Good Things / Bad Things

In this episode, senior contributing editor Prego de Nada proposes that Earthlings would be happier, and life on Earth would be better, if they were to jettison the practice of characterizing their choices as between "good things" and "bad things", and instead adopt the practice of viewing the expected consequences of their choices as tradeoffs, where decisions are made by comparing values and costs.
Tune in for details.

Transcript

Good Things / Bad Things

 Good day to you, and welcome to Fascinating!  I am your host Rik, from Planet Vulcan.  

 My ongoing mission on Planet Earth:  to plant seeds of a way of thinking, a way that is based on an understanding of evolutionary processes, with the ultimate aim of helping to sustain and increase the momentum of Earth’s long arc towards prosperous and happy societies, based on ideals of liberty and justice.

 We have noticed alarming levels of anxiety amongst many Earthlings of late.  This anxiety appears to stem from the realization that there is much to be done by way of reaching the goal of prosperous and happy societies, along with a feeling of powerlessness and frustration, not knowing which way to turn, who to believe and what to support.

 There are many reasons for the feelings of powerlessness and frustration, one of which we addressed in the previous episode, namely the pervasiveness of ecnarongi (ignorance in reverse, i.e., knowing that which is not so) amongst your leaders and the general population.

 Senior contributing editor Prego de Nada has submitted the following essay, in which he suggests an additional source of the difficulties and confusion so many Earthlings experience.  He believes it lies in an unfortunate choice of approach to making judgments and decisions, an approach which leads to much unnecessary worry.  You have enough to worry about without this extra burden. Prego suggests that Earthlings can eliminate much unnecessary worry by incorporating evolutionary thinking, with salutary results for all.

 Prego writes:

 Most of us approach the task of forming judgments and making choices by characterizing the possible alternatives as either “good” or “bad”.

 For example, many of us base food choices on whether it is a “good food” or a “bad food”.  And those who use this approach will characterize any diet which includes “bad food” as a “bad diet”.

 However, from the scientific point of view, “bad food” is an oxymoron.  And even the much-vilified refined sugar and other “bad foods” have nutritional value – that is why they are called “foods” – and at the very least provide a source of energy to the eater.

 If you were marooned on a remote island, or stuck on Mars while waiting to be rescued, you would gratefully consume any food you could get.

 And an interesting observation on the behavior of many of us is that in spite of judging a food to be a “bad food”, we will indulge in it anyway, and then feel guilty about having done it!

 What a waste of time and what a way to make yourself miserable, when you could be savoring the moments of your day and taking pleasure in being alive!

 I am assuming of course that you are not someone who takes pleasure in feeling guilty, which I suppose some of us do.

 Most of us would like to break this vicious circle, but how do you do this, you ask, and still have a sound basis for making judgments and choices?  

 There’s an answer to this question - you can look at things through new eyes, realize that how you frame the question is a choice, and that there are alternative ways of framing.  The choice to see alternatives as “good” and “bad” is demonstrably suboptimal, at least if your goals include the pursuit of happiness.

 If you do value the pursuit of happiness, a better choice is to view things as tradeoffs.  Rather than thinking “good thing” and “bad thing”, you think “value” and “cost”.  And instead of adopting good and rejecting bad, you pursue values that are worth the cost, and you do not pursue values that are not worth the cost.

 For example, let us say that a friend has told you that you ought to reduce your intake of refined sugar to zero, because refined sugar is a “bad thing”.

 Ignore this friend’s advice and stop worrying.  

 You can consume refined sugar with total equanimity and a clear conscience if your subjective value of the total experience is greater than its price; with price broadly defined as “what you have to give up to get it”.  And as long as you are getting sufficient nutrients from other sources - if those dues have been paid - it’s perfectly okay to make empty calories part of your diet.  Doing so does not make it a “bad diet”.

 Another example:  many of us express a reluctance to buy inexpensive imported clothing, even when its quality is at least as good as domestically produced clothing.

 A dear family friend has expressed reluctance to buy clothing imported from south and southeast Asian countries because she is convinced that they are produced with “sweatshop labor”; she would much prefer to buy clothes produced somewhere else, because “sweatshop labor” is a “bad thing”.

 It seems that she is one of the many amongst us who has accepted the dogmas of Marxianity, particularly the one which says that the workers and the owners of the capital inputs are not partners who both benefit from this cooperation, but rather adversaries involved in a brutal zero-sum contest in which the workers are systematically disadvantaged.

 Her belief, however, is not based on anything more than a priori reasoning, which dogmatically asserts that profits are the result of exploitation; and on second- and third-hand anecdotal evidence that workers are truly being treated unfairly, evidence which is being presented by people with a political agenda.  

 The owners are making [gasp!] profits – what more proof do you need that these workers are being exploited?  You know, the ones who are lining up to get these jobs.

 I wish my friend would shrug off this unsophisticated Marxian reasoning, fashionable and widespread though it might be, and stop worrying.  

 We can trust natural market processes and cooperative competition to solve problems more effectively going forward than does fretting and feeling guilty about the good things coming your way, as if any gain to you necessarily involves a bad thing to someone else.  Or by voting for people who promise to solve th misdiagnosed problem, which is a dead end as well.

 Don’t forget that the last thing Tweedledum and Tweedledee wanted was for Alice to find her way out of the woods.

 Wait, what?!!! Did I just say “cooperative competition”?  Aren’t cooperation and competition opposites?

 It’s a common belief that you can either cooperate or you can compete, and it has to be one or the other; but this is a gross oversimplification which focuses on only one possible aspect of competition, like a high-noon gunfight, in which the outcome is zero-sum.  It’s vitally important to understand that in the world of production and commerce, most interactions are positive-sum.  People win all the time without defeating anyone.

 This belief, that cooperation and competition are mutually exclusive, appears to stem from the root notion that we humans are not part of nature; and that competition is all about “nature, red in tooth and claw”, as described in the poem by Lord Tennyson, and belongs in our animal past; cooperation is seen as a feature of human morality, separate and apart from nature.  And better than nature.

 And yet, a deeper and broader understanding of nature than Tennyson’s portrayal focuses on reveals not only predation, but also includes widespread symbiosis and parasitism.  And symbiosis is the most profound form of emergent cooperation, even as, ironically in some people’s eyes, the behaviors of the symbiotes are guided by their own evolved selfish genes.  There may not be an intent to cooperate, but cooperation is what happens anyway.

 And even predation and parasitism, which most of us humans decry within our societies, constitute a form of cooperation in nature, because these things serve to maintain big-picture homeostatic balance.  

 Not so easy to explain this to the rabbit as it receives the chomp of death from the coyote, but true nonetheless.  

 Although I’m still not sure I buy the idea that I should be philosophical about mosquitoes.

 Here's another one: energy from petroleum is a “bad thing”, because of the associated pollution, and solar and wind energy are “good things”.  Therefore we must do everything in our collective power to call a halt to the use of petroleum, and the sooner the better.

 If this sounds right to you, and you are worried for the future, sometimes to the point where your life is dominated by chronic anxiety and even your health suffers, I want you to know that there is a way for you to achieve peace of mind, while still being true to yourself and helping to save Planet Earth.

 To begin with, I strongly urge you to forget everything you think you know about how to meet this challenge, and start over.  

 As you do research and begin to rebuild your way of thinking, you will notice that much if not most of what you read, hear, and see about coping with pollution is based on the intelligent design fallacy, i.e., that the problem can only be solved with collective action dictated by those in positions of authority who are presumed to have the necessary foresight (“good people”), and by overcoming the sinners and the enemies of the people who oppose their policies (“bad people”).

 This trick, the one of relying on directed collective action to reach a specified goal, never works, and especially not when the diagnosis is nonsensical.

 As you rebuild your way of thinking you must learn to recognize, and reject, intelligent design thinking and instead employ evolutionary thinking, if you wish to understand on a deep level what is happening in our world, and understand what will be a way forward that offers justified hope.

 And the most important element of the way forward with pollution control is to make use of the magic of pricing; because proper pricing incentivizes proper behavior, in a decentralized manner, and in a way that captures all relevant information, which exists in distributed form and which no one person is or can be on top of.  

 Economic science teaches us that decentralized action based on prices is the way to get the most bang for your buck.  The answer to the challenge of human-induced climate change boils down to properly internalizing the social costs of pollution, so that these costs become part of the decision-making process.  It is only with pricing that we can possibly institute an automatic control such as this.

 We also have plenty of reason to be optimistic about the contributions that scientific discovery and technological innovation are making and will continue to make, especially if we allow natural incentives to operate.

 No one has stated the case for optimism about the future of the natural world better than environmental scientist and journalist Ronald Bailey, and I recommend his “End of Doom:  Environmental Renewal in the Twenty-First Century”.

 Here's another:  chemicals are “bad things”.  A recent survey questionnaire in Europe reportedly found 40% agreement with the statement that chemicals should be banned entirely!  All chemicals!

 I’m not sure what these people thought the alternative “good thing” to these "bad" chemicals might be, and it’s a problem for anyone with a functioning brain to try to imagine what it might be, simply because there is no material substance that is not a chemical.  Water is a chemical, the atmosphere is composed of chemicals, and so is the rest of the planet.  

 So this particular survey revealed not only a faulty good thing/bad thing approach to decision-making, but also revealed profound ignorance on the part of a large percentage of the population.  

But cynical operators have been able to capitalize on this ignorance and promote what some people are referring to as chemophobia, while of course connecting the chemicals we are supposed to be fearing to the ultimate “bad thing”, capitalism.

 Let’s look at one final example.

 Safety is a “good thing”, and risk is a “bad thing”.  So our public policies should be aimed at promoting safety and reducing, or even eliminating, risk.

 Einstein taught us that it’s a good thing to simplify things as much as is possible, but not more than that.

 This characterization of safety good/risk bad attempts “more than that”, and thus becomes useless as a guide to intelligent action.

 The tradeoff approach as applied to risk treats risk not as a “bad thing”, but simply as something that requires some compensation for assuming it.  E.g., you are going to require a higher prospective rate of return on a risky investment that on a safe investment before you will consent to assuming the extra risk.

 If you are one of those who enjoy making yourself crazy, then you should stick with the risk is a “bad thing” approach.  You will have lots of company.

 Here are some examples of very small risks about which many people have very big concerns.

  - Many people avoid swimming in the ocean due to fear of sharks.

 In truth, you are more likely to be killed by falling into a hog pen or being struck by lightning than you are to be killed by a shark attack.

 Stop worrying and get in the ocean.

  - Fear of flying is common due to the perceived danger of a plane crash.

 In truth, flying is statistically one of the safest modes of transportation there is.  You are far more likely to die while in a car than you are in an airplane.

 Stop worrying and get on the plane.

  - Some fear that consuming artificial sweeteners will cause serious health issues.

 In truth, there is virtually zero risk that there will be even minor health issues with normal doses.

 Stop worrying and use the saccharin and the aspartame (at least if you enjoy an aftertaste similar to gasoline).

  - Concerns about food being made unsafe or radioactive by microwaves.

 In truth, the radiation used in a microwave oven is of a wavelength that is non-ionizing, meaning that it does not have sufficient energy to knock electrons off of atoms.  It is ecnarongi to equate such radiation with ionizing radiation such as gamma rays.  And this low energy radiation if typically about 99% shielded as well.

 The only thing that microwaves do to food is to make it hotter.

 Stop worrying and nuke that food.

 Employing a tradeoff approach for all of these real and imagined fears, rather than a good thing/bad thing approach, and the realization that virtually everything involves some level of risk, would result in far less worry and distress for all, and of course also in far better judgments and choices.  

 Thanks to Prego for this essay.

 I invite you to have a listen to the next Fascinating! podcast and a look at the next video on our YouTube channel.  You can find access to all podcasts and videos on our web page, fascinatingpodcast.com.

 Please recommend Fascinating! to your friends if you find the lessons from nature in these essays personally valuable.

 Theme music:  Helium, with thanks to TrackTribe.

 Live long and prosper.

 Practice the art of winning without defeating anyone.

 Savor your experiences.

 Treasure your memories.

 Anticipate a happy and rewarding future.

 And respect nature’s wisdom.