fights. And constantly talking about your pursuit of pleasure with strangers can make people resent you, or compete with you, or avoid you, and in general is a ticket to negative affect. The higher the stakes, the less we do it. In therapy training, we're "de-programmed" so that we don't just notice, but pursue affect, even when it flashes across faces for only a moment, and this de-programming is very difficult.

If this theory is correct, there should be other trends of affect-generating cultural practices that differ between hunter-gatherer and centralized agricultural societies, and that are at their most intense in the oldest longest-centrally-organized agricultural society (i.e. China and East Asia); and that are at their most intense in formal settings, like religion and many high-prestige professions.[2] To this end:

• I have found qualitative assertions (but not quantitative studies) that homosexuality is more tolerated in more traditional societies, often with specific institutionalized roles.
  
  
• Gender roles in general become more rigid in the transition from hunter-gatherer to agricultural.
  
  
• There is a trend toward brighter colors in the art and clothing of cultures that more recently converted from hunter-gatherer to agricultural (or "small-village" agricultural to nation-state.) Yes, bright colors are often used in nation-states - in specific settings (religious displays, holidays, weddings.)
  
  
• Drums tend to disappear as a central musical instrument in this transition as well, only to have re-appeared recently in the West in rock and hip-hop - possibly because, ironically, our wealth has allowed us to ignore social restrictions and revert back to our "native state" as hunter-gatherers, as in Hanson's theory of farmers vs foragers.
  
  
• In the hunter-gatherer to centralized agricultural authority transition, hallucinogens become restricted (often to religious ceremonies) or outright banned.
  
  
• There are exceptions to these rules, in the sense that these things which disappear in the transition still do appear under closed settings controlled by and useful to central authority - war chants, group initiations, religious artifacts and ceremonies, and team sports with big audiences.
  
  
• Bright colors, rhythmic music, hallucinogens, the spread of gender equality and tolerance of sexual minorities, and sex-openly-for-pleasure all reappeared in the West as we transitioned from agricultural back to hunter-gatherer values in the late 20th century, as per Hanson's theory.

These affect-restricting cultural practices can be thought of as a Dunbar's number multiplier, by decreasing the frequency of group fission events. Others are exapting family psychology to the state (leader as father figure, fellow soldiers as brothers) and organizing society into stable hierarchies (family, village, ethnic group, state.) If we assume that agricultural states ultimately win out over foragers - which they consistently have since the Great Stand on the Ugra and the fall of the Yuan Dynasty - then there is a form of selection for groups which develop such multipliers.[3]

A major cultural technology and Dunbar's multiplier is controlled tolerance. It is difficult for people with different moral systems to closely co-exist. The Ottomans had the millet system, China and the Mongols had a theocratically laissez faire approach, and in the modern West many countries build freedom of conscience into the law, though avoiding leg-breaking and pocket-picking by neighbors with different convictions was realistically much easier in Jefferson's wide-open agrarian utopia.


FOOTNOTES

[1] Psychiatrists are less formal than surgeons in our meetings and I am pleased to report much more comfortable talking about food.

[2] Americans in particular might object that there are many high-status arenas in the U.S. which are now fairly informal, for instance technology, the entertainment industry, or academia. I would argue that apparently informal, high-prestige professions are actually formal in a more complex way. This is clearest in academia, but true for the others, that this apparent informality is not so much superficial as an another layer of complexity to let the ambitious signal that they can maneuver even under the paradox of forced "relaxed collegiality." Sure someone can wear jeans to work and set their own hours - but come back in 15 years and see who's setting budgets, and it probably won't be them.

[3] The current greatest combination of Dunbar's number multipliers remains China at about 9.2 million.

New Names for Subtle Emotional States

Linderungzorn: "relief anger" - the sensation of finally doing something you've been putting off and stressing about forever, and it turns out to not be a big deal, and you're angry at yourself for delaying it and torturing yourself for no reason,


Sociopathos: the mixture of glee, contempt and anger one feels when someone who insists on making bad decisions suffers as a result.

The Benefit of Joining the United States Comes from Becoming More Like New England

In an SSRN paper, Maseland and Spruk look at an interesting counterfactual: how would territories have performed that did in reality join the US, if they had not? Also, how might some countries had performed if they had joined the US, when in actual fact they never (fully) did? For this second question the countries are Puerto Rico, Cuba, Greenland and the Philippines. (Newfoundland strongly considered it, mid-20th century.) They find that joining the US is beneficial. However, and more interesting, they find that this effect is in part mediated by the states that actually did join, importing institutional values which are most similar to those of New England states.

This is interesting, because a) there is an overrepresentation of New England-bred and -educated people in America's cultural elites; b) the book Albion's Seed notes the different values brought by settlers from different parts of England to the New World, and as New England Puritans were literally breeding for intelligence, it's not a surprise they had such an outsize impact; c) this may relate to the "law of the Canadian border", which prompts one to ask d) if the benefit of joining the US decreases as one moves south - i.e., since Wyoming was much more likely to receive New England institutional norms than say, Mississippi (based on the country's predominantly east-west migration patterns), does that mean Mississippi did not benefit as much?

Which States Are Americans Moving To and From, As Related to Cost of Living

United Van Lines publishes an annual list of the move-to, move-away balance for each state. With the exception of Vermont there are no big surprises - although many Californians, accustomed as we are to the articles about everyone leaving California, might be shocked to learn that we're only on the move-away side of the balance sheet by less than 2 percentage points.

Here's the scatter plot:


No surprise, people are moving to cheap places. For every cent more a dollar is worth, there's another percent of the move there-move away balance toward people going there.

Are there cheap places people aren't moving to? Yes - Mississippi, Iowa, and Missouri. In fact there's a cluster of cheap places people aren't moving to, and they're in the South and Midwest. Besides the climactic desirability of a place, low cost of living correlates with subpar growth and not many jobs. Yes, people will move to cheaper states in/near the Northeast (proximity to expensive cities) for retirement or if forced out by rent, but if a state is in a large area of other cheap states (not many jobs) then there won't be as much reason to move between them. Hence, the Midwest and Southern states that are cheap, but not attracting many people. (Meanwhile, cheap Idaho is drawing plenty of in-migration - probably coastal retirees, especially from California.)

Are there expensive places people are moving to anyway? Yes, Washington State. Probably mostly Californians, coming from an even more expensive place. Similarly, Vermont is notably off-trend, also in that direction. Probably lots of Bostonians and some New Yorkers.

Not sure what's so great in Vermont. I'm sure it's nice and all, but 3-to-1 move-in to move-out?

Australia and USA Populating at the Same Rate: Coincidence?

I wondered: how does Australia's current population density compare to the U.S.'s at the same point in its history? Australia's first colony was founded in 231 years ago in 1788; the future U.S.'s first continuous colony that was a center of population expansion (i.e., Jamestown, not St. Augustine or Roanoke) was founded in 1609.

Today, 231 years after its founding colony in 1788,* Australia has a population of 25,203,198, giving a population density of 7.93 people per square mile.

In 1840, 231 years after its founding colony in 1609, the USA had 17,069,453 people. Taking into account its size at the time, the U.S. had almost exactly the same population density with 7.92 people per square mile.

Interesting, but possibly coincidental. The first observation to make is accessibility: from the period 1788 until today, it's much easier to get to a new land and spread out from one's landing location than it was in the period 1609 to 1840. Australia is also further away from Europe. Had Australia been settled at the same time, I doubt it would have filled as fast. There also seems to have been more reproduction with natives in North America, and also a denser native population (for the continent, an upper bound around 20 million is often estimated, versus Australia with 2 million.)

Related to its lower pre-colonial native population, Australia is also not as innately hospitable as the U.S. Large portions of the coast are inaccessible swamp, and a massive portion of the interior is desert with poor soil. Because the coasts are much better, Australia's population in 2019 is 86% urbanized, versus 10.8% in the U.S. in 1840.

Related to not being as hospitable, Canada is the obvious comparator. Canada at a similar point after its first colony had a density of 0.29 people per square mile, more than 27 times lower than the U.S. at that time, despite beyond as close or closer. (It's still 8 times lower today, despite having a 5-year head start.)


*I'm not counting the ancient Indian contact with Australia, which is now genetically confirmed. It turns out that's right around the time dingoes appeared - likely not a coincidence.

For the Rationalist Community: More on Why Choice of College Doesn't Matter That Much

After I wrote the last post (telling people college choice doesn't actually matter much in terms of happiness in life) it struck me how directly opposed it was to the message that's been growing over the last few years in the rationality community, much of which overlaps with people interested in existential risk (x-risk) and effective altruism. Since Scott Alexander is kind enough to put me on the blogroll at Slatestarcodex, I occasionally get readers from there. Some of them are in high school and are deciding what to do with their lives; some are parents, helping their kids decide.

(An interesting take on perils to be avoided in college culture from Dan Wang)

A good starting point is this SSC post, which notes: "In general, [Dale & Krueger 2011] find no advantage from attending more selective colleges. Although Harvard students earn much more than University of Podunk students, this is entirely explained by Harvard only accepting the highest-ability people. Conditional on a given level of ability, people do not earn more money by going to more selective colleges...Overall, unless people come from a disadvantaged background, there’s surprisingly little evidence that going to a good college as an undergraduate is helpful in the long term – except possibly for a few positions like President or Supreme Court justice." No argument that many colleges are getting harder to get into; but clearly, it doesn't matter as much as you might think.

And that's the point I'd like to expand on. There are two messages that we're getting these days from the ambient culture about college decisions:

• If you don't get into the college of your choice, your life is ruined, that's your one chance, you're now a loser and you won't be able to get a good job (society's current message)
• In order to work on anything meaningful, it has to be something involving AI, x-risk, or EA/rationality-adjacent topics. (this community's implied message)

It turns out that neither of these have much to do with meaning or personal happiness.[1]

I worry that earnest young rationalists, who are already anxious enough when they recognize the pervasive irrationality in society, will have their anxiety exacerbated by these discussions and the extra fuel they add to the (unnecessary) college admissions madness I'm arguing against here. There is also something to be said here against the tendency of people in the rationalist community to define themselves based on intelligence. Intelligence is only a proxy indicator for actual accomplishment. (No one was ever recruited onto a basketball team for being 6'10". They're recruited because they can play good basketball. Yes, height is correlated with that, but it's still only a proxy.) And you have to keep in mind, getting into college isn't the accomplishment.

There are certainly choices you can make that will damage your happiness in life. These do not have to do with which college you go to. They are things like abusing substances, driving unsafely, harming the people you care about or allowing them to harm you. I should clarify that this is not an argument that college is pointless, that you shouldn't try to get in, or that choice of program is 100% entirely irrelevant to your life. I think you should try to get into the best school you can, that's best-suited to what you want to do. What you should take away from this is that there's no point killing yourself to do it, and don't worry too much, because if you don't get in to your top choice(s), you'll be fine anyway.

The overall message is that wherever you go to college, it will not significantly harm or help your chance at a good life.

College admissions madness – noticeably worse in the 30ish years since I applied to undergrad – is mostly motivated by status considerations. Yes, status helps you do other things, much like developing a chess piece's position, and I've wondered myself about how much time to spend looking impressive vs actually "doing things." I don't have an answer for that, other than for me personally, the answer is clearly not "indefinitely increase status throughout life." I tried it. It makes me miserable and is unsustainable, and defeats the purpose of being able to use the status to "do things." Some problems are 1) that we can never know when your quest for status is actually just motivated by the immediately positive feedback you get right now from someone recognizing your status (rather than it being a vehicle to accomplish other things) and 2) that status is an ordinal good – it's about ranking, not absolute value. Moreover, it's necessarily zero sum. If you rise one spot in a status competition, someone else drops one spot. Smart people – emotionally and intellectually smart people – stay out of zero-sum games, including status competitions. One major drawback of the internet is that suddenly we're all aware of the same status hierarchies and aware of how the other half live, and we are drawn into the game, instead of appreciating that in absolute terms we mostly have good lives, and will have the same life regardless of where we rank in status competitions, including "where was your undergrad institution ranked?"

It's tragic that, so far as we know, this is the one place and time in the universe where such a thing as happiness can exist, and the most evolved beings on this planet who live in wealthy free nations with material lives our ancestors could only dream about, are squandering our happiness to worry about whether their neighbor might think they're better.

So here are some follow-up questions and objections that I imagine might be voiced by a young person connected to the rationality community, puzzled by what they're reading here, against the backdrop of other messages they've been getting.


"I want to work on the most important problems, especially x-risk problems. I can't do that unless I get into these institutions."

It is very unlikely that getting into a certain university is 100% gating to whether you can do anything that contributes in a certain area. (Worth asking here: are you working on nuclear x-risk? Why not? Even the risk vs probability graph here shows nuclear war having an expected value worse than rogue AI on the 200 year horizon; I don't think the probability of nuclear war drops as much with shorter time periods as rogue AI drops. Seriously. Work on nuclear weapons reduction, that has a much clearer payoff.) If you don't end up in a position to do anything related, you'll still have a good life. And to that someone might say, "So you're admitting you're just interested in having a good time, and you're not stressing too much about working on x-risk or any other cause? How incredibly selfish!" This is the paradox. If you want to work on x-risk, and you apply and can't get in to your preferred programs – guess what? It's probably because people better than you at those skills got the spots you were applying for. And they're going to do a better job working on those problems than you would have, so the work gets done anyway. So there's the paradox – unless you're saying what matters is you and your little ego getting into that spot, rather than progress being made, you shouldn't be upset about that.[2] It's fine, and you'll still have the same quality of life you would otherwise have.

If you're objecting to my statement that the admissions process is fair and accurate, and you're saying "the applicants who beat me out won't necessarily be better than me – they're just people who hire better essay writers, or whose richer family gave more money to the university, or who are better looking, or [endless list of unfair gamey things that have nothing to do with success in the chosen field of endeavor.]" And you are quite possibly correct! So this doesn't reflect on who you are, you have no control over it, and you'll still have a good life!


"But I can't do [exact career] unless I get into [chosen institution.]"

Rarely are career tracks so black and white. Yes, it might be harder to go from A to B (become a professor, get funded by a VC, etc) if you don't start out at a top institution, but rarely is it a go/no-go situation. But even that difference in access is not really about the education, and is more about networking and access. You can do that with internships, visiting your friend who did get in and making contacts, or doing projects with contacts you make online. If you're hoping you can just rely on the credential you get from institution X and are not doing anything related to that career before you get there, outside of the institution...then maybe it's just the status of the institution you want, and not what it can actually do for you in terms of making you better at that field of endeavor? (See more on this below in the "But I won't be able to learn..." section.)

In fact there are very few one-hour periods in your life that strongly determine the rest of your life – life is mostly the accumulation of small decisions made multiple times a day. The discrete future-determining events tend to be either not programmed (e.g. random introduction at a social event) or have nothing to do with your career (asking someone on impulse for their phone number, and later you start a family with them.) You might object that there was an admissions test you didn't do well on, but guess what - your ability at that test was determined well before you sat down, in fact mostly before you were born.[4] And even then, a bad score because you were sick doesn't destroy the rest of your life the way, say, mistreating a family member might.

An anecdote, with thrills and spills: a med student that I once supervised as a resident got back her Step 1 score while I was working with her. For non-medical people, this is the single most important test score that determines how competitive you are as a residency applicant – both in terms of the programs you might go to, or even the specialty you might get into (some specialties are harder to get into than others.) She remains the best med student I ever worked with – but when she got back her score it was quite disappointing to her. "I feel like my future just closed off! I can't get into [competitive specialty.]" And with her score, she was probably right (a spill.) So I asked her to go for a walk with me and I told her I thought she would have wasted her talent on [competitive specialty] and that she'd be a talented psychiatrist (which is not as hard to get into, though this is changing – fashions in medicine are funny things.) Fast forward, she is now in her psychiatry residency (thrill), and got into [extremely competitive program.] I told her to stay at our program, partly out of selfishness at wanting to retain her and work with her (which I freely admitted) but I also thought she would be happier. I haven't spoken to her recently but I've heard that she hasn't enjoyed her training experience so far, for deeply unpleasant reasons that have to do with the culture of the place but not the rigor or work hours (a spill.)


"If I want to be a professor at a major university, or a physician, or a lawyer, there are big differences in my chances based on what college I'm applying from. There are real hoops and gatekeepers."

First, see "But I can't do exact career" above. Also, the same thing applies as with X-risk above: if you're really in it for patient care, or justice, etc. and you didn't get in, then someone else better than you got your spot. Fine! Your patients or clients will still be taken care of, and you'll still be happy as not a doctor or lawyer. (In fact, likely happier. The burn-out statistics for these professions are abysmal. And sometime read up on the lives of people who had physics units, or other equally Important Things, named after them. Maybe you're more selfless than most people – actually probably not – and most people would rather have a good life than a unit.)[5] Regarding getting a PhD and getting a full-time tenured faculty position, in a place you might actually want to live for its own sake – you're entering a lottery similar to that jock you scoffed at in high school, who said he was going to play pro sports.

Also, if you can't get into a good institution, maybe you're not cut out to be a doctor or lawyer. That's fine, and in fact I'm happy for you that you didn't get stuck in those careers, where unless you're suited for them you would be abjectly miserable. (See below, "There's a clear hierarchy...") Even within medicine, I meet psychiatrists who hate being psychiatrists, surgeons who hate doing surgery, etc. – and they have bad lives. We live in a technologically advanced wealthy country. There are many, many, many things to do with your life that will be fulfilling, make money, and give you a chance to create value for others. I once overheard a middle-aged mountain guide on Mt. Shasta once talking with the people in his climbing party, and it turned out he had applied to med school and then withdrawn his application. He was having a blast on the mountain that day and showed no sign of regretting his life choices.


"I see a lot of information online about how VCs and top companies only recruit young people from elite universities. And various people who talk a lot online about start-ups and technology companies say that unless you're working in technology, you're not doing anything important."

If CNN ran stories all the time that said, really the only significant thing in your life is to become a TV journalist, and it's incredibly competitive and you should start thinking NOW about where to attend so you can get hired...I hope you would laugh at the obvious self-servingness of it. So when you read online about how tech is the only thing that matters – how is that different?

It's worth pointing out that VC partners like young founders, despite data showing that older founders are more likely to be successful. That is self-evidently because they can control the founders more easily, and make them work harder – no families, no expectations of a healthy life-balance. (That little twinge you just felt that you must be a loser if you want time with your family and a balanced life? That means that "the 1%" have already done their job on you.) In the same way, consulting firms are not interested in older applicants, because they can't mold them and get them to work stupidly long hours – a fully formed personality and set of values is not useful when you want to control someone. So don't be so eager to put yourself in this position.


"There's a clear hierarchy in life. Don't kid yourself. This is all just wishful thinking."

There are certainly status hierarchies. If you haven't bought into their lack of innate value by now, you should stop reading. But it's true, we're human, and they affect us – which is why the healthiest societies are ones with multiple overlapping status hierarchies, and the healthiest people are members of multiple status hierarchies. First, there's not just one dimension with "MD/PhD at UCSF" (in my world) at the top, and everyone else below that. Whatever is at the top of the hierarchies you spend your time worrying about, rest assured that the majority of human beings don't care about it. It can be easy to forget that other status hierarchies exist when you're inside one, but if you can, avoid taking them seriously, and stop worrying about who's above and below you.[3] (If there is a secret to a happy life, it's the ability to do this. I'm still working on it myself but when I can do it, it feels great.)

Second, to the extent that you're willing to subject yourself to a status hierarchy because there are good people participating in it who you respect and whose opinion you admire – make sure it's one that fits you. People differ tremendously in their innate talents and temperaments. You might not be cut out for a STEM field. You might not even be college material. There are many many many things to do in life that are fun, create value for others, and can make you a decent living, that don't require a bachelor's degree (ie trades.) Don't rob yourself of a career you'd be great at because classmates look down their noses at your choice. There are many many many people stuck in postdocs or at big law firms wondering why they chose this path. Ask yourself seriously how much you're collecting status coupons (degrees from prestigious institutions) to reassure yourself that random strangers who don't matter to your life or goals will think you're impressive, versus how much those status coupons are actually getting you toward your goals. If you don't know what those goals are, figure them out.


"But if I don't get into a good STEM program, I won't get a job."

Most jobs that require a bachelor's degree, still do not specifically require STEM degrees. With the exception of programmers, we produce way too many STEM graduates, particularly ones who want to go beyond undergrad. (See "If I want to be a professor" above.) You can learn programming from any institution and you'll be in demand. You can also learn programming on your own (see "But I won't learn" below.) If you say you want to be a programmer but your reason for not spending more time learning it is that you didn't get into XYZ University...chances are, your self-starting passion would not have been kindled there either.


"But unless I get into XYZ University, I won't be able to learn [field.]"

Don't MIT and Harvard literally have all their courses online? Why aren't you already taking them? If you need a professor to threaten you with bad grades to make you learn the material, you are not a talented and self-driven achiever in that field, and going to such a program will give you a piece of paper that impresses people and maybe gets you paid a little more, but will not turn you into a talented and self-driven achiever.


"Fine, but that 10% income premium does make a difference over time. If I don't get into an elite school, I can't join the 1%."

First: if you're thinking your salary is going to be what gets you into the 1%, then you're woefully middle class and don't understand the 1% at all. Being rich is about capital, not salary. I'm a physician, but I still rely on my salary. I'm not elite. I have to go to work on Monday or I can't pay my mortgage. So your university experience is very unlikely to get you into the 1%. Second, above about US$70,000 (maybe a little more adjusted for today's dollars and your local cost of living) the happiness curve plateaus. One caveat – if you're the first generation in your family to go to college, or you come from an underrepresented minority or immigrant population, college does give a bigger benefit to your future prospects than others, and the better the college, the more disproportionately bigger the increase.


"Sure, it's easy for you to say 'don't worry about getting in, status doesn't matter.' You got into med school and you're now established in your career."

Oddly enough, the thing that I think has most made me relax about my career is having a family. It really does put things in perspective. So it's not really "I did it, so it can't be hard", it's more "I realized my career is actually not as important as I used to think it was." And the reality is that a job is a job (see "Fine, but that 10% income premium" above.)


"Status does matter. I can't help noticing how people regard me. So I'll be scared and depressed if I follow your advice, and I'm still going to try to get into the best school possible."

First, you should try to get into the best school possible, but you shouldn't kill yourself trying, and you shouldn't feel bad if it doesn't work out. But if you feel controlled by your own need for status recognition – this actually IS something you have some control over (try CBT!) Second, there are two sides to the coin. What if you go to Harvard, and don't do much with your life? Many Harvard grads have regular jobs, and are constantly feeling pressured from other Harvard grads, their coworkers, families, etc. when someone says "So you went to Harvard, and now you're doing...this?" (i.e., the same job with same office that someone who went to State U is doing.) I have known Harvard grads who feel this, and it's unpleasant. They have the same life that a State U grad has - which is fine - but also the feeling that they've disappointed people - which is not fine.

An anecdote: an acquaintance from my undergrad (a decent but not awesome public university) was interviewing for a prestigious international scholarship. When they asked him what he would do if he didn't get it, he said, "Oh I'll be fine, I already got [other, less prestigious international scholarship.]" (Which he had.) He soon realized this was the wrong move, and needless to say did not get the scholarship he was interviewing for. Guess what? He has had and continues to have an amazing career, so much so that I'm changing details and not naming him because you might be able to figure out who I'm talking about based on his presence online. And, it's very difficult to see how he would be happier OR more successful if he had gotten the "better" scholarship. It is also difficult to believe that he would not have had a fulfilling career even if he did not get any prestigious scholarships (and again, note that successful is not the same as happy!) And looking at top scholarships - Rhodes Scholars are smart people, but they don't change the world. The people who get into top scholarships and programs are the people who are best suited for getting into top scholarships and programs - not necessarily doing the things that those programs are ostensibly training people for.


"I was reading your other post, and I read where you say you looked for data on happiness outcomes from attending universities of varying quality – and there's little to no data on this? This is even worse than I thought! How am I supposed to make a decision! I'm flying blind in my quest to have a good life!"

No you're not. What data we do have suggests your quest for happiness is minimally impacted by where you go to university.


"This is so selfish. If everybody thought like this (maximizing personal happiness) then progress would grind to a halt, the AIs will get us, etc."

But guess what! Not everyone thinks like this. But, if you're willing to sacrifice your personal happiness, I truly do appreciate your decision. I just want you to realize that's what you're getting into. Working 20 hour days will not make you happy, even if you get into the school/company/etc. of your dreams.


"Look, I know I will be happy if I get into [college program of my choice.] You can't explain that away by saying my life will be fine either way."

Yes, you will have a bump up in your mood if during application season you get a thick envelope and some bad days if you get a thin one. But happiness set point is a real thing. You will have good and bad days at either university, or job, or in your life, regardless. In fact, very close to the same number and intensity of good and bad days. Just like people who win the lottery or become paraplegic return to their own set points in mere months. If the devil appeared and said he was either taking away your ability to walk, or making you not get into your top choice for college, which would you pick? (And guess what – you would be okay either way.)


ADDENDUM: The Community College Strategy

People often attend community college with the goal of transferring to a four-year college, and ultimately, getting the same degree everyone else does. Community colleges accept all comers, and if the stressful part of this process is getting accepted to a four-year college, then isn’t this a very obvious back door? Yet I don’t hear many people discussing it. On one hand, I wonder if people avoid this seemingly very workable strategy due to the (stupid) status stigma of starting at a community college; on the other, I don’t know the numbers and maybe it is actually quite hard to transfer to a decent four-year college from a community college even for motivated people. There’s also the consideration of missing out on networking opportunities – some colleges are very cliquish, and landing there junior year when all the relationships are already established might be a very lonely experience, and you miss out on the friendships and career connections that are an important part of your career.

Bottom line, if you want to attend a good public university in a state, and you can't get in straight from high school, then if you're actually motivated and you attend a community college in that state, that's a realistic shot at getting in as a transfer student.

However it was hard to find statistics along the lines of "x % of people entering community colleges stating that they wanted to transfer to a selective four-year institution were able to do it." What I did find are some stats for specific universities (decent list here.) At UCLA, 30% of its undergrads are in-state community college transfers. Top public universities do take lots of community college students. (Interestingly, community college transfers outperform the direct-from-high-school students at top universities, but private schools don't take many - indeed, Princeton only recently started taking them at all again. Why might that be? One theory that explains observations is that Princeton isn't looking for performance throughout its student body, it's looking for alumni contributions that give them some mediocre legacy students, along with a "certain type" of applicant. Again, if you're the applicant, that's not about you or any choices you've made.)

You might also know that community colleges have an abysmal rate of its students ultimately graduating with a four year degree, so how does that match the higher success rate of community college students once they get to a four year campus? Because it's not the community college or four year college "making" the student - the community college students that succeeds at UCLA might not succeed first time around in the initial admission but they get to the same place, because of their innate properties. And if you go to community college and don't graduate - higher ed isn't for you, and that's fine too. Also worth noting - once you're at a UCLA, more selective private schools are within reach for graduate education. (But again - why? Ask yourself very seriously.)


FOOTNOTES

[1] If you're worried about a meaningless life: don't be. This is literally the thing that you have the most control over. As well, happiness is composed of three components, pleasure, meaning, and flow. With respect to these things, humans discount the future in two different ways. We value pleasure over meaning too much in the short term; that's easy to understand. But we also value meaning over pleasure too much in the long term. If you go years sacrificing food, fun, and friends to work like a dog at your meaningful job, you will likely burn out, and you may not get as much meaning from your career as you thought when you considered it for sixty seconds while you were 17.

[2] I am a physician, and did not get into the (highly competitive) top-ranked residency programs I ranked first. This was devastating at the time, especially because I realized some decidedly non-clinical-skill-reflecting poor choices likely played a part (i.e., it didn't occur to me to go over my application with my own med school, which includes getting a professional photo done, and I sent out my application with a headshot that made me look like a serial killer.) I complained to a friend that the people who did get those spots were just status-seekers who played the game better than me, to which she replied, "How is that not what's motivating you? And are you admitting that how well you play the admissions game is the important thing about your life?" Once I realized that I had become a physician to (news flash!) help patients, and that I would still be able to do this just the same, I got over myself. And the program I went through ended up giving me opportunities I never would have had at the other ones. Now, if I had gotten into the more competitive ones, would I not be writing a blog post about how that program ended up being the best one? Probably. Because it doesn’t matter to my overall happiness.

[3] People with narcissistic personality disorder have very little empathy or interest in others beyond using those others as a constant source of attention and flattery, so that the narcissist can convince himself he’s not garbage. Narcissists have very little self-value other than knowing where they are in status hierarchies, and very little knowledge of other people beyond categorizing them as higher or lower status. And narcissists as a rule are miserable.

[4] While on my surgery rotation, I met with the director of the clerkship, a trauma surgeon. He asked what specialty I wanted to go into. At the time I already knew it would either by psychiatry or neurology. But I was on my neurosurgery rotation at the time. In reality, for multiple reasons, there was never any danger of my becoming a surgeon. But the game I had been told to play was to include my current rotation in my list of interests in the hopes of avoiding offending the attendings and getting a better grade. So I did that – and the trauma surgeon looked contemplative and said, "I'm going to be honest with you. I don’t see you as a neurosurgeon." Of course he had seen through me and was exactly correct. There was a second of fear ("Oh no, he’s going to fail me") and then a feeling of immense relief – a physical sensation of weight lifting from my shoulders. That’s when I realized that my not being a neurosurgeon had been determined many years before that moment.

[5] Neurosurgery sounds cool but the training is especially grueling, even by doctors' standards. When I was a med student, I was in a seminar where a doc was going around the room asking what specialty people wanted to go into. One guy said neurosurgery, and the doc held out his hands as if weighing options and said "Yeah...(one hand) neurosurgery...(other hand) happy life...(one hand) neurosurgery...(other hand) happy life..." As it happens, I love what I do, psychiatry, which has a much more humane schedule than neurosurgery. I can't imagine why everyone doesn't do it, other than they don't think about what it would be like at age 50 to have a neurosurgeon's schedule.