The Crash of Flight 90: Doomed By Self-Deception

  • Air Florida Flight 90 crashed into a bridge on takeoff from Washington National Airport, killing 78
  • Pilots failed to turn on engine anti-icing systems, causing loss of thrust
  • Co-pilot pointed out discrepancy in instruments, but pilot proceeded with takeoff anyway
  • The accident was the result of a pattern of self-deception by the pilot and insufficient forcefulness on the part of the co-pilot to correct that self-deception
  • Pilot consistently chooses to minimize problems, while co-pilot is accurately pointing out the extent of ice on the plane
  • Pilot’s excessive confidence fools co-pilot into thinking that everything is going to be all right
  • Official NTSB report on crash

Competent Elites

  • Elites are elite for a reason
  • It’s possible that people who are richer than you are just better, in every way
    • More happy
    • More intelligent
    • Etc.
  • If this is true, then it is in no one’s interest to acknowledge it
  • It’s not the in the interest of those in the power elite to talk to those outside the power elite

Inefficiencies in the Social Value Market

  • How to produce a lot of social value for relatively little cost
  • Add liquidity where needed
    • Micro-loans
    • Startup capital
  • Solve coordination problems
    • Kickstarter
    • Donor chains
  • Pool risks
    • Insurance
    • Hedges and contracts
  • Provide information to allow others to allocate their resources more effectively
    • GlassDoor
    • GiveWell
  • Restructure choice sets so that our biases work for us instead of against us
    • Use opt-out vs. opt-in to encourage behaviors that you want
    • Use prize-linked accounts to encourage savings
  • Remove rent-seeking
    • Get rid of unnecessary occupational licensing

Humans Are Born Irrational And That Has Made Us Better Decision Makers

  • Rationality only makes sense in the context of a goal
  • We don’t have the time or capability to calculate probabilities for every decision
  • Even data-based predictions don’t inoculate against irrationality or prejudice
    • In the financial crisis, experts were convinced that it was far more unlikely than it actually was for house prices to go down in a correlated fashion
    • It’s possible to convince yourself that you’re being rational, when in reality you’re overfitting to historical data
  • Rationality ignore the fact that decisions rest as much on subjective preferences as they do on objective facts
  • People tend to rely on heuristics rather than statistics and this is a good thing
    • Recognition heuristic is better at predicting winners of Wimbledon than ATP rankings
    • Hyperbolic discounting is a good proxy for modeling uncertainties that may prevent us from getting a payout in the future
  • Emotions are key to decision-making
    • People who have brain damage that leaves them unable to feel emotion have trouble making decisions
    • Emotions are how you know what your preferences are
    • Courage can be seen as excessive optimism, but it leads to great results for society
  • Decisions are made in a social context
    • The social implications of a decision affect us as much as the consequences of the decision itself
    • Our ability to agree with those around us is key to our ability to cooperate

Why I Am Not A Quaker (even though it often seems as though I should be)

  • The Society of Friends (a.k.a Quakers) have come to the right conclusions in a wide variety of domains
  • Their virtues are those of liberalism, as are their vices
  • Why we should respect the Society of Friends
    • Proto-liberal beliefs
      • Freedom of conscience
      • Belief in individual liberty
      • Belief in individuals’ moral choices
    • Personal integrity as a radical practice
      • Refuse to sign letters with “normal” pleasantries, because they were considered insincere
      • Preferred virtue over profit in business negotiations
    • Nonviolent social technology
      • Reliance on persuasion over force
      • Extremely collaborative decision-making
      • Treat dissent as signal to be processed rather than noise to be suppressed
    • Humble marketing - focus on providing high quality goods and services, and trust that customers will find a way to you
  • So why isn’t Ben a Quaker?
    • Quakerism is vulnerable to arbitrage
      • If you allocate your resources toward good works, then others can profit from opposing you
      • If you volunteer to help after a disaster, you create an incentive against preventing the disaster in the first place
      • Vulnerable to specious guarantees - Starbucks can’t deceive you about the quality of their coffee, but they can deceive you about their fair-trade practices
    • Quakerism works well in a closed system or an isolated intentional community, but it works less well when there are other groups that will intentionally exploit its weaknesses
    • Quakers don’t pay enough attention to the problem of child-rearing - means that community will die out over a span of generations
    • The problem that many intentional communities have is that their values conflict with the outside world, forcing people to choose either economic success or community membership
  • Alternatives to Quaker values
    • Puritans
      • Don’t exist any more
      • Don’t seem very fun
      • Very traditionalist - probably wouldn’t be open to some of rationality’s more radical conclusions
    • Jews
      • Jews are drifting away from Orthodox Judaism as they’re forced to make compromises to remain relevant in a modern economy
      • Haredi Jews are much more insular, but they’re alos much more dogmatic and don’t seem to be make much material progress
    • Academic communities - focus on the integrity of their intellectual production, but are dependent on outside world for new members
    • Hippie communities - seem to live well, but don’t seem to produce much in the way of material progress
    • Burning man
      • Only lasts two weeks
      • No artifacts of lasting value