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Date: Tue, 4 Sep 2007 14:13:32 -0400 (EDT)
To: Laurie Reeves <laurie.reeves &AElig yahoo.com>
cc: improvetheworld &AElig umich.edu, reeves-hayos &AElig umich.edu,         reeves-kalkman &AElig umich.edu
From: Daniel Reeves <dreeves &AElig umich.edu>
Subject: Re: mind the gap

Thanks Mom (and Rosie) :)

Note that hundredths of yootles are spelled "pyoonies".

--- \/   FROM Laurie Reeves AT 07.09.01 09:03 (Saturday)   \/ ---

> I'll just put in my two cents (two punies) on the
> yootling.
>
> I like yootling because it takes a fundamental
> concept, that is, equality and autonomy of
> individuals, and forces the concept to be acknowledged
> and respected between my husband and myself.  Strange
> as it may sound, perfectly nice people like Martin
> (and me?  Oh, horrors) can struggle with this very
> basic concept
> perhaps because of their upbringing or any number of
> reasons.  With a simple thing like yootling, each of
> us discards all second-guessing, all presumptions,
> etc., and arrive at equitable outcome, and even more
> importantly, what FEEL like equitable outcomes (as
> opposed to grudgingly conceding).  We're happily
> forced, if you will, to acknowledge each other's
> autonomy and equal
> status.
>
> For someone like Rosie (my niece) it's a great thing
> too.  Rosie
> is not very good at expressing herself verbally, so in
> discussions or arguments where she needs to express
> her desires, preferences, etc. she often succumbs to
> someone more demanding, persuasive, or even
> manipulative.  Not surprisingly, she loves yootling.
> She is
> experiencing true fairness in decision making.  For
> someone like her it's a breath of fresh air in her
> life.  I told you how she told her counselor about
> yootles, and that yootling was one of the reasons she
> wanted to
> live with us.  The counselor thought it sounded very
> cool.  And Danny, you know from the start that I have
> tended to see yootle's usefulness in interpersonal
> relations.  From the start I have said that, for
> example, marriage counselors or family counselors
> might really be able to help their clients with
> something like a yootles program.  I mean, we can talk
> all day about what we want from ourselves and the
> other person in a relationship but yootles puts it
> into "Yootles and Punies?"  I don't remember what
> cents are called.  Dollars and SENSE.
>
> Anyway, dad and I still don't yootle enough but in
> concept I am on board with the whole idea.  Rosie
> tends to suggest yootling more often and it works
> great for
> us.
>
> Oh, and no doubt about it, yootling saves time and
> frustration over figuring out what to do, what's fair,
> what the other person really wants, etc.  I think it's
> a great experience (especially for children) to learn
> to assess their own (and in relation to others) real
> value and utility for things, and perhaps equally
> important, to accept the outcome, learning as they go
> to more rapidly and accurately assess these things.
>
> Laurie
> --- Daniel Reeves <dreeves &AElig umich.edu> wrote:
>
>> I have to respond to your yootles critique first!
>>   Our aim is both to decrease to next to nothing the
>> overhead of applying
>> more formal mechanisms to decision-making (and more
>> recently, prediction
>> and prediction+decisions) as well as convince you
>> there's plenty to be
>> gained.  Bethany and I yootle every day for every
>> little (and big) thing
>> imaginable.  (Being both indecisive types it often
>> saves us a ton of
>> time.) Granted, we're gigantic dorks and no one else
>> cares yet.
>>
>> I'm of course not done defending my boyfriend Paul
>> either.  More on that
>> later.
>>
>> But I'm actually delighted that we're making real
>> progress on
>> circumscribing the disagreement while identifying
>> common ground (eg,
>> Graham is at least right in some other fantasy
>> universe; Trixie won't like
>> that concession at all!  and of course I conceded on
>> slavery and may do so
>> on health care, where basic human rights are at
>> stake.. although Kevin
>> may set you straight on the healthcare issue!).
>>
>>
>> --- \/   FROM James W Mickens AT 07.08.31 22:21
>> (Yesterday)   \/ ---
>>
>>>> You're characterizing our disagreement as hinging
>> on whether public
>>>> policy should optimize economics subject to moral
>> constraints or
>>>> optimize morality subject to economic
>> constraints.  I'm unclear on what
>>>> either of those really mean for public policy.
>>>
>>>
>>> There's a difference in the intent of your policy
>> and the methods that you
>>> will use to evaluate it. For example, suppose that
>> you've devised a new tax
>>> code for an underdeveloped country. When you
>> evaluate its success, will you
>>> look at how much additional wealth it generated,
>> or some actual measure of
>>> utility such as the percentage of citizens who
>> have access to electricity or
>>> clean water? I use the term "actual measure of
>> utility" because I think that
>>> just examining, say, the increase in GDP is a bad
>> way to measure net social
>>> welfare. The net wealth of a society is, at best,
>> an indirect measure of its
>>> net welfare because aggregate wealth trends tell
>> us nothing about the
>>> *distribution* of wealth or whether that wealth is
>> being used to satisfy some
>>> particular goal. The classic example is health
>> care. Despite rising levels of
>>> aggregate wealth in America, many *individual*
>> Americans have poor health and
>>> inadequate access to proper medical care. Is the
>> solution to this problem the
>>> creation of even more wealth in the hope that the
>> health care industry will
>>> spontaneously reorganize? Or is the solution a
>> targeted policy, whether it be
>>> nationalized health care, better health education
>> in schools, and/or
>>> something else? I argue that the latter approach
>> would be better,
>>> particularly since the market has thus far been
>> ineffective in addressing
>>> this issue.
>>>
>>> The failure of wealth-driven policies is even more
>> obvious in the
>>> international pharmaceutical market, where drug
>> companies develop medicines
>>> for diseases that affluent people care about
>> (e.g., restless leg syndrome,
>>> diabetes) and ignore a huge number of illnesses
>> (e.g., diarrheal diseases)
>>> that affect a much larger number of people who
>> have much less money. People
>>> who care about net welfare should find this
>> problematic. So, in the
>>> international drug market, should we pursue
>> wealth-driven or morality-driven
>>> policies? In other words, should we allow drug
>> companies to maximize their
>>> profits and hope that they'll turn a charitable
>> eye towards the developing
>>> world, or should we force them through regulation,
>> subsidies, tax credits,
>>> etc., to address the needs of poorer countries?
>> History suggests that the
>>> former strategy will fail if you're trying to
>> optimize for health and not
>>> profit.
>>>
>>> I understand that it is extremely expensive to
>> develop new drugs and that
>>> pharmaceutical companies must be given a way to
>> recoup these costs. However,
>>> it's obvious that a market system which focuses on
>> maximizing their profits
>>> will not lead to a net increase in global health
>> (an important utility
>>> metric).
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>> Let me first defend Graham's point.  He concedes
>> whole classes of
>>>> exceptions and I think social injustices are
>> included, if not explicitly.
>>>> His argument -- that income inequality is not,
>> inherently, unjust --
>>>> remains intact.
>>>
>>> Once again, I'm claiming that economic justness
>> does not equal moral
>>> justness. When you say that income inequality is
>> "not inherently unjust," you
>>> should specify whether you refer to the economic
>> definition, the moral
>>> definition, or both.
>>>
>>> If Graham includes social injustice in his
>> exceptions list, then I suppose
>>> that he and I are in agreement. But if Graham
>> believes in the entrenched,
>>> pervasive nature of social injustice, why does he
>> spend so much time waxing
>>> poetic about the inherent fairness of economic
>> inequality? This fairness only
>>> exists in an idealized model of the economy which
>> bears little resemblance to
>>> the real one. The fact that Graham spends most of
>> his time talking about this
>>> idealized world suggests that either a) he is a
>> hopeless utopian, or b) he
>>> does not, in fact, believe that social injustice
>> is entrenched and pervasive
>>> ;-).
>>>
>>> ~j
>>>
>>>
>>> p.s.
>>>
>>>> And just to nip a potential subthread: the
>> non-mathematically inclined are
>>>> not allowed to blithely declare human motivation
>> to be irreducible to
>>>> mathematics.
>>>
>>> Ah, but I claim that the mathematically inclined
>> are not allowed to blithely
>>> declare that human motivation *is* reducible to
>> mathematics ;-). The reason
>>> that I do not use yootles to determine who will
>> pick me up from the airport
>>> is that, in the common case, this decision is not
>> subject to rigorous
>>> mathematical or economic constraints, nor should
>> it be. In many scenarios, I
>>> only care about approximate notions of fairness. I
>> suppose that if gasoline
>>> were $27,000 a gallon, it might be reasonable to
>> employ a strong mathematical
>>> framework to prevent tragedy (e.g., "Oh no, Todd
>> has taken me to the airport
>>> fifteen times but I haven't taken him at all. Todd
>> has now spent $405,000 on
>>> gas while I have escaped scot-free."). Absent such
>> extreme conditions, the
>>> introduction of mathematics into simple human
>> transactions will often just
>>> add overhead and produce little tangible benefit.
>>>
>>> It is frequently possible and fruitful to analyze
>> people's behavior using
>>> mathematical models. However, that doesn't mean
>> that the underlying
>>> psychology of the individual is actually driven by
>> these models, or that
>>> giving the math to people will make it easier for
>> them to manage their lives.
>>>
>>
>> --
>> http://ai.eecs.umich.edu/people/dreeves  - -
>> search://"Daniel Reeves"
>>
> === message truncated ===
>
>
>
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-- 
http://ai.eecs.umich.edu/people/dreeves  - -  search://"Daniel Reeves"

"Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it
whether it exists or not, diagnosing it incorrectly, and
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