Let’s take your concrete example about democracy. If I understand correctly, you separate the progress towards democracy into:
discovering/creating the concept of democracy, learning it, spreading the concept itself, which is under the differential intellectual progress.
convince people to implement democracy, do the fieldwork for implementing it, which is at least partially under the differential progress.
But the thing is, I don’t have a clear criterion for distinguishing the two. My first ideas were:
differential intellectual progress is about any interaction where the relevant knowledge of some participant increases (in the democracy example, learning the idea is relevant, learning that the teeth of your philosophy teacher are slightly ajar is not). And then differential progress is about any interaction making headway towards a change in the world (in the example the implementation of democracy). But I cannot think of a situation where no one learns anything relevant to the situation at hand. That is, for these definitions, differential progress is differential intellectual progress.
Another idea is that differential intellectual progress is about all the work needed for making rational agents implement a change in the world, while differential progress is about all the work needed for making humans implement a change in the world. Here the two are clearly different. My issue there stems with the word intellectual: in this case Amos and Tversky’s work, and pretty much all of behavioral economics, is not intellectual.
I think the first of those is close, but not quite there. Maybe this is how I’d put it (though I’d hadn’t tried to specify it to this extent before seeing your comment):
Differential progress is about actions that advance risk-reducing lasting changes relative to risk-increasing progress, regardless of how these actions achieve that objective.
Differential intellectual progress is a subset of differential progress where an increase in knowledge by some participant is a necessary step between the action and the outcomes. It’s not just that someone does learn something, or even that it would necessarily be true that someone would end up having learned something (e.g., as an inevitable outcome of the effect we care about). It’s instead that someone had to learn something in order for the outcome to occur.
In the democracy example, if I teach someone about democracy, then the way in which that may cause risk-reducing lasting changes is via changes in that person’s knowledge. So that’s differential intellectual progress (and thus also differential progress, since that’s the broader category).
If instead I just persuade someone to be in favour of democracy by inspiring them or making liking democracy look cool, then that may not require them to have changes in knowledge. In reality, they’re likely to also “learn something new” along the lines of “this guy gave a great speech”, or “this really cool guy likes democracy”. But that new knowledge isn’t why they now want democracy; the causal pathway went via their emotions directly, with the change in their knowledge being an additional consequence that isn’t on the main path.
(Similar scenarios could also occur where a change in knowledge was necessary, such as if they choose to support democracy based on now explicitly thinking doing so will win them approval from me or from their friends. I’m talking about cases that aren’t like that; cases where it’s more automatic and emotion-driven.)
Does that seem clearer to you? (I’m still writing these a bit quickly, and I still think this isn’t perfectly precise, but it seems fairly intuitive to me.)
And then we could perhaps further say that differential technological development is when a change in technology was a necessary step for the effect to occur. Again, it’s not just an inevitable consequence of the chain of events, but rather something on the causal pathway between our action and the outcome we care about.
I think it’s possible that this framing might make the relationship between all three clearer than I did in this post. (I think in the post, I more just pointed to a general idea and assumed readers would have roughly the same intuitions as me—and the authors I cite, I think.)
(Also, my phrasing about “causal pathways” and such is influenced by Judea Pearl’s The Book of Why, which I think is a great book. I think the phrasing is fairly understandable without that context, but just thought I’d add that in case it’s not.)
That’s a great criterion! We might be able to find some weird counter-example, but it solves all of my issues. Because intellectual work/knowledge might be a part of all actions, but it isn’t necessary on the main causal path.
I’ve gone with adding a footnote that links to this comment thread. Probably would’ve baked this explanation in if I’d had it initially, but I now couldn’t quickly find a neat, concise way to add it.
And thanks for the suggestion to make this idea/criterion into its own post. I’ll think about whether to do that, just adjust this post’s main text to reflect that idea, or just add a footnote in this post.
Thanks for the in-depth answer!
Let’s take your concrete example about democracy. If I understand correctly, you separate the progress towards democracy into:
discovering/creating the concept of democracy, learning it, spreading the concept itself, which is under the differential intellectual progress.
convince people to implement democracy, do the fieldwork for implementing it, which is at least partially under the differential progress.
But the thing is, I don’t have a clear criterion for distinguishing the two. My first ideas were:
differential intellectual progress is about any interaction where the relevant knowledge of some participant increases (in the democracy example, learning the idea is relevant, learning that the teeth of your philosophy teacher are slightly ajar is not). And then differential progress is about any interaction making headway towards a change in the world (in the example the implementation of democracy). But I cannot think of a situation where no one learns anything relevant to the situation at hand. That is, for these definitions, differential progress is differential intellectual progress.
Another idea is that differential intellectual progress is about all the work needed for making rational agents implement a change in the world, while differential progress is about all the work needed for making humans implement a change in the world. Here the two are clearly different. My issue there stems with the word intellectual: in this case Amos and Tversky’s work, and pretty much all of behavioral economics, is not intellectual.
Does any of these two criteria feel right to you?
I think the first of those is close, but not quite there. Maybe this is how I’d put it (though I’d hadn’t tried to specify it to this extent before seeing your comment):
Differential progress is about actions that advance risk-reducing lasting changes relative to risk-increasing progress, regardless of how these actions achieve that objective.
Differential intellectual progress is a subset of differential progress where an increase in knowledge by some participant is a necessary step between the action and the outcomes. It’s not just that someone does learn something, or even that it would necessarily be true that someone would end up having learned something (e.g., as an inevitable outcome of the effect we care about). It’s instead that someone had to learn something in order for the outcome to occur.
In the democracy example, if I teach someone about democracy, then the way in which that may cause risk-reducing lasting changes is via changes in that person’s knowledge. So that’s differential intellectual progress (and thus also differential progress, since that’s the broader category).
If instead I just persuade someone to be in favour of democracy by inspiring them or making liking democracy look cool, then that may not require them to have changes in knowledge. In reality, they’re likely to also “learn something new” along the lines of “this guy gave a great speech”, or “this really cool guy likes democracy”. But that new knowledge isn’t why they now want democracy; the causal pathway went via their emotions directly, with the change in their knowledge being an additional consequence that isn’t on the main path.
(Similar scenarios could also occur where a change in knowledge was necessary, such as if they choose to support democracy based on now explicitly thinking doing so will win them approval from me or from their friends. I’m talking about cases that aren’t like that; cases where it’s more automatic and emotion-driven.)
Does that seem clearer to you? (I’m still writing these a bit quickly, and I still think this isn’t perfectly precise, but it seems fairly intuitive to me.)
And then we could perhaps further say that differential technological development is when a change in technology was a necessary step for the effect to occur. Again, it’s not just an inevitable consequence of the chain of events, but rather something on the causal pathway between our action and the outcome we care about.
I think it’s possible that this framing might make the relationship between all three clearer than I did in this post. (I think in the post, I more just pointed to a general idea and assumed readers would have roughly the same intuitions as me—and the authors I cite, I think.)
(Also, my phrasing about “causal pathways” and such is influenced by Judea Pearl’s The Book of Why, which I think is a great book. I think the phrasing is fairly understandable without that context, but just thought I’d add that in case it’s not.)
That’s a great criterion! We might be able to find some weird counter-example, but it solves all of my issues. Because intellectual work/knowledge might be a part of all actions, but it isn’t necessary on the main causal path.
I think this might actually deserve its own post.
I’ve gone with adding a footnote that links to this comment thread. Probably would’ve baked this explanation in if I’d had it initially, but I now couldn’t quickly find a neat, concise way to add it.
Thanks again for prompting the thinking, though!
Great!
And thanks for the suggestion to make this idea/criterion into its own post. I’ll think about whether to do that, just adjust this post’s main text to reflect that idea, or just add a footnote in this post.