(1) Per the formula (1-ABS(((1000/(0.83*1.2))-(1000/0.83))/(1000/0.83)))^0.1, it would appear that we have 98.2% remaining freedom, and a 1.8% reduction?
(2) I think you’re right on the averaging issue—in a number of other areas (e.g. calculating probabilities from a bunch of reference classes), we’ve tended to use the geomean, but that’s for extrapolating from estimates to the true value, as opposed to true individual means to the true population means. The other related issue, however, is whether the sample is representative, and whether we think that highly educated people are more likely to report caring about abstract concerns. Will have to think about this, but thanks for the feedback!
(3) As to your larger point, I’m not sure if it’s reasonable to interpret individual behaviour when it comes to trading off short term against long term gains as maximizing, given time inconsistent preferences (relative to valuing your welfare equally at all times), people just not thinking too much about daily choices, lack of awareness of the precise degree of risk (even if the risk were 10x or 0.1x, it’s not like you would likely shift a meaningful shift in behaviour), and of course motivated reasoning.
(1) Sorry, I was copy-pasting the formula in the spreadsheet, but missed the extra 0.1 factor you added at the end. First of all, I still think the factor of 50 you’re shaving off due to diminishing marginal returns seems quite extreme, given the lack of articulable justification for why it should be so big. I guess the extra factor of 10 is because diet cola exists? I’m not sure why you’re adding that—as I mentioned, the questions you asked people already mentioned that people could substitute to diet sodas. Quoting from the instructions to participants of cell E1 of your survey spreadsheet, “Note that this does not include artificially-sweetened beverages (i.e. Coke Zero, Diet Pepsi, Sprite Zero etc) – you would still be able to drink those.”.
(2) Makes sense. Regarding composition, we could look at polling of soda taxes to get a sense for this. One thing to note is that politicians typically don’t implement these taxes (hence you looking into lobbying for them), suggesting that they’re not very popular. Of the twopolls I could find, it seemed like either there were no significant differences between groups, or that Republicans were more opposed to soda taxes than Democrats. Given that the vast majority of American EAs are Democrats, this suggests that the poll could be underrating the disutility of reduced sugar consumption.
(3) Note that many of these factors go both ways—people could be motivated to appear self-abnegating and healthy, think sugary drinks are less healthy than they are (anecdotally, I’ve asked two people how much diabetes would be reduced if sugary drinks didn’t exist, and they both overestimated relative to your cited number), or not think about how sugary drinks are actually OK. It’s indeed plausible that people value their future selves less than they ought to according to standard utilitarianism, but I don’t think it’s a priori clear that they do so by a massive factor.
Consolidating over the number of comments:
(1) Per the formula (1-ABS(((1000/(0.83*1.2))-(1000/0.83))/(1000/0.83)))^0.1, it would appear that we have 98.2% remaining freedom, and a 1.8% reduction?
(2) I think you’re right on the averaging issue—in a number of other areas (e.g. calculating probabilities from a bunch of reference classes), we’ve tended to use the geomean, but that’s for extrapolating from estimates to the true value, as opposed to true individual means to the true population means. The other related issue, however, is whether the sample is representative, and whether we think that highly educated people are more likely to report caring about abstract concerns. Will have to think about this, but thanks for the feedback!
(3) As to your larger point, I’m not sure if it’s reasonable to interpret individual behaviour when it comes to trading off short term against long term gains as maximizing, given time inconsistent preferences (relative to valuing your welfare equally at all times), people just not thinking too much about daily choices, lack of awareness of the precise degree of risk (even if the risk were 10x or 0.1x, it’s not like you would likely shift a meaningful shift in behaviour), and of course motivated reasoning.
(1) Sorry, I was copy-pasting the formula in the spreadsheet, but missed the extra 0.1 factor you added at the end. First of all, I still think the factor of 50 you’re shaving off due to diminishing marginal returns seems quite extreme, given the lack of articulable justification for why it should be so big. I guess the extra factor of 10 is because diet cola exists? I’m not sure why you’re adding that—as I mentioned, the questions you asked people already mentioned that people could substitute to diet sodas. Quoting from the instructions to participants of cell E1 of your survey spreadsheet, “Note that this does not include artificially-sweetened beverages (i.e. Coke Zero, Diet Pepsi, Sprite Zero etc) – you would still be able to drink those.”.
(2) Makes sense. Regarding composition, we could look at polling of soda taxes to get a sense for this. One thing to note is that politicians typically don’t implement these taxes (hence you looking into lobbying for them), suggesting that they’re not very popular. Of the two polls I could find, it seemed like either there were no significant differences between groups, or that Republicans were more opposed to soda taxes than Democrats. Given that the vast majority of American EAs are Democrats, this suggests that the poll could be underrating the disutility of reduced sugar consumption.
(3) Note that many of these factors go both ways—people could be motivated to appear self-abnegating and healthy, think sugary drinks are less healthy than they are (anecdotally, I’ve asked two people how much diabetes would be reduced if sugary drinks didn’t exist, and they both overestimated relative to your cited number), or not think about how sugary drinks are actually OK. It’s indeed plausible that people value their future selves less than they ought to according to standard utilitarianism, but I don’t think it’s a priori clear that they do so by a massive factor.