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Intelligence and radical economic attitudes

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101–110 of 197 posts

Re: Intelligence and radical economic attitudes

#101

Post by tsol »

>Conservative economic attitudes have been theorized as symptoms of low cognitive ability. Studies suggest the opposite, linking more conservative views weakly to higher, not lower, cognitive ability, but with very large between-study variability. Here, we propose and replicate a new model linking cognitive ability not to liberal or conservative economics, but to economic extremism:

Maybe none of these are indicative of intelligence. It would be neat if our collective political opinions becoming more extreme was because we are really are just so much smarter, but I don't actually see a reason why there should be any relation between the two. Whether it's more intelligent to take a conservative stance or a liberal stance, whether it's more intelligent to take an extreme stance or a moderate stance-- I think really depends on the situation. If anything it would seem to me that the more unintelligent view might be to too heavily identify with any single point of view.

Re: Intelligence and radical economic attitudes

#102

Post by anigbrowl »

twblalock wrote: post #77
anigbrowl wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> in a way that benefits society So when accusations of price gouging arise (say in the aftermath of a disaster), you're saying that it's the government interfering while the people in the disaster area area are eager to pay top dollar for suddenly-rare commodities like water or hand sanitizer? If I see regular-seeming people complaining about prices, should I assume they're covert government agents?

Those things are often suddenly rare because people hoard them, which can be prevented by allowing supply and demand to properly work. Prices should go up if goods are in more demand. In addition, the higher prices will motivate sellers to send more products to the impacted area. That eventually leads to price stabilization at the intersection of the supply and demand curve, i.e. how things are supposed to work. Do t…

I don't need you to explain price theory to me, and also don't find your hoarding argument persuasive, for two reasons: one, much of the demand in the aftermath of a disaster is from people who need to consume a commodity and can't get any, and two, the hoarding behavior you describe is more likely to be by price gougers hoping to engage in arbitrage.

> But if you artificially suppress prices, there will also be some people who don't get water, because other people will hoard it.

Rationing the volume available for purchase by individual customers is the obvious solution, and seems to have worked out just fine in practice during things like the great toilet paper panic of 2020.

I'm asking Walter how he explains the fact of people complaining about high prices in such a context, given his claim that it's government spoiling the price theory party. Why are the opinions of people who are priced out discounted?

Re: Intelligence and radical economic attitudes

#103

Post by thwayunion »

solveit wrote: post #84
thwayunion wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a good point. Additionally, IQ measures a very specific type of cognitive ability. I am not so sure that those cognitive abilities are perfectly correlated with the sort of social and emotional intelligence required to assess the likely effectiveness of a political system.

If only there were half a century of research into exactly what IQ does and doesn't correlate with! Anyhow, my lukewarm take is that no level of "social and emotional intelligence" will allow you to assess the likely effectiveness of a political system, because why in the world would the built-in intelligence for interacting with a couple of hundred people be any good at predicting the aggregate behaviour of billions…

> If only there were half a century of research into exactly what IQ does and doesn't correlate with!

Nice quip, but what's your point? ;-)

> Anyhow, my lukewarm take is that no level of "social and emotional intelligence" will allow you to assess the likely effectiveness of a political system, because why in the world would the built-in intelligence for interacting with a couple of hundred people be any good at predicting the aggregate behaviour of billions of people.

I at least have a high degree of belief in the contrapositive -- if one doesn't have a high degree of social and emotional intelligence then they won't be able to assess the likely effectiveness of a political system.

Re: Intelligence and radical economic attitudes

#104

Post by thwayunion »

anigbrowl wrote: post #55

While the degree of economic extremism (perhaps better described as investment or fluency) seems to correlate well with intelligence, I think it's unlikely that one can decide whether a given economic philosophy is the 'smarter' choice. Economic preferences may not be the outcome of pure rationality so much as differing values which in turn are based on different criteria of emotional satisfaction. There is some evid…

> Economic preferences may not be the outcome of pure rationality so much as differing values which in turn are based on different criteria of emotional satisfaction.

The dyadic games paper is interesting, but I think you're perhaps a bit quick to dismiss banal self-interest as a very likely missing causal variable.

To what extent are extreme economic ideologies simply post-hoc intellectual justifications camouflaging basically self-interested preferences?

There is a correlation between family socioeconomic status and IQ. What if it's merely that advantaged groups:

1. have the resources to provide the early life advantages that give an IQ boost,

2. have the resources to develop and defend coherent ideological systems that justify their allotment (eg, by funding think tanks and so on), and

3. tend to pass those social interests down to the next generation either directly (family-owned businesses/assets) or indirectly via cultural knowledge and connection (eg, doctor/professor/etc. kids are more like to become doctors/professors/etc.).

In particular,

- what economic beliefs do "non-extreme" people have? Are their beliefs non-extreme, or do they simply have a consistent bucket of (perhaps quite extreme) economic beliefs which don't have a clear name? What if all we're measuring here is that the children of professors have Brookings and an army of intellectuals to give names to things, while the children of business owners have AEI and an army of other intellectuals who also give names to things?

- what happens to this result if we control for SES?

I ask the first question because most people in my orbit from lower SES describe themselves as centrists on economic issues but actually have a haphazard bucket of deeply held cultural beliefs which are not located at the center of anything in particular.

Re: Intelligence and radical economic attitudes

#105

Post by tbrownaw »

WalterBright wrote: post #32
aeternum wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Purely free markets also have some very well-known failure cases: tradgedy of the commons, ability of a large participant to drop prices to eliminate competition then raise prices, inability of market forces to handle extreme tail risk like major natural disasters.

> tradgedy of the commons, Communal ownership is not free market, hence the tragedy of the commons is not a failure of the free market. > ability of a large participant to drop prices to eliminate competition then raise prices, Has never happened successfully. > inability of market forces to handle extreme tail risk like major natural disasters. The free market does very well at rushing supplies into disaster areas.…

>> ability of a large participant to drop prices to eliminate competition then raise prices,

> Has never happened successfully.

I thought ISPs were notorious for temporarily dropping prices whenever a competitor tries to build out? Or at least I keep hearing anecdotes from people who think they've watched it happen.

Re: Intelligence and radical economic attitudes

#106

Post by thwayunion »

Jensson wrote: post #60
abeppu wrote: post #49

I think the way more interesting thing in this is buried in the table of correlations for study 3. - the positive correlation between intelligence and income at 30 is 0.11, and highly significant, p - the positive correlation between intelligence and income at 42 is 0.05, highly significant, p - the positive correlation between income at 30 and income at 42 is 0.11, highly significant, p I.e. what you earn when you'r…

> the positive correlation between income at 30 and income at 42 is 0.11 I'm surprised this correlation is so low, most people have already started their main career at 30, do people really change career that much between 30 and 42? Only reason I see it can be that low is that they have women who quit work or something, otherwise I'd expect high earners to continue to be high earners at that age and vice versa.

I'd guess voluntary career phase transition.

Women is a really good guess. 30 is sort of a terrible age to choose for this sort of thing...

Another possibility: lots of high earners are "done but not retired" by 40. They have a big enough nest egg to step off the corporate ladder, but not enough of a nest egg to stop working entirely. So they have part-time income from teaching university courses or consulting, but it's nowhere near their highest-earning years (which wouldn't been in their 30s).

Re: Intelligence and radical economic attitudes

#107

Post by dragonwriter »

anigbrowl wrote: post #55

While the degree of economic extremism (perhaps better described as investment or fluency) seems to correlate well with intelligence, I think it's unlikely that one can decide whether a given economic philosophy is the 'smarter' choice. Economic preferences may not be the outcome of pure rationality so much as differing values which in turn are based on different criteria of emotional satisfaction. There is some evid…

> Economic preferences may not be the outcome of pure rationality so much as differing values

The definition of “pure rationality” in economics (and the broader social sciences)—and it's worth noting this is widely recognized as an obviously idealized and incorrect model, with controversy over whether and where it is useful even as a basic starting point or not—is that each individual:

(1) has a “utility function” mapping the state of the world to experienced utility (satisfaction, basically.)

(2) makes all decisions as if they had perfect knowledge of the outcomes that would result and how those outcomes map through their utility function, maximizing their personal experienced utility.

So, basically what you have proposed as an exception to pure rationality as an explanation for economic behavior is actually fully encompassed within the definition of pure rationality, by way of the personal utility function.

Re: Intelligence and radical economic attitudes

#108

Post by eternalban »

redeeman wrote: post #97
AnimalMuppet wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or they are less willing to mutilate reality in order to try to make it fit within some intellectual/philosophical/political system. And the more radical the system is, the more it mutilates reality in order to try to make it fit within the system.

> Or they are less willing to mutilate reality in order to try to make it fit within some intellectual/philosophical/political system. what we are seeing a certain political leaning do these days would seem to very very strongly disprove this :)

One is an intellectual response and the other emotional. To wit, the mascot of this entire affair ..

Re: Intelligence and radical economic attitudes

#109

Post by astrange »

Test0129 wrote: post #91
liotier wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Free markets indeed is an extreme position: efficiency in trade requires regulation.

Regulations? You mean the same mechanism ISPs, food companies, "sin taxable" companies, etc use to capture entire segments of the market and price fix their way to a billion dollar profit? Or the regulations that nearly sank Tesla in the cradle that existed for no reason other than politicians are as corrupt, if not more, than the worst CEOs? 99.9% of the time regulation is unnecessary. Over-regulation is a huge prob…

If you didn’t have regulations you wouldn’t be able to consume or produce any modern product. It’s not worth making electronics if your users all have randomly shaped random voltage power sockets installed by whoever built their house, uncontrolled RF emissions, and want to pay you in private bank currencies you can’t spend.

This is an example of the article - libertarianism requires people to replace how things actually work with brief inaccurate summaries of how it works they fit in their heads, and the smarter you are the more incorrect information you can fit in your head and the more wrong you are.

Re: Intelligence and radical economic attitudes

#110

Post by User23 »

jackmott42 wrote: post #67
scarmig wrote: post #16

People like the sense that their views are coherent. Intelligent people are more likely to see how their point of view is incoherent. So they adopt points of view that are more coherent. Our world, both in its material basis and the ideology under/overlying it, is a messy hodgepodge, so those points of view tend to be radical i.e. a rejection of the existing basis of the world.

Or they just pick the view that benefits them, with no regard to how it affects others. Smart people definitely do better in a fuck you got mine economy than dumb people.

Smart people do better than dumb people at everything, ceteris paribus. If they didn’t then evolution would never have selected for intelligence.
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