This has some personal significance:
http://www.daviesscojail.org/InmateList/InmateView.aspx?ID=2093189
Not sure I want to blog about it right now. I do want to save the link.
Tuesday, January 26, 2010
Sunday, January 03, 2010
Risk, cognitive bias, and the role of government
Humans are terrible at estimating risk. Bad enough that I'd be willing to call it an area of potential market failure -- i.e. people will underestimate the risks they face, under-prepare for them, and then be over-impacted by them.
Take my world view from about 1986, when I felt everyone should be accountable for all their decisions without exception, and it was morally acceptable for me to contemplate a worker (a) choosing not to be insured under WC, (b) getting injured on the job, and (c) impoverishing himself and his family. So sacred was his choice that I was willing to see any negative outcome unfold. As long as he'd chosen his actions, I was okay with his fall.
Now, reading Cialdini and numerous other sources on the horrific list of cognitive biases (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases) to which the human mind is susceptible, I'm much more willing to embrace at least some "coercive" rules such as mandatory workers' comp insurance.
The big risk here, for me, is that as soon as I empower someone -- almost always the government -- to use coercion to "fix" the cognitive errors of the population at large, the concept (or illusion) of individual autonomy and "consent of the governed" can break down, and the legitimacy of the government can break down.
Doubly so because the government is no less susceptible to error, being made up of humans, and while I can easily correct my personal errors by changing my behavior, it's very hard for me to either change or opt out of the erroneous coercive mandates of a nanny state.
The graceful way forward may be to use cognitive bias in our favor, by allowing people to "opt out" of certain things if it matters to them a lot, while making the default choice be the one that has greater social protection. For example I'm in favor of making everyone an organ donor by default, while allowing anyone who really cares strongly to opt out.
Take my world view from about 1986, when I felt everyone should be accountable for all their decisions without exception, and it was morally acceptable for me to contemplate a worker (a) choosing not to be insured under WC, (b) getting injured on the job, and (c) impoverishing himself and his family. So sacred was his choice that I was willing to see any negative outcome unfold. As long as he'd chosen his actions, I was okay with his fall.
Now, reading Cialdini and numerous other sources on the horrific list of cognitive biases (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases) to which the human mind is susceptible, I'm much more willing to embrace at least some "coercive" rules such as mandatory workers' comp insurance.
The big risk here, for me, is that as soon as I empower someone -- almost always the government -- to use coercion to "fix" the cognitive errors of the population at large, the concept (or illusion) of individual autonomy and "consent of the governed" can break down, and the legitimacy of the government can break down.
Doubly so because the government is no less susceptible to error, being made up of humans, and while I can easily correct my personal errors by changing my behavior, it's very hard for me to either change or opt out of the erroneous coercive mandates of a nanny state.
The graceful way forward may be to use cognitive bias in our favor, by allowing people to "opt out" of certain things if it matters to them a lot, while making the default choice be the one that has greater social protection. For example I'm in favor of making everyone an organ donor by default, while allowing anyone who really cares strongly to opt out.
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