The Rational for Giving

Usually, when we’re asked to donate money for a good cause, we end up feeling guilty some way or another. Maybe it’s because we know we don’t give enough, but for me, I know it’s because I chose to ignore all the bad things I feel helpless towards.  A few days ago, I listened to an excellent interview [1] on KQCD of Peter Signer [2], a philosophy professor at Princeton University who specializes in applied ethics.  In contrast to what I was expecting, his interview made me feel hopeful!  He gave one of the clearest, most level headed and rational argument of why we should all donate a small portion of our yearly income to help the poorest of the planet.  But not only that, he put a system in place so that we know we’re not alone in doing it and that our group effort is making a difference.

Basically, those of us making less than 120000 CAN$ should give about 1% of our income.  If we earn more, that percentage should go up.  There’s a calculator on The Life You Can Save website [3] to help us figure out our contributions.  Of course, since I’m a little bit of a math geek, I went a head and plotted a few points (actually, quite a few) to extract the formulae that dictate the amount of donation when the income is less than 10 million dollars per year (you never know!)  Here, is the donation amount and is the yearly income (in thousands of Canadian dollars).

To get a sense of what this means, I plotted the amount of money that would be left after making the donation (in blue) compared to the income (doted black line) with the vertical red lines representing the amount of money donated.

You can also see the percentage that we should donate as a function of our income.

Here’s a very quick video summarizing Signer’s argument (it’s a bit fast to read).  I highly recommend taking an hour to listen to his interview [2]; it’s well worth it.

1. KQED, Interview with Peter Signer, <http://www.kqed.org/.stream/anon/radio/forum/2009/03/2009-03-04b-forum.mp3>
2. Peter Signer, <http://www.princeton.edu/~psinger/>
3. The Life You Can Save, <http://www.thelifeyoucansave.com/>
4. Open Culture, Save a Life in 3 minutes, <http://www.openculture.com/2010/06/save_a_life_in_three_minutes.html>

Economic Crisis and Business Schools…

ABC has a very interesting radio program investigating whether business schools have some responsibility in the declining economy.

Talking about how MBA’s are supposed to train managers:

“You cannot create a manager in the classroom, let alone a leader. You simply can’t. Management is not a science, it’s not a profession, it’s a practice. You learn it by doing it. To claim that you’re training people who are not managers to be managers is a sham. You can’t do it.” [1]

A retired professor who pioneered business schools was asked the following question: “What are the benefits of a business education?” and answered that…

“there are three benefits:

1. To equip students with a vocabulary that enables them to talk with authority about subjects they did not understand.
2. Give students principles that would demonstrate their ability to withstand any amount of disconfirming evidence.
3. Give students a ticket of admission to job where they could learn something about management.” [1]

Other interesting quotes:

” The characteristic of the new age of management profession is improving the number, not improving the product.” [1]

“The case-study method trains people to be make decisions about things they know nothing about in their guts and in their soul.” [1]

Link:

1. ABC: Background Briefing, MBA: Mostly bloody aweful, <http://www.abc.net.au/rn/backgroundbriefing/stories/2009/2526727.htm>

I, Robot and Game Theory

Cover of I, Robot illustrates the story “Runaround”. [7]

I, Robot, by Isaac Asimov [1], is a collection of nine short stories where robots and positronic computers follow three laws [2] supposed to protect humans:

1. A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
2. A robot must obey orders given to it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.

The theme of the movie was probably based mostly on the last story, called The Evitable Conflict [3]. In this story, powerful positronic computers around the world have the task of optimizing the world’s economy. Naturally, such a complex problem cannot be solved without making trade offs and sacrificing the well being of some individuals for the greater good. As such, the machines come to generalize the First Law to mean: “No robot may injure humanity or, through inaction, allow humanity to come to harm.” The three laws, which were supposed to prevent robots from taking over, in essence, dictate them to do so (for our own good).

In the movie, the detective uncovers this scheme soon enough, and with the help of a non-three-laws robot, manages to shutdown the main computer in time. In the book, however, humans realize that the solutions the machines are implementing are the best, and any deviation from their scheme would leave us worse off overall. And so, they come to accept the benevolent (and selfless) dictatorship of the machines.

When I read this story, I wondered if a “best solution” could exist to such complex problems as “optimizing the world’s economy”. I was recently reminded of this question after watching political scientist Bruce Bueno de Mesquita speak at TED [4] about how game theory [5] can be used to predict the most likely outcome of a situation where many players are trying to optimize their own self interest.

In the language of game theory, it seems that Asimov’s machines were finding some kind of equilibria. But with all the machines cooperating not for their own self interest, but for that of humanity, would game theory be the proper tool to use?

Finally, Cory Doctorow puts a spin on things with his I, Robot [6], and imagines a world divided into two: In the West, robots are bound by the three laws; in the East, the are not. Maybe because of this division, his three-laws-bound robots don’t seem to generalize the first law. His non-three-laws robots, however, open up a whole new set of possibilities…

Links:

1. Wikipedia: I, Robot, <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_robot>
2. Wikipedia: Three Laws of Robotics, <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Laws_of_Robotics>
3. Wikipedia: The Evitable Conflict, <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Evitable_Conflict>
4. TED: , <http://www.ted.com/index.php/talk/bruce_bueno_de_mesquita_predicts_iran_s_future.html>
5. Wikipedia: Game Theory, <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_theory>
6. Craphound: Overclocked , <http://craphound.com/overclocked/download>
7. Wikimedia File, <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:I_Robot_-_Runaround.jpg>

Crisis of Credit

These are supposed to be simple explanations of the crisis of credit in the US. I guess I understand the problem, but what I don’t understand is how anyone could hope that a system with so many “middle men” could be sustainable… I really don’t understand macro economics…

“Organized” cycling…

In England formal demonstrations have to be notified to the police in advanced. Are 400 cyclists getting together every last Friday of the month to cycle across a bridge part of a demonstration? That’s what the highest court in England will have to decide next week… [1]

Anyone seen V is for Vendetta ? [2]

Links

1. BBC, When is a demo, not a demo,
   <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/7667183.stm>
2. Wikipedia, V is for Vendetta,
   <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V_is_for_Vendetta>

Economy and Reproduction

Cory Doctorow [1], co-editor of the popular blog Boing Boing [2], wrote this very interesting article [3] comparing micro-economy to reproduction.

The gist of the idea is to first consider two different kinds of reproductive strategies. The one we use is expensive because it takes years to grow a few kids so we better make sure that they are successful. The one that dandelions use is cheap because they produce thousands of seeds that they carelessly send everywhere.

The analogy with economy starts here. If making copies of something is expensive (like printing books), then we want to adopt the first strategy and make sure that we get money for every copy sold. If, on the other end, making copies is cheap (like posting an ebook on a website), then we should adopt the second strategy and not care about who copies it and where copies lend…

Regardless of whether the analogy is faulty or not, the image is powerful, and the topic ties in really nicely with what I blogged about yesterday… It’s kind of cool too to think that maybe (and this is my own extrapolation of Cory’s ideas) our economic system is (unconsciously) motivated by our reproductive strategy (not in the Freudian sense I hope). Maybe that’s why we find it so difficult to accept ideas of Open Source and Star Trek type utopias: we’re not dandelions…

Links:

1. Craphound
   http://craphound.com/
2. Boing Boing
   http://boingboing.net/
3. Locus Online Article
   http://www.locusmag.com/Features/2008/05/cory-doctorow-think-like-dandelion.html