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Opportunity Cost, my favorite phrase
Mar. 22nd, 2014 12:41 amPaul Krugman famously became an economist because he was a fan of Isaac Asimov's Foundation series and figured it was the closest he could get to being a Psychohistorian. That pretty much sums up my own attraction to the field, although I'd put it a slightly different way: economics is the study of counterfactuals. If this changes, what other things change? We have a whole subfield, econometrics, that helps us mathematically compare one possible future to another. If we make seatbelts mandatory, a percentage of the population will drive faster because they will no longer perceive it as dangerous; will this net more or fewer vehicular deaths? (Fewer, but not as many fewer as the people thought who didn't consider the speeders.)
It's more complicated when you can't do a direct comparison. If we tear down the sorts of playground equipment that kids fell off of, no more broken arms. But now we have kids staying inside and playing video games, developing sedentary diseases like higher rates of diabetes. Which one is more dangerous, the broken arm or the diabetes? How many broken arms do you trade for the diabetes? Do we care that we are now winning fewer olympic medals? Do we care that we are now getting very sophisticated opinions about user interface design?
It's bewildering when people don't run these thought exercises. If GMOs strike you as bad, what does not GMOs look like? If plastics are killing us, how many of us die with not plastics? Does banning e-cigarettes stop people from smoking because nonsmokers aren't tempted by cool-looking e-cigarettes, or does it drive smokers right back to more dangerous tobacco products because if you're going to get hassled you might as well? Maybe you don't have the data to know, but you can get it, or try to. You can't just end with "this has negative effects!" I need to know whether they're more or less negative than not-this.
We're all going to die. We really are. Safe doesn't exist, just safer. In the meantime, watching the news or stepping on social media is excruciating. It seems the only options are one-sided panic or false equivalence. I'd never say science is incorruptible; it can be distorted and it can be used for bad ends. But I sure don't think politicians or journalists are helping.
It's more complicated when you can't do a direct comparison. If we tear down the sorts of playground equipment that kids fell off of, no more broken arms. But now we have kids staying inside and playing video games, developing sedentary diseases like higher rates of diabetes. Which one is more dangerous, the broken arm or the diabetes? How many broken arms do you trade for the diabetes? Do we care that we are now winning fewer olympic medals? Do we care that we are now getting very sophisticated opinions about user interface design?
It's bewildering when people don't run these thought exercises. If GMOs strike you as bad, what does not GMOs look like? If plastics are killing us, how many of us die with not plastics? Does banning e-cigarettes stop people from smoking because nonsmokers aren't tempted by cool-looking e-cigarettes, or does it drive smokers right back to more dangerous tobacco products because if you're going to get hassled you might as well? Maybe you don't have the data to know, but you can get it, or try to. You can't just end with "this has negative effects!" I need to know whether they're more or less negative than not-this.
We're all going to die. We really are. Safe doesn't exist, just safer. In the meantime, watching the news or stepping on social media is excruciating. It seems the only options are one-sided panic or false equivalence. I'd never say science is incorruptible; it can be distorted and it can be used for bad ends. But I sure don't think politicians or journalists are helping.
