Rules v Discretion

This was the subject of my economics essay which was extremely boring to be honest because it was about monetary policy but I’ve realised that as with a lot of economics it can be looked at far more generally.

As a quick summary the point about rules v discretion is that if you are trying to decide what action to take (e.g. monetary policy) then you can either follow a set rule or just do what you feel like (discretion).

The ‘interesting’ thing in terms of monetary policy is that simply by having a rule you change what is happening. This is because people form expectations of your policy and make their decisions based on those expectations. If they know that you are going to follow a rule then their expectations will be accurate and they will respond accordingly. And if you know how they will respond to your rule then you can set it so that everyone is best of. That’s the idea anyway, as will probably be apparent that’s now quite how it works in practice (mainly due to imperfect information and conflicting interests).

The main argument in favour of discretion is that, because of imperfect information when setting a rule, any rule might at some point advocate sub-optimal policy. In such a scenario it would obviously be stupid to keep following the rule and so you can never credibly commit to one.

As I was saying before I went off on one I’ve realise d that this could be – in particular revision. The ‘rule’ would be a timetable. I can set myself a timetable and stick to it. The problem is that the timetable might sometimes say that I should do something that I then realise isn’t really worth it, normally spending time on something I already know. So it seems sensible to use my discretion and not always stick to my timetable.

BUT the problem is that if I say that I’ll use my discretion then the thing is that I always have a short-term incentive to deviate from my timetable. I can always pretend that doing something that is hard is ‘pointless’. This might be true or it might just be that I’m avoiding work.

Given this problem that I have with lack of self-discipline it seems like it might be best to commit to my timetable and say that I will always do what it says even if I think it’s stupid. Because it’s too hard to draw the line and it’ll stop me coming up with excuses for not doing stuff that I know I should do really. I’m not doing that but it is an idea.

Something else you could apply it to is getting out of bed. I do my best work in the morning and so I’ve decided to often get up fairly early to start work. Now I could have a rule about this. I could say that I’ll always get up at say 7:00. I normally don’t mind getting up early so that seems sensible. The thing is that sometimes I’m tired and getting up 7:00 would actually be bad for me. If I let myself have another couple of hours sleep then I’d be more productive.

So again it seems like I should use discretion. However, the problem is again one of lack of self-discipline and short-term thinking. I always have an incentive to pretend to myself that I need more sleep when actually I’m just being lazy.

In practice I think it’s quite rare that following a rule all the time is the best thing to do. There will almost always be a good time to break it. However I do find it interesting how allowing yourself discretion does come up with these problems. I guess in fairness it’s pretty obvious stuff that I’ve been talking about. But I always like seeing how game theory can show how so many situations are basically the same thing going on.

The problem with game theory of course is that you maximise utility. And if in reality utility means happiness then this is quite hard to measure.

So that seemed like a bit of a pointless ramble. Hope it was interesting in any case.

Why I wish I didn’t support Man U

My friend asked me why I didn’t care about United anymore and I wrote this in response. Not sure if any of the non-Comrades will care but hey, it’s my blog:

In all honesty I still support Man U. I watched the Wigan game on TV and cheered when United scored and was happy when they one. However my reaction was certainly far less than it would have been a while ago.

I did make a deliberate decision to start supporting United less. I grew gradually more ashamed of supporting them as my reason was just ‘because I do’ and I wished that I hadn’t grown up supporting them. But I felt like I was justified in saying that I hadn’t really chosen to support them, I now support Maidenhead United as well, so there that is.

Then when the Glazer’s took over I became even more disillusioned. I wondered what it means to support ‘a club’ and having previously been delighted that United was a well run club that played good football it appalled me that the Glazers were taking such a massive risk. The vast majority of fans hadn’t wanted them to take over but they had anyway. United suddenly seemed the epitome of everything wrong in football.

I decided not to buy any United merchandise (in fairness partly because it’s expensive) as a protest against the Glazers. But I still felt that it was somehow wrong to carry on supporting United. And as my support for Maidenhead United grew I just naturally care less and less about United.

It’s now got to the point where my mood is slightly affected when United do well or badly but not very much. And I wish that it didn’t. I’m not so sure about whether you ‘should’ support your local team, certainly not at all costs. But the thing is I don’t want to support United. I feel like they’ve got nothing to do with me. It seems ridiculous to care about whether they win or lose.

Whereas with Maidenhead OK I didn’t really have an impact but it was possible. In my own small way I could contribute to the running of the club and therefore it’s success. Obviously you can do that in a big club by buying merchandise but your effect is so close to zero as to feel minimal.

And when you are in the crowd at Maidenhead you can feel like a real part of the support. On my birthday I started the chanting a couple of times. No way could I have done that at Man U.

So that’s a ramble about my feelings about Manchester United. I’ve kind of lost interest in football generally basically by doing other things but I still like playing and watching it. And if I was in Maidenhead full-time I think I’d get involved there. But with Man U – I just care less and less and I think if I replace all my United merchandise as I’d like to then I’d eventually completely stop supporting them.

I’m Maidenhead till I die, I’m Maidenhead till I die, I know I am, I’m sure I am, I’m Maidenhead till I die.

What is university for?

The system of many people getting a degree and some a masters but very few then staying on to do research (OK so there’s some in a degree/masters but I doubt you’re contributing that much generally) is a bit odd.

Why did most students choose university? Probably for: 1) The lifestyle; 2) They felt they needed to do get a decent job. Neither of these seem like especially good reasons. (By that I don’t mean they aren’t good for the individuals, I mean it’s an odd system where these are genuine reasons to go university).

One of my main frustrations at university has been that my degree has seemed the most pointless bit. This is partly me not choosing my degree course well but I think a lot of people feel similarly.

OK so getting a degree shows a certain level of intelligence. And organisations can sort of judge just how much intelligence is required to get different degrees. But does this justify the strange system we have where most people spend 3 years desperately avoiding work?

For me the most useful bit about university in terms of developing me for a career has been societies. These have developed my transferable skills (communication, teamwork, leadership etc.) It hasn’t really felt like my degree has improved me that much. I mean my approach to certain problems has improved. But the skill isn’t very transferable really. Perhaps other people have developed ways to solve problems that are transferable and I’m just doing badly. But it seems like university trains you for academia – which is of course what should be the case.

So why do so many companies require a degree nowadays? Is assessing candidates really that difficult? I know that generally when you have a go at a system you are supposed to come up with something better. And to be honest I’m not sure I can. Because to be fair something that is very useful about uni is that it gives you some more time to think about what career you want.

I guess the alternative system I’d advocate would involve graduate recruitment not being an absolute pile of ****. In particular this whole idea about career focus. Don’t get me wrong of course if someone is more certain they want to do a job then that is a good thing and means they should be at an advantage – but it’s such a small part of it. Especially for interns.

I think the system should be that it’s very normal to do a load of internships before you settle on your final career. I think that’s what I’ll do after I graduate if my year in auditing doesn’t go well. I think it makes sense for young people to really try out a variety of careers before choosing one. And as well as being good for them it would probably help the companies that hire them if when they finally feel settled they have a variety of experience behind them.

So that’s why I feel that this uni system is a load of rubbish. In fairness you could say that simply the fact that uni is great fun is a good enough reason for it to continue. But whatever. My point is that I just think it’s very ridiculous how everything seems to be geared to encouraging students to train as academics when very few want to do that (although in fairness some degrees are reasonably applied).

Religion’s ultimate weapon

There’s another reason why I’m not so anti-religion anymore. It’s that it seems like there’s bits of it you just can’t replace. And so whilst I dislike basically every religion we have at the moment because they are so outdated I’m not convinced that this means religion is definitely a bad thing.

If someone dies – what comfort can rival that which religion offers?

Believing that you’ll see the person again, or believing that they’re happy, or believing that there was a reason behind their death. There’s 3 things which are of massive comfort to people and are in my opinion almost definitely wrong but some people will believe if they have religion.

And who are we to take that away from them? Do we really have all the answers? Certainly I think atheists should fight against religion in the way that it encourages damaging beliefs that hinder progress or discriminate against people for no reason. But if the only way that someone can be happy is to believe there’s something more to life than what they see in front of them I’m just not convinced that an atheist should try to take that away.

Shout about it

Charity.

Something I feel very strongly everyone should be involved in to some extent (oh here I go again). One thing I’ve realised is that actually loads of people to give to charity or are quite willing to do something fun with the aim of raising money.

But generally people don’t talk about it. I used to think that was good. It seemed like you just ‘shouldn’t’ brag about charity stuff you are doing – just do it and be satisfied knowing that you are doing a good thing.

But I’m not convinced about that now. I think people should be encouraged to talk about giving money to /doing things for charity – so that it happens as much as possible.

I guess one problem is that you get unfair comparisons. If you aren’t well off then you can’t give us much to charity. Or if your expenditure is unavoidable high (because of having kids or something). Or there could be other reasons.

But I think those don’t outweigh the positives that would come out of an atmosphere of talking about charity far more often. Putting those who only think about themselves to shame if that’s what they feel. If you don’t want to give to charity then fine. But if you know you should but you don’t then that’s not fine. If people are capable of making you feel guilty then clearly there’s something wrong with what you wanted to do.

That’s what I think anyway

Defining your own morality

That’s the problem with atheism. That most atheists would say that they define their own morality. I would be all for that – the problem is that everyone does it so poorly.

I’ve realised that I am an atheist. Quite a moderate one at the moment but certainly it seems whenever I think hard for a while I just can’t believe in a God.

But the problem of not having religion is that there doesn’t seem to be enough incentive for people to act morally. This is partly why I don’t feel so anti-religion at the moment. Because it seems to me that you could come up with a religion that encourages people to act morally.

The leading religion in Britain doesn’t seem to. From what I’ve been told Christianity is the ultimate get out clause. As long as you believe in Jesus it doesn’t matter what you do – they just hope that you’ll act reasonably well. No wonder such a religion is so popular.

The problem with modern religions is that generally there’s no burning in hell aspect. It all started to go wrong when you could buy your way out of it.

I think a sensible religion would be as follows:

When you die you meet God. With him you will then go through your life and you have to justify everything you did and didn’t do. Anything you can’t justify and therefore was ‘wrong’ you will be punished for. The point here is that you will be defining your own morality. But it will be subjected to scrutiny.

Far too many people define their morality to suit themselves. Allowing themselves to steal or lie or whatever because ‘it’s not that important’ or ‘life’s unfair’ or some other crap reason.

I mean don’t get me wrong I do it too. I constantly do things that are clearly immoral – generally not in a very serious way – and come up with some justification which really I know is rubbish.

And the thing is that if you are an atheist it’s so much up to you what you want to do. I mean sure the law is enforced reasonably well so you can’t get away with everything but there is so much you can get away with – and people very often take advantage of that.

So that’s one reason I think religion could be useful – because people just won’t act morally enough without something pushing them.

An anti-religion atheist?

As what I might arrogantly call a prominent member of Warwick Atheists it might seem obvious that I am an atheist. But recently I’ve begun to have doubts. And the thing is that basically I’ve felt that at heart I am, and perhaps always will be, an agnostic.

 

Many atheists say that agnostics are really atheists and I see their point. Which I think is that surely either you believe in God or you don’t. So if you don’t believe in God then by definition you are an atheist.

 

But the thing is that we have the term ‘agnosticism’ for a reason. The reason being that some people are genuinely unsure of their opinion. They just can’t make their mind up. I hear some arguments as to why God definitely doesn’t exist and they appear airtight and that’s all fine. But then I begin to have doubts since science certainly can’t explain everything. I think it makes sense to take a religion seriously and I think to myself ‘if such a religion were true – what would convince me?’ And it seems silly to write it off.

 

I mean to be honest I don’t really like the book religions. Basically because they are full of old-fashioned morality that no one seems to agree with anymore. So it seems impossible that it came from a God.

 

But I just don’t feel comfortable sitting in the position of ‘knowing’ that they are wrong. Maybe I just haven’t done enough research. When I read ‘The God Delusion’ it presented loads of arguments that I found persuasive. And perhaps if I read the religious texts I’d find loads of stuff that would convince me that they couldn’t be the word of God.

 

But who are we to question God? That’s the thing. It seems that a lot of atheist arguments revolve around showing what type of creature God must be and saying ‘well surely you don’t believe in that?’ And that doesn’t seem like a great argument to me.

 

Plus you have to consider if all the religions are wrong but there is a God. That’s a lot harder to disprove because there’s no rubbish written in black-and-white that you can easily say is wrong. Instead it seems that you squirm and say ‘well there’s not enough evidence’ or ‘it’s unnecessary’ – again not very persuasive arguments when science doesn’t hold all the answers.

 

And then also religion does make so many people happy. I mean yes it does loads of damage. That’s the thing – by its very nature religion can offer loads of comfort but also do loads of harm. And I think it’s a very difficult question to answer as to whether it does more harm then good. Or more to the point if it would always be the case that it does more harm than good.

 

I like the saying that the religion is the only thing that can make a good person do evil things. It makes a very good point (could question if it’s technically correct but who cares). But religion also gives people comfort that it seems impossible to replace. People just find death hard to deal with. And religion gives people a lot of comfort. Who are we to say that that’s ‘wrong’?

 

But then of course you can’t just accept religion because of the way that the blind faith that it encourages is actually damaging. People hold views simply because they come part of package deal – and it’s terrible.

 

This has been somewhat of a ramble getting to nowhere. I’ve felt my opinion going back and forth as I’ve been writing. That’s why it really does seem that I’m an agnostic. It feels like I’m an atheist by default now because I set myself up as one – I don’t really like that. Surely the very fact that I have to sit here and question what my opinion gives it away? Surely that shows that I don’t know? What’s wrong with that?

 

 

The answer comes back immediately – whether or not you believe in God just matters. Obviously. Because you let it affect how you live and that affects others. So it is something to be taken seriously.

 

But so are lots of things. There are plenty of important issues I could spend time worrying about. Basically I don’t think it’s intelligent to make my mind up without exploring the evidence properly. And I don’t really have time for that at the moment. Or I guess I could always make time – but why should I? Perhaps I should make time to research about the issues concerning the environment so I could have an informed opinion on that – that’s certainly an important issue.

 

My point is that I don’t think I’m duty bound to especially think about my views on religion – even though it is important. So I think I’m comfortable being an agnostic – and that’s that.

 

And as to whether or not I’m anti-religion – there are certainly aspects of it I despise. But whether or not the world would be better off without some modified form – I don’t know.

 

So that’s been one hell of a ramble to nowhere. Ah well.

The only way

In a comment Ben appeared to be suggesting that the scientific method was definitely the best way to think. The reason being that it has the key strengths of being self-correcting and trying to find the real truth.

 

Now I like the scientific method. But I would claim that to state that it is ‘definitely right’ and that anything unscientific is definitely inferior is an arrogant claim. I agree that the scientific method is best but the point I’m trying to make here is that this is an opinion and nothing more.

 

As I see it the problem with the scientific method is that it seems to assume that things work scientifically. How can you apply the scientific method to the question of God? Previously I made a point by imagining a world where the scientific method would say that there was a God. But clearly we don’t live in such a clear-cut world.

 

However, given that if there is a God he clearly has decided not to intervene too much it appears to me that we are slightly stuck. What if we live in a world with a God who decides to intervene occasionally? Or perhaps there’s a deist God who set up the world and then left it running – but importantly judges us when we die and somehow we experience some kind of after-life.

 

Where would science leave us then? It seems to me that science wouldn’t be able to help very much. It wouldn’t give much certainty to there being a God and so we’d live our lives assuming that there wasn’t one. And we’d be screwed.

 

So that’s why I think that it is a choice to use the scientific method. I think it makes certain assumptions. Now however you choose to live your life is going to require assumptions and personally I favour the scientific method – it works. But what I’m getting at is that you shouldn’t be so arrogant to say that the way you think is ‘definitely right’. Perhaps it isn’t.

 

Perhaps we live in a world that in its very nature is actually unscientific. Perhaps the rules that govern things change. Perhaps the reason that there is always random variation is simply because things aren’t governed by rules. Perhaps not everything has a mechanism.

 

And given this uncertainty I think you should respect how other people live their lives. By which I don’t mean that you should shy away from saying that you think the way they live is wrong. But I mean that if you are a caring person then you will take into account their feelings. Rather than ignoring them on some justification that they shouldn’t have them so it’s not your responsibility to care. That sounds very convenient to me. And it also sounds like bollocks.

Life contract

Something that interests me is morality – do you have a duty to live morally? Here’s some rambling leading to one way I think you could look at life:

You didn’t choose to be born. Life was just thrust upon you. All of a sudden you are in a world. And although it might seem incomprehensible you start to realise that it’s almost certainly true that all these people around you must experience something similar to that which you experience. You realise that it is unlikely that you are the only conscious being. And you start to realise the consequences of it.

Your actions affect others. Sometimes you do things deliberately to affect others. Sometimes accidentally. Sometimes you legitimately regret the way you acted. Sometimes you are left wishing you had acted differently but actually you are expecting too much of yourself.

I don’t know about others but I find this situation a little unfair. If you have a conscience (which normally goes along with being conscious but not always) then you don’t like it when you have a negative impact on others. Particularly people you care about. And yet negatively impacting on others is inevitable. You can’t have the aim of never doing anything that hurts someone.

But it does seem like you just ‘should’ care about others. If no one cared about others at all certainly we’d be in serious ****. But it’s easy to get out of that – we can care about others when we think it will benefit ourselves. So we’ll get a situation where for example we don’t go around killing people we hate because we’ve set up a society which punishes people like that.

But what about going a step further? What about caring about others when you don’t need to? Like giving to charity if you are well off – should you do that? You didn’t ask to be better off than others. So surely there’s not reason to care about them? I don’t know about others but for me that argument just seems so lacking.

So here’s something I’ve thought of:

You could see life as a contract that you were forced into, but to compensate for that it has a continuum of break clauses (now there’s a euphemism if ever I wrote one).

The contract is like this:

You have been given a life – unique to each person

In return for this life you have to act ‘morally’

If you don’t like this contract then at any point you can exercise your break clause – you can kill yourself – and you don’t have to feel any guilt about that

This needs a little bit of clarification. By acting morally I mean always questioning your actions and if they are ‘fair’. Rather than just doing what suits you, you have to try think equally about yourself and everyone else – this basically means acting lovingly. What life you were given will determine how much you have to think about others. If you are incredibly lucky to be extremely wealthy and comfortable then you have to think about others a lot. If you’ve been given a rubbish life then you can concentrate on yourself more.

But clearly it is unfair to just force you to live a life acting in this way. That’s why you have the get out clause. If you don’t accept this way of living then you can kill yourself and not worry about the consequences. The reason I’m talking about the consequences goes along with the morality thing because it’s easy to point out that committing suicide could be seen as immoral since it would traumatise loads of people – but in this way of looking at life I’ve sidestepped that.

Anyway that’s something to think about. Personally I’m actually not convinced by this way of looking at life. I’m not entirely sure why though.

Selfishness V Love

People are selfish. That is just unavoidable. This is something that I’ve heard a lot of people say and I don’t know maybe this is something everyone ‘learns’ when they get older.

I don’t agree with it though.

(There is the argument that it’s genes not people that are selfish since they are the ones replicating, so ‘altruism’ between people is possible and actually expected – I’m not getting at that though.)

I don’t normally like getting caught up in semantics but I think there are a lot of things that people do that shouldn’t be classified as ‘selfish’. The reason being that for me selfishness implies that you are putting your feelings above other people’s, that you are having a negative impact on others but you don’t care because you are being made better off. However, this doesn’t have to be the case.

For example say you give some money to charity. Also assume that you went to the effort to make sure that you gave the money in such a way that you knew it was being spent well. Was that selfish? Doesn’t seem like it to me. Yes you were thinking about yourself. You presumably feel good about yourself afterwards. So what? What has also happened is that you have made other people better off.

Now this type of action isn’t altruism – because that implies that you are worse off but others are better off. I asked my friend Bibby for a more suitable word for this kind of action and he suggested love. Now I don’t want to sound like a hippy but I like that idea.

I think people are capable of being loving. Of thinking about others as well as themselves. And acting in such a way that just makes everyone better off. And so not thinking about themselves all the time.

Certainly genuine altruism is possible. But I think it’s too much to ask for consistently. But I think acting in a loving way – helping others and feeling good about and so helping yourself – is something that we should all try and do.

So to those who go around saying that people do things for themselves I’d say you’ve missed the point. Why you do something isn’t really that important. It’s what you actually did that’s the crucial thing. So you could choose to only care about yourself, justifying it to yourself by saying that’s what everyone does. Or you could choose to care about others, realising that you can think about yourself at the same time

No one’s perfect. But in this respect I certainly know what type of person I want to be.