In some situations there is also an activity bias. For example, soccer goalies would rather dive one way or another even if staying in the middle would give them better odds. Politicians would rather change a policy so that they can take credit.
Whether a passivity bias or an activity bias dominates depends on incentives.
In political contexts, I’ve heard this phrased as, “X is so bad that we have to do *something* about it; this is something; therefore we should do this”.
First, I want to say that I signed up not only because of the interesting content, but because of your clear and concise style, which makes this readable without a major commitment.
Now the real point. As a physician I have had very notable issues with this matter. People do ask for advice. My malpractice company has told me not to give it even if I tell them to only make decisions with their doctor. This has come up either when a friend asks me about something or when I am aware of a treatment option the person I am speaking with is not aware of. I am advised not to even mention it as the listener may take this as the way to do things. If they take my suggestion and the case does not go well I can be sued. I told them that if something exists that would likely be very helpful and the person is not aware of it I cannot withhold the information, especially if we are close. They say they understand but hold by their stance.
Of course, most people do not have this particular problem. But I do think it generalizes in that in our overly litigious society people will hold us responsible for any and everything that goes wrong, if they possibly can. Even if we are not thinking of lawsuits specifically, I do think people are sensitive to the idea that getting involved can come back and hurt you.
Whatever the case, I am not allowed, under punishment of not being covered if sued, to tell people simple facts like "there is a medicine for that, ask your doctor." If the situation is bad I do it anyway.
Wow, yeah, it's messed up that the legal system so thoroughly disincentivizes getting involved. I wonder if people sometimes mistakenly generalize norms of prudence that apply in this legal context ("don't get involved, you might get sued!") to a broader *moral* suspicion of getting involved? Or perhaps it more likely goes the other way, and the law is the way that it is because legislators implicitly assume that it's most important to deter harmful interventions and don't care enough about the unseen costs of deterring helpful interventions.
Thanks for subscribing - I appreciate the support!
I think it is the former as the tort system has been the wild west for attorneys. It is calmer now as insurance companies have fought back. But I think the lesson has been internalized.
No a philosopher so approaching this from a tangent: it seems to me, and tbh it seems QUITE OBVIOUS that inaction bias is a result of adopting a feature of, for the lack of better term, human nature (= cognitive adaptations evolved via natural selection), which is status quo preference caused by a very strong drive to avoid uncertainty/insecurity, *unless acutely threatened by clear and present danger* as a rational moral heuristic/reasonable intuition.
It's exactly the same thing that makes people stay in houses at risk of flooding and in cities at risk of bombing and in countries where they might be persecuted or killed and in severely abusive marriages. That it would be adopted as a valid moral percept seems .... strange to this non-philosopher.
I suspect that for most of human history it would have been a good bias!
In long term periods without lots of social change, any existing society was a complex homeostatic system that no one understood. In any such system, most changes will break something in some fundamental way, even if you don’t see that break until generations later. So it’s best for people not to do new things unless they are absolutely sure that it will be an improvement.
This of course doesn’t apply any more once changes have started happening so quickly that established systems are likely to have problems dealing with them (or in the face of acute crises like disasters).
Thank you so much for this angle of the discussion that people often ignore, what I wanted to comment on whether context makes a difference (on East-West axis) In Islam, some say it is a duty for a muslim to give advice about doing good, and avoiding misdeeds El-Ammr bel Ma'rof wa El-Nahy A'n El-Monkr "الأمر بالمعروف و النهي عن المنكر" any time which might give a permission to exercise a moral restrainting over others' actions (especially in the case of women by men). A lot of time, this topic is brought up in my country (Egypt) about the appropriateness of giving advice for women on fb groups or in public (previously) from islamic teachings, online now some people even post anonymously (so we do not know the gender of the advisor so we cannot say it is men exercising a domineering role over women), but what strikes me is that some of these women vigorously attack this person as if he is sort of hypocrite or even trying to fit a patricharal role, and why he is not spending talking about this and this, but a lot of these women will not contest what he says on theological grounds (because they have not studied this) nor whether they geniuely accept Islam or not (or consider themselves true muslims according to commonly held teachings or not or even aspire to be), they just refuse to lose the fruits of women's liberalization. So what do you think about this issue for instance?
In some situations there is also an activity bias. For example, soccer goalies would rather dive one way or another even if staying in the middle would give them better odds. Politicians would rather change a policy so that they can take credit.
Whether a passivity bias or an activity bias dominates depends on incentives.
I actually think you can get both at once: bias to do something, but not to risk doing anything substantial, leads to political "theater".
In political contexts, I’ve heard this phrased as, “X is so bad that we have to do *something* about it; this is something; therefore we should do this”.
First, I want to say that I signed up not only because of the interesting content, but because of your clear and concise style, which makes this readable without a major commitment.
Now the real point. As a physician I have had very notable issues with this matter. People do ask for advice. My malpractice company has told me not to give it even if I tell them to only make decisions with their doctor. This has come up either when a friend asks me about something or when I am aware of a treatment option the person I am speaking with is not aware of. I am advised not to even mention it as the listener may take this as the way to do things. If they take my suggestion and the case does not go well I can be sued. I told them that if something exists that would likely be very helpful and the person is not aware of it I cannot withhold the information, especially if we are close. They say they understand but hold by their stance.
Of course, most people do not have this particular problem. But I do think it generalizes in that in our overly litigious society people will hold us responsible for any and everything that goes wrong, if they possibly can. Even if we are not thinking of lawsuits specifically, I do think people are sensitive to the idea that getting involved can come back and hurt you.
Whatever the case, I am not allowed, under punishment of not being covered if sued, to tell people simple facts like "there is a medicine for that, ask your doctor." If the situation is bad I do it anyway.
Wow, yeah, it's messed up that the legal system so thoroughly disincentivizes getting involved. I wonder if people sometimes mistakenly generalize norms of prudence that apply in this legal context ("don't get involved, you might get sued!") to a broader *moral* suspicion of getting involved? Or perhaps it more likely goes the other way, and the law is the way that it is because legislators implicitly assume that it's most important to deter harmful interventions and don't care enough about the unseen costs of deterring helpful interventions.
Thanks for subscribing - I appreciate the support!
I think it is the former as the tort system has been the wild west for attorneys. It is calmer now as insurance companies have fought back. But I think the lesson has been internalized.
You may be interested in Eyal Zamir's book
Law, Psychology, and Morality: The role of loss aversion. 2015 Oxford University Press.
No a philosopher so approaching this from a tangent: it seems to me, and tbh it seems QUITE OBVIOUS that inaction bias is a result of adopting a feature of, for the lack of better term, human nature (= cognitive adaptations evolved via natural selection), which is status quo preference caused by a very strong drive to avoid uncertainty/insecurity, *unless acutely threatened by clear and present danger* as a rational moral heuristic/reasonable intuition.
It's exactly the same thing that makes people stay in houses at risk of flooding and in cities at risk of bombing and in countries where they might be persecuted or killed and in severely abusive marriages. That it would be adopted as a valid moral percept seems .... strange to this non-philosopher.
I suspect that for most of human history it would have been a good bias!
In long term periods without lots of social change, any existing society was a complex homeostatic system that no one understood. In any such system, most changes will break something in some fundamental way, even if you don’t see that break until generations later. So it’s best for people not to do new things unless they are absolutely sure that it will be an improvement.
This of course doesn’t apply any more once changes have started happening so quickly that established systems are likely to have problems dealing with them (or in the face of acute crises like disasters).
Thank you so much for this angle of the discussion that people often ignore, what I wanted to comment on whether context makes a difference (on East-West axis) In Islam, some say it is a duty for a muslim to give advice about doing good, and avoiding misdeeds El-Ammr bel Ma'rof wa El-Nahy A'n El-Monkr "الأمر بالمعروف و النهي عن المنكر" any time which might give a permission to exercise a moral restrainting over others' actions (especially in the case of women by men). A lot of time, this topic is brought up in my country (Egypt) about the appropriateness of giving advice for women on fb groups or in public (previously) from islamic teachings, online now some people even post anonymously (so we do not know the gender of the advisor so we cannot say it is men exercising a domineering role over women), but what strikes me is that some of these women vigorously attack this person as if he is sort of hypocrite or even trying to fit a patricharal role, and why he is not spending talking about this and this, but a lot of these women will not contest what he says on theological grounds (because they have not studied this) nor whether they geniuely accept Islam or not (or consider themselves true muslims according to commonly held teachings or not or even aspire to be), they just refuse to lose the fruits of women's liberalization. So what do you think about this issue for instance?