tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1740670447258719504.post7184192401030350293..comments2024-03-27T03:00:27.024-04:00Comments on Facts & other stubborn things: Assault of Thoughts - 10/17/2012Evanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12259004160963531720noreply@blogger.comBlogger3125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1740670447258719504.post-59736143261398156342012-10-18T19:45:11.722-04:002012-10-18T19:45:11.722-04:00Being as, according to some, I am Stimulus-Respons...Being as, according to some, I am Stimulus-Response living tissue robot, I cannot help but comment on the first paragraph. <br /><br />The arguments in the article are not internally consistent. He declares that he does not believe in free will, and discusses the "ethical" problem of income disparity. <br /><br />Without free will, discussions of 'ethics' are meaningless. I don't "want" to be able to run a half marathon in less than two hours any more than someone else "wants" to be a meth addict, or "wants" to enjoy good wine. Still, for unknowable reasons I spend time running, and someone else doing drugs, and someone else driving hither and yon in search of wine. There is no objective good or bad in any of those if no harm is done.<br /><br />So: Why are differences in behavior that result in varying wealth accumulation an ethical problem? I suffer no harm by someone else spending countless hours at some activity that generates a lot of income when I spend few hours at the same activity which generates little income.<br /><br />This "no free will" thing is fun to think about, and we robots have been thinking about this very thing since at least as far back as ancient Greece. Sometimes you can gain insights into behavior if you use an S-R, or S-Organism-R model, and people like B.F. Skinner did some neat studies on it. The end game is that we are each a massive network of stimulus response reactions that APPEAR to be free will, but really aren't. I can't prove I'm not living in The Matrix right now, or that I am not a brain in a beaker, or that I have free will. But it sure seems like I have free will. And Occam's Razor is pretty compelling for me on this point.<br /><br />Finally, to tie the supposition of no free will to any given robot's prerogative to turn incentive knobs for other robots so that the world will appear to be 'fair' or 'more ethical' to the former robot is utterly preposterous. Why does our condition of not having Free Will have any bearing on a puppet master's empowerment to adjust the S-R equation so that some meat robots must choose between spending their time painting the houses of other meat robots who don't care if their house is not painted or not, or going to jail for tax evasion?Charles Ricenoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1740670447258719504.post-3313745531250813662012-10-17T13:25:15.095-04:002012-10-17T13:25:15.095-04:00Well I did recommend it after all!
The blue text ...Well I did recommend it after all!<br /><br />The blue text is quoted from him, after going through all the points about occupational segregation and human capital investments. It's a poorly chosen way of putting it, and I think it's likely to mislead.<br /><br />I anticipate a lot of people are going to walk away from this video thinking "there is no gender discrimination in the labor market". Perhaps I am being pessimistic, but I think that's likely. And what bothers me is there are very specific things about how the information is presented that would lead people to think that. Hopefully I'm just being pessimistic about people.<br /><br />I deeply disagree with your second to last sentence.Daniel Kuehnhttp://www.factsandotherstubbornthings.blogspot.comnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1740670447258719504.post-2380084607876440632012-10-17T12:20:24.714-04:002012-10-17T12:20:24.714-04:00Confused about your gripe with Steve's video -...Confused about your gripe with Steve's video - I thought it was crystal clear.<br /><br />He distinguished between discrimination by employers *given* the choices of prospective employees and the broader notion of discrimination that may influence those choices.<br /><br />While these two notions interact, they're clearly distinguishable. In the first case you take an employee's MVP as *given* and ask whether the wage corresponds to it - greater gaps for different types correspond to greater discrimination. <br /><br />In the second case you treat a person's MVP as endogenous (often thinking of it over longer periods of time).<br /><br />Anyways, when most people talk about gender wage discrimination, they're talking about the first case. And as Steve pointed out, it's not really a problem.<br /><br />edarniwnoreply@blogger.com