Two More Things People Think But Won't Say

[leaponthis]

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As long as even a small fraction of woman suffer PMS to the point where it occasionaly affects their decisions,

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Sklansky,

Where are you getting your facts? Did you make this up? What studies have you read that have determined that during PMS a woman's decision making ability is affected in any way? You ASS-U-Me too much if I might state an opinion.

leaponthis

[Gobgogbog]

I'm a little confused as to how someone could have a symptom that SERIOUSLY affects their ability to do their job, but is easily hidden.

Unless, of course, it only seriously affects their ability to do the job they are trying for, but didn't affect their ability to do previous jobs.

Or unless it's a small probability that it affects their ability to do their job (given that they have it).

In any case, the for the given example, it's unlikely for there to be such a close call that this needs to be considered. And the penalty for getting the decision wrong isn't so great, if it's such a close call. And if you're considering such small issues to break the tie, you have to consider a LOT of small issues like this -- not just the ones that come easily to your mind (else you will be affected by your own bias).

So that's why people don't talk about stuff like #2 -- it's a lot of effort and near-zero gain. There's no point to thinking about it.

[RoundTower]

people say these kinds of things all the time, in private conversation. Public figures don't say them because they depend on their popularity, and these things make some group or other very unhappy. What's so hard to understand?

[ACPlayer]

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1. Once it was shown that Iraq had no WMDs and Sadam wasn't helping terrorists, we don't care anymore. The fact that Sadam was a ruthless dictator who supressed rights and killed tens of thosands of innocents doesn't begin to make spending billions and losing thousands of Americans worth it. The issue isn't that we don't think the US should be the world's policeman imposing our values on others. That's actually fine. As long as we can pull that off cheaply. But if it isn't cheap, who cares about the plight of the Iraqi's?

2. As long as even a small fraction of woman suffer PMS to the point where it occasionaly affects their decisions, that one fact is highly relevant as far as voting for a woman president is concerned. At least until she is of the age that doctors agree the syndrome no longer occurs. If after taking the risk into account, someone wants to vote for her anyway, because she is otherwise so good, or the opponent is so bad, fine. But if the decison is close, no one can be faulted for voting against the woman even if the great majority are not affected by PMS. That might not be fair to woman in general but as a voter with kids who doesn't want an increased risk of war,it is perfectly fine for me to change my vote if a statistical, "unfair" fact is good reason to do so.

Again, how come nobody says this stuff?

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1. Some of us did not believe that Saddam was a threat before the war and continue to believe that the only point of interest shouldbe the benefit to the US of an action and not benefit of others -- I personally dont think it is worth a single penny to remove a ruthless dictator (if indeed Saddam was such a one).

2. You seem to assume that the impact of PMS is negative. Do you have any research for this, or is this simply, idle, sexist, speculation?

The point of this thread escapes me.

[Paul Levy]

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2. As long as even a small fraction of woman suffer PMS to the point where it occasionaly affects their decisions...

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David’s point is purely game-theoretical, and I think that the fact that it involves gender differences has been given too much importance. I would try to rephrase the issue slightly:

For the discussion to be meaningful we are making the simplifying assumption that ‘being affected by PMS’ is a binary event, either one is or is not affected. Then, if one is affected there is a non-zero possibility that irrational behaviour occurs (resulting in a disastrous event for the country if it happens to the president). In other words we are introducing two different random variables.

Is this enough ground to reject a woman candidate?

To answer this we need to make further assumptions:

1) PMS is the only such risk factor associated with the woman president (otherwise the argument becomes too high-dimensional and messy)

2) Without PMS the woman president would be ‘better’ (in whatever way one wants to define this) than the man, similar to a security yielding a better return than another.

3) The male candidate does not carry PMS risk but may or may not carry another risk factor of which we do not have information.

Then the answer to the question is: No, this is not sufficient to reject the woman a priori, and we need to ask some more questions before we make a decision.

Is the voter (or the country or whomever you want to represent the decision-maker as) constantly absolutely risk averse or not?
If yes, then we do not care how much better than the man the woman might be, all we care about is avoiding the disastrous event. Then we have to come up with an estimate of the likelihood of the PMS-induced event occurring and compare it against the likelihood of the event occurring as a result of the man carrying a risk factor of his own.

If no (and that’s how it should be on a poker forum!), then first we have to estimate the same probabilities as above, and if the ‘default risk’ of the woman is equal to or lower than the man’s, she wins. If it’s bigger, we have to decide whether her excess return compensates her higher default risk, just like it’s done for risky bonds (or poker pots).

If we relax assumption 3), then the argument is trivial in the case of constant absolute risk aversion but stays the same in the other case.

I think everyone will agree that coming up with any of these quantitative estimates is impossible in practice. So the issue that I believe David wants to raise is: in his decision-making process, the voter has to make assumptions to compensate for his lack of information. Just like a poker player…