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Most people do not take care of their family because they think it's in their best interests. They often take care of their family for myriad reasons--e.g. a mo

Most people do not take care of their family because they think it's in their best interests. They often take care of their family for myriad reasons--e.g. a moral call to selflessness, sociocultural norms, a sense of familial duty, love, etc. The language of "best interests" really doesn't fit here. Taking care of an ailing parent is in no way connected to maximizing one's returns on anything (except maybe fulfilling a sense of what you "ought" to do).

alexbecker 12y ago
You're missing his point. "Interests" is a technical term in economics which means something different from the common usage. In short, it means things you consciously seek for their own value. Love, being moral, fulfilling duties; all of these are interests in the sense economists use the term. NB: Economists largely study specifically monetary interest because it's something they can measure. A number of criticisms can be made about this, but there isn't a good alternative.
- dragonwriter 12y ago
  > Economists largely study specifically monetary interest because it's something they can measure. A principle assumption of many of the models underlying economic theories (including, but not limited to, rational choice theory) is that there is a unidimensional quantity, "utility", that aggregates a persons preferences and which individual decisions increase or decrease by definable amounts. Because money is widely fungible, and utility cannot be measured directly, money (e.g., the money people are willing to pay to get something they want, or the money they demand to do or give up something) is often used as a proxy for utility by economists, with the idea that all decisions have an (potentially zero) utility impact, and that utility impact can be stated in monetary terms.
  - alexbecker 12y ago
    I'm familiar with utility functions, although I think they don't accurately reflect people's values; I think people's values more closely resemble a poset. But even assuming a cardinal utility function, we run into the problem that money isn't all that widely fungible. I cannot buy friends, family, love, legal or social reform, etc., all of which must weigh heavily in many people's utility functions.
    - dragonwriter 12y ago
      > I cannot buy friends, family, love, legal or social reform, etc., all of which must weigh heavily in many people's utility functions. The concept is that while you can't do so directly, the degree to which you value these things can in principle be quantified monetarily by the monetary value of the things you can buy with money that you are willing to forego in order to attain the things that cannot be bought with money, allowing money to be used as a tool to quantify utility even for things which it can't buy directly.
      - alexbecker 12y ago
        I don't think that is consistent with preference being transitive, but I guess that's not a necessary assumption for most economic theory, only that it is cycle-free. If you model my preferences as a directed graph (say an edge A -> B exists if I can and will trade A for B), then in order to be able to use money as a proxy, every node must have a parent and a child which are both amounts of money. This seems unlikely to me.
        dragonwriter 12y ago
        > I don't think that is consistent with preference being transitive Its certainly consistent with preference being transitive (since it is intimately tied in with cardinal utility, which is a much stronger position which includes transitive preference.) Transitive preferences in a poset aren't sufficient to support money-as-general-utility-scorecard, however.
        alexbecker 12y ago
        Brain fart on my part, I was thinking about a different comment. I meant that it isn't consistent with people's observed preferences being transitive; if they are, then there is no need to make the inferences you suggest. But of course you were talking about things that can't be traded for money, not things that people refuse to because they value them more, so ignore my criticism. Actually, that makes me realize that I need to change the edge criterion in my previous comment.
- defen 12y ago
  > "Interests" is a technical term in economics which means something different from the common usage. In short, it means things you consciously seek for their own value. Love, being moral, fulfilling duties; all of these are interests in the sense economists use the term. So what is the "utility" (sorry, I couldn't resist) of this term? It seems to be a tautology - what else could people pursue besides their "interests"? It seems circular - by definition anything people consciously do is an "interest", because humans are rational, because they pursue their interests...
  - alexbecker 12y ago
    Most of my actions do not achieve goals in themselves. Example: I don't work for its own sake, nor do I work for the sake of money. I work because it is one in a chain of actions I take to satisfy my actual values.
  - tikhonj 12y ago
    The core significance "rational interests" is that they are consistent. For example, if you like A more than B and B more than C, you should like A more than C. The important part is the internal consistency, not the actual preferences. You could aim at nothing more than helping your fellow man and behave perfectly rationally, as long as you're consistent about it. It's not a perfect model because people's preferences are not necessarily totally ordered, and people are not always consistent, and preferences change in interesting but sometimes inconsistent (and often predictable) ways. But it's pretty good. I think it's a great way to think about things because it makes no judgements about what your actual goals are. After all, people have different preferences and interests, and that's fine. More importantly, this also means you could reuse the same ideas perfectly happily for corporations, organizations, societies or event AIs and still draw interesting conclusions. It also lets us create systems that can successfully cater to agents with wildly different interests and get them all to cooperate willingly—that's one of the most important features of our market system and capitalism.
- nhaehnle 12y ago
  The problem with the concept of "utility" as introduced by economists is that it is commonly used in a bait-and-switch. You can either use utility as a technical and unassailable term, taking it as axiomatic that humans are utility-maximizers. As a consequence, the term becomes vacuous, because whatever any human does at any point in time, well, it must have been because she or he had some unobservable notion of utility that was maximized by whatever they happened to be doing at the time. So you end up with a "scientific theory" that does not actually allow you to make any predictions, which makes it totally worthless. Furthermore, facts that seemingly contradict utility-maximization are easily argued away: For example, the fact that humans' behaviour does not appear consistent over time is explained by utility functions change over time.[1] Once you accept the notion of utility based on this technically unassailable approach to it, however, people have a tendency to subtly shift what they mean by utility, sneaking a hidden value judgement into their argument that might be hard to catch (of course, that value judgement always tends to boil down to: the utility that should be maximized is somewhat equivalent to monetary value). [2] Yes, there may be a small number of genuinely well-meaning academic economists who do this. However, public discourse has very few well-meaning economists[3], and even fewer academic ones. Given the difficulties of the term, it would be a pragmatic move to eliminate it. Frankly, I think the main reason that eliminating the notion of utility is so difficult is that eliminating that term leaves a vacuum that is difficult to fill. Explaining human nature is an extremely tough problem, which we are basically unable to solve today. Rather than acknowledge that they are unable to do it, economists worship their variant of the "god of the gaps". [1] Actually, this is very reminiscent of discussions with people who believe in the existence of a god. Whatever fact one points out that either contradicts or does not fit the existing (non-)evidence well, believers just tend to retreat to a technically unassailable definition of god that ends up making the statement "god exists" pretty vacuous. [2] Again, this is very reminiscent of discussions with people who believe in the existence of a god. Once one concedes that yes, a god whose existence is so vacuous might well exist, they will at some point switch their definition of god back to one which implies that their god can affect the physical world. [3] The problem is similar to regulatory capture, an idea expressed here: http://physicsoffinance.blogspot.de/2014/11/has-big-business-captured-economics.html http://physicsoffinance.blogspot.de/2014/11/has-big-business...
  - 12y ago
kelseyfrancis 12y ago
> Taking care of an ailing parent is in no way connected to maximizing one's returns on anything (except maybe fulfilling a sense of what you "ought" to do). Unless that act teaches your own children how to treat you later in life.
- crpatino 12y ago
  I know it is a semantics argument, but there's a difference between "X ends up acting in alignment with self interest" and "X's actions are motivated/guided by self interest".
  - kelseyfrancis 12y ago
    Motives aren't really relevant here. Reciprocation or replication by others does happen, regardless of motive, so caring for family and friends (or strangers for that matter) is very much in one's self interest. I took issue only with the idea that it's not.
jlarocco 12y ago
> Most people do not take care of their family because they think it's in their best interests. They often take care of their family for myriad reasons--e.g. a moral call to selflessness, sociocultural norms, a sense of familial duty, love, etc. The language of "best interests" really doesn't fit here. I disagree, and would almost go so far as to say making other excuses, like following a "moral call to selflessness" or following "sociocultural norms" is more sociopathic. I value my family, so I'd take care of them if they needed it. No other reason than I value them being around. Breaking it down and saying, "I need to make it look like I follow sociocultural norms, so I'm going to do this, just to fit in," seems more sociopathic, IMO.

alexbecker 12y ago

You're missing his point. "Interests" is a technical term in economics which means something different from the common usage. In short, it means things you consciously seek for their own value. Love, being moral, fulfilling duties; all of these are interests in the sense economists use the term. NB: Economists largely study specifically monetary interest because it's something they can measure. A number of criticisms can be made about this, but there isn't a good alternative.

dragonwriter 12y ago
> Economists largely study specifically monetary interest because it's something they can measure. A principle assumption of many of the models underlying economic theories (including, but not limited to, rational choice theory) is that there is a unidimensional quantity, "utility", that aggregates a persons preferences and which individual decisions increase or decrease by definable amounts. Because money is widely fungible, and utility cannot be measured directly, money (e.g., the money people are willing to pay to get something they want, or the money they demand to do or give up something) is often used as a proxy for utility by economists, with the idea that all decisions have an (potentially zero) utility impact, and that utility impact can be stated in monetary terms.
- alexbecker 12y ago
  I'm familiar with utility functions, although I think they don't accurately reflect people's values; I think people's values more closely resemble a poset. But even assuming a cardinal utility function, we run into the problem that money isn't all that widely fungible. I cannot buy friends, family, love, legal or social reform, etc., all of which must weigh heavily in many people's utility functions.
  - dragonwriter 12y ago
    > I cannot buy friends, family, love, legal or social reform, etc., all of which must weigh heavily in many people's utility functions. The concept is that while you can't do so directly, the degree to which you value these things can in principle be quantified monetarily by the monetary value of the things you can buy with money that you are willing to forego in order to attain the things that cannot be bought with money, allowing money to be used as a tool to quantify utility even for things which it can't buy directly.
    - alexbecker 12y ago
      I don't think that is consistent with preference being transitive, but I guess that's not a necessary assumption for most economic theory, only that it is cycle-free. If you model my preferences as a directed graph (say an edge A -> B exists if I can and will trade A for B), then in order to be able to use money as a proxy, every node must have a parent and a child which are both amounts of money. This seems unlikely to me.
      - dragonwriter 12y ago
        > I don't think that is consistent with preference being transitive Its certainly consistent with preference being transitive (since it is intimately tied in with cardinal utility, which is a much stronger position which includes transitive preference.) Transitive preferences in a poset aren't sufficient to support money-as-general-utility-scorecard, however.
        alexbecker 12y ago
        Brain fart on my part, I was thinking about a different comment. I meant that it isn't consistent with people's observed preferences being transitive; if they are, then there is no need to make the inferences you suggest. But of course you were talking about things that can't be traded for money, not things that people refuse to because they value them more, so ignore my criticism. Actually, that makes me realize that I need to change the edge criterion in my previous comment.
defen 12y ago
> "Interests" is a technical term in economics which means something different from the common usage. In short, it means things you consciously seek for their own value. Love, being moral, fulfilling duties; all of these are interests in the sense economists use the term. So what is the "utility" (sorry, I couldn't resist) of this term? It seems to be a tautology - what else could people pursue besides their "interests"? It seems circular - by definition anything people consciously do is an "interest", because humans are rational, because they pursue their interests...
- alexbecker 12y ago
  Most of my actions do not achieve goals in themselves. Example: I don't work for its own sake, nor do I work for the sake of money. I work because it is one in a chain of actions I take to satisfy my actual values.
- tikhonj 12y ago
  The core significance "rational interests" is that they are consistent. For example, if you like A more than B and B more than C, you should like A more than C. The important part is the internal consistency, not the actual preferences. You could aim at nothing more than helping your fellow man and behave perfectly rationally, as long as you're consistent about it. It's not a perfect model because people's preferences are not necessarily totally ordered, and people are not always consistent, and preferences change in interesting but sometimes inconsistent (and often predictable) ways. But it's pretty good. I think it's a great way to think about things because it makes no judgements about what your actual goals are. After all, people have different preferences and interests, and that's fine. More importantly, this also means you could reuse the same ideas perfectly happily for corporations, organizations, societies or event AIs and still draw interesting conclusions. It also lets us create systems that can successfully cater to agents with wildly different interests and get them all to cooperate willingly—that's one of the most important features of our market system and capitalism.
nhaehnle 12y ago
The problem with the concept of "utility" as introduced by economists is that it is commonly used in a bait-and-switch. You can either use utility as a technical and unassailable term, taking it as axiomatic that humans are utility-maximizers. As a consequence, the term becomes vacuous, because whatever any human does at any point in time, well, it must have been because she or he had some unobservable notion of utility that was maximized by whatever they happened to be doing at the time. So you end up with a "scientific theory" that does not actually allow you to make any predictions, which makes it totally worthless. Furthermore, facts that seemingly contradict utility-maximization are easily argued away: For example, the fact that humans' behaviour does not appear consistent over time is explained by utility functions change over time.[1] Once you accept the notion of utility based on this technically unassailable approach to it, however, people have a tendency to subtly shift what they mean by utility, sneaking a hidden value judgement into their argument that might be hard to catch (of course, that value judgement always tends to boil down to: the utility that should be maximized is somewhat equivalent to monetary value). [2] Yes, there may be a small number of genuinely well-meaning academic economists who do this. However, public discourse has very few well-meaning economists[3], and even fewer academic ones. Given the difficulties of the term, it would be a pragmatic move to eliminate it. Frankly, I think the main reason that eliminating the notion of utility is so difficult is that eliminating that term leaves a vacuum that is difficult to fill. Explaining human nature is an extremely tough problem, which we are basically unable to solve today. Rather than acknowledge that they are unable to do it, economists worship their variant of the "god of the gaps". [1] Actually, this is very reminiscent of discussions with people who believe in the existence of a god. Whatever fact one points out that either contradicts or does not fit the existing (non-)evidence well, believers just tend to retreat to a technically unassailable definition of god that ends up making the statement "god exists" pretty vacuous. [2] Again, this is very reminiscent of discussions with people who believe in the existence of a god. Once one concedes that yes, a god whose existence is so vacuous might well exist, they will at some point switch their definition of god back to one which implies that their god can affect the physical world. [3] The problem is similar to regulatory capture, an idea expressed here: http://physicsoffinance.blogspot.de/2014/11/has-big-business-captured-economics.html http://physicsoffinance.blogspot.de/2014/11/has-big-business...
- 12y ago

kelseyfrancis 12y ago

> Taking care of an ailing parent is in no way connected to maximizing one's returns on anything (except maybe fulfilling a sense of what you "ought" to do). Unless that act teaches your own children how to treat you later in life.

crpatino 12y ago
I know it is a semantics argument, but there's a difference between "X ends up acting in alignment with self interest" and "X's actions are motivated/guided by self interest".
- kelseyfrancis 12y ago
  Motives aren't really relevant here. Reciprocation or replication by others does happen, regardless of motive, so caring for family and friends (or strangers for that matter) is very much in one's self interest. I took issue only with the idea that it's not.

jlarocco 12y ago

> Most people do not take care of their family because they think it's in their best interests. They often take care of their family for myriad reasons--e.g. a moral call to selflessness, sociocultural norms, a sense of familial duty, love, etc. The language of "best interests" really doesn't fit here. I disagree, and would almost go so far as to say making other excuses, like following a "moral call to selflessness" or following "sociocultural norms" is more sociopathic. I value my family, so I'd take care of them if they needed it. No other reason than I value them being around. Breaking it down and saying, "I need to make it look like I follow sociocultural norms, so I'm going to do this, just to fit in," seems more sociopathic, IMO.