At any rate, the key point of this half remembered dream was that just as many things are the results of human action but not human intention, so too are many of the things we care most about beyond our ability to plan for their aquisition. We have a pretty vague idea about what will make us happy, or what we want. There is a quote I can not find at the moment, roughly how every dog can be loved, so long as he is not too ordinary. It is the little quirks that make him special and lovable.
That's all well and good, we all know that we are supposed to love things for what's wrong with them (or something.) So, obviously, when we went to adopt a new kitten, we asked for a Siamese that had a chronic sinus infection, short, stubby legs, a love of sleeping with his balls in the air, a whining cry and the mental capacity of a lamb with fetal alcohol syndrome. Wait... no, that's what we received. Our list of wants was essentially "Siamese, female, friendly, not dead and OOOOOH THIS ONE HAS WHITE FEET!" Turns out female was not so important, nor was friendly seeing as how we adopted him sight unseen, and it took little High Chancellor Pudding Cup about five months to recognize us after we changed pants.
So, why did we keep him? I am left with the conclusion that although he fulfills only 2.5 of our 5 criteria (he is very friendly for about 10-20 minutes a day, or when you are in the kitchen or holding a bag that might contain treats) it is all the things we didn't intend that make him special to us. Even though his little snot explosions are kind of gross to find splattered on the walls, they are pretty funny otherwise. Likewise, his exploits in not understanding how things like "walls" work make for amusing stories. (At least to crazy cat people like us.) Even his "good" points are surprising, such as how he curls his feet up when he sleeps on his back, and how the fact he is actually a little standoffish is a bit refreshing, considering our previous complement of cats had to be on top of you at all times. We now are very attached to a little cat that is very different from what our initial list of requirements suggested.
So, is this just an extended cat story, or is there an economics point here? The economics point is this: economics often assume that they can get at the true preferences of people in their models. In fact, everyone sort of assumes they know what other people really want. In truth though, we only have a vague notion of what we want ourselves, much less any sort of mathematical certainty about what would maximize anyone else's utility. As another example, no one really knew they wanted an iPad until it was released. At best they want something that does X,Y and Z and maybe looks like something out of Star Trek, but not an iPad until it actually existed. For me, this suggests a few implications:
1: Utility is constantly being updated in our subconscious, not only with regard to deciding whether we like things we are aware of or not, but also factoring in things we were not aware of.
2: We can not come up with even rankings of wants or desires that are meaningful for anything but the extreme short term. We can only guess at how much various things will make us happy, and only based on existence as we know it at the time of the list.
3: Planning, let alone optimizing, our choices long term is largely impossible. At best, we can plan for broad categories of actions and wants, and then leave space for changes within each category.
In effect, our knowledge even of ourselves is so limited that our best plan is to not plan, but rather to simply ensure we have the flexibility to react to our wants in the future.What seems like a complete list, or even a good idea, now is very likely to seem terrible weeks, months or years from now. Raise your hand if you bought a house between 2000 and 2008, if you wish you had bought Microsoft in the '80's, or graduated with a degree in IT in 2003. I hope you didn't invest heavily in a life time supply of clothes in the '90's.
This is in part why free markets are so important. We have very little idea what is a good idea now, much less what will be. The best idea seems to be to keep open the most possibilities. Markets do this by allowing people to find and invent others desires by creating new products and services, and letting people pick as they come up. Planning is involved, but it is a multitude of small plans, not a huge overarching plan about how much of everything to dedicate resources to. It can take a while before the actual attributes of something are even known, much less assessed for their relative value by people, and that will doom any economic plan to failure.
Come to think of it, maybe sausage before bed is not so bad after all...
Great return to the blogosphere (even though my appreciation for cats is limited).
ReplyDeleteBefore I began primarily reading economics, I was largely interested in behavioral psychology. A fantastic book by Daniel Gilbert, "Stumbling on Happiness", addresses many similar issues. One such point is that our ability to accurately predict our own preferences far into the future frequently over-weights our current preferences and vastly underestimates how much those will change. Hence, you could not be more correct in stating that "The best idea seems to be to keep open the most possibilities."