The Schrödinger’s Cat Experiment, Explained

Η τυραννία της ακρασίας

του Χαρίδημου Κ. Τσούκα

Καθημερινή
18 Σεπτεμβρίου 2011

–Μπαμπά, θα χρεοκοπήσουμε;

– Κανείς δεν μπορεί να ξέρει, αλλά θεωρώ ότι είναι μια πολύ πιθανή εξέλιξη.

– Τι σε κάνει να το πιστεύεις αυτό;

– Οι πιο έγκυροι οικονομολόγοι προβλέπουν κάποιας μορφής χρεοκοπία. Χωρίς δραστική αναδιάρθρωση του χρέους, η χώρα δεν σώζεται. Δεν είναι αυτό όμως που με κάνει τόσο απαισιόδοξο όσο η δική μας ακρασία.

– Τι εννοείς;

– «Ακρασία» είναι ένας όρος του Αριστοτέλη για να περιγράψει το φαινόμενο όπου ξέρω τι είναι ορθό να πράξω αλλά δεν το πράττω. «Ο ακρατής πράττει εν γνώσει του άσχημες πράξεις υπό το κράτος του πάθους του» (Ηθικά Νικομάχεια, 1145β 12-13). Ο ακρατής είναι ανίκανος να ζήσει όπως θεωρεί ότι θα έπρεπε.

– Περίεργο δεν είναι αυτό;

– Ναι, το ίδιο έλεγε και ο Σωκράτης. Η υποβέλτιστη πράξη οφείλεται στην άγνοια, όχι στην ακρασία. Για τον Αριστοτέλη, όμως, η ακρασία είναι όχι μόνο υπαρκτή αλλά και επικίνδυνη. Η ακρασία προκύπτει στο μέτρο που το άτομο κυριαρχείται από τα πάθη του, έτσι ώστε να αποκτά ψευδή εικόνα των πεποιθήσεών του. Νομίζει ότι θέλει κάτι (π. χ. να κόψει το τσιγάρο), αλλά δεν το εννοεί.

– Και τι σχέση έχει αυτό με την κρίση που περνάμε;

– Μεγάλη. Η κυβέρνηση δεσμεύεται έναντι των δανειστών της να υλοποιήσει ρηξικέλευθες πολιτικές για τη μείωση του χρέους, αλλά διστάζει να τις υλοποιήσει. Καταφάσκει μεν, συμπεριφέρεται αντιφατικά δε. Τα παραδείγματα, πολλά. Τα προστατευμένα επαγγέλματα δήθεν άνοιξαν. Οι ιδιωτικοποιήσεις συμφωνήθηκαν, αλλά ακόμη περιμένουν. Η εργασιακή εφεδρεία αναβάλλεται διαρκώς. Δεσμευτήκαμε για συγκεκριμένα αποτελέσματα αλλά δεν πασχίζουμε να τα παραγάγουμε. Ο καθηγητής Σταύρος Θωμαδάκης, διακεκριμένος οικονομολόγος, μας έλεγε πρόσφατα στο Πανεπιστήμιο Κύπρου ότι φοβάται default by default! Κινδυνεύουμε να χρεοκοπήσουμε λόγω αδράνειας - γιατί αδυνατούμε να δράσουμε διαφορετικά.

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Rationality, games and conflict

Robert Aumann interviewed by Romesh Vaitilingam

Vox
September 9, 2011

Nobel laureate Robert Aumann of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem talks to Romesh Vaitilingam about his work on ‘rule rationality’, the development of game theory and its potential for understanding conflict – from the Pax Romana to the modern day Middle East. The interview was recorded in August 2011 at the Fourth Lindau Meeting on Economic Sciences, which brought together 17 of the 38 living economics laureates with nearly 400 top young economists from around the world.

Listen to the interview here

Fourteen magic words that can increase voter turnout by over 10 percentage points??

by Andrew Gelman

The Monkey Cage
September 4, 2011

Christopher Bryan, Gregory Walton, Todd Rogers, and Carol Dweck did two experiments in which they increased people’s voter turnout in real electionsby over 10 percentage points by simply asking them the following survey question on election day:

• How important is it to you to be a voter in the upcoming election?

In the comparison condition, potential voters were asked:

• How important is it to you to vote in the upcoming election?

Unfortunately, there doesn’t seem to have been a control condition in the experiments, so all they could really do was compare these two treatments to each other.

The gimmick of the experiment is that it harnesses humans’ natural belief in essentialism (see, for example, reference 14 in the link above), the idea that being “a voter” is more essential than being a person who happened to vote.

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Read the Paper

Joe Heller (The Green Bay Press-Gazette)

The Sugary Secret of Self-Control

by Steven Pinker

New York Times
September 2, 2011

Ever since Adam and Eve ate the apple, Ulysses had himself tied to the mast, the grasshopper sang while the ant stored food and St. Augustine prayed “Lord make me chaste — but not yet,” individuals have struggled with self-control. In today’s world this virtue is all the more vital, because now that we have largely tamed the scourges of nature, most of our troubles are self-inflicted. We eat, drink, smoke and gamble too much, max out our credit cards, fall into dangerous liaisons and become addicted to heroin, cocaine and e-mail.

Nonetheless, the very idea of self-­control has acquired a musty Victorian odor. The Google Books Ngram Viewer shows that the phrase rose in popularity through the 19th century but began to free fall around 1920 and cratered in the 1960s, the era of doing your own thing, letting it all hang out and taking a walk on the wild side. Your problem was no longer that you were profligate or dissolute, but that you were uptight, repressed, neurotic, obsessive-compulsive or fixated at the anal stage of psychosexual development.

Then a remarkable finding came to light. In experiments beginning in the late 1960s, the psychologist Walter Mischel tormented preschoolers with the agonizing choice of one marshmallow now or two marshmallows 15 minutes from now. When he followed up decades later, he found that the 4-year-olds who waited for two marshmallows turned into adults who were better adjusted, were less likely to abuse drugs, had higher self-esteem, had better relationships, were better at handling stress, obtained higher degrees and earned more money.

What is this mysterious thing called self-control? When we fight an urge, it feels like a strenuous effort, as if there were a homunculus in the head that physically impinged on a persistent antagonist. We speak of exerting will power, of forcing ourselves to go to work, of restraining ourselves and of controlling our temper, as if it were an unruly dog. In recent years the psychologist Roy F. Baumeister has shown that the force metaphor has a kernel of neurobiological reality. In Willpower, he has teamed up with the irreverent New York Times science columnist John Tierney to explain this ingenious research and show how it can enhance our lives.

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