The Problem with Ecosystem Services

There is a controversy in the conservation community about monetary valuations.  A recent podcast on Freakanomics looked at rational altruism using a Consequentialist cost/benefit analysis.

The example was between treating HIV and malaria.  A person infected with HIV might cost $100,000, while a person dying of malaria might only cost $1,000 to cure.  Since we can help 100 people with malaria for every one with HIV, shouldn't we focus first on malaria, and only turn to HIV once we've helped everyone we can with malaria?

The logic is sound, but try telling that to a doctor working on HIV (let alone a patient with HIV).  But how else could we decide?

The big idea seems to be to add up the (monetary) costs of charities and look at some simple metric (like lives saved) to pick and choose the best charities.(link to bjorn lomberg's thinktank)  But do we only care about a single metric, a single value?  And how compare education to disease, senile dementia to juvenile delinquency?

The same problems bedevil conservation...

I think the simple answer is that there are no simple answers, and every approach has a place.  If some government minister will only listen to economic arguments, use them... but others will listen to other values, and those also matter.  Whether people care about the scariest diseases (terminal diarhea) or the cuddliest endangered animals (link to cockapo), these interests are meaningful.
There is a long tradition in decision science and economics of critiquing irrational human preoccupation with infrequent, but salient/scary crises (link to risk diagram disasters axis) as opposed to rational actors (link to behavioral economics discussion, maybe wikipedia) dispassionately evaluating statistics.  I try to avoid news sources because of our (link) well-demonstrated cognitive biases, but I don't think we can (or should) "fix" every element of human thinking.

Yes, every decision is a choice to focus on one priority over another, and yes it is not rational to make that decision without comparing and ranking all choices.  But pure rationality doesn't take account of the full richness of human life.  We care about many values, not just The Most Important. Is it absurd to try to save endangered species when many people don't have adequate nutrition?  (link to weird conservation stories, nature conservancy).

Psychometric Factor Analysis of Risk Perception: Dread Risk and Unknown Risk

Risks are perceived based on their qualities.

Micromorts can be used as an "objective" statistical approximation of risk.

Evolving Positive and Negative Affect?

In Don Norman's book, Emotional Design: Why We Love or Hate Everyday Objects, he lists some of the factors that Decision Science implicates as innately predisposing humans to either positive or negative affect:

"What are people genetically programmed for? Those situations and
objects that, throughout evolutionary history, offer food, warmth, or protection
give rise to positive affect. These conditions include:

warm, comfortably lit places,
temperate climate,
sweet tastes and smells,
bright, highly saturated hues,
“soothing” sounds and simple melodies and rhythms,
harmonious music and sounds,
caresses,
smiling faces,
rhythmic beats,
“attractive” people,
symmetrical objects,
rounded, smooth objects
“sensuous” feelings, sounds, and shapes.

Similarly, here are some of the conditions that appear to produce automatic
negative affect:

heights,
sudden, unexpected loud sounds or bright lights,
“looming” objects (objects that appear to be about to hit the observer),
extreme hot or cold,
darkness,
extremely bright lights or loud sounds,
empty, flat terrain (deserts),
crowded dense terrain (jungles or forests),
crowds of people,
rotting smells, decaying foods
bitter tastes,
sharp objects,
harsh, abrupt sounds,
grating and discordant sounds,
misshapen human bodies,
snakes and spiders,
human feces (and its smell),
other people’s body fluids,
vomit. "

Need for closure OR Indecisive

I had thought that disagreement over Evolutionary Theory or Global Warming could be reinterpreted as an opportunity to engage other curious minds. As science becomes more egalitarian and open, more and more interested, educated citizens will join the debate. If science can learn with them (collaborative, constructivist model of knowledge), rather than teach toward them (defiency model of education in which learners need to be filled up with knowledge) we could realize a great opportunity.

However, not all arguers are open to persuasion. In complex, competing-message environments today some people pick their opinions first. Kruglanski has described a personality scale of closure/openess in decision-making. (Kruglanski, 1993)


Experiment
He asked:

Which phrases do you agree with?

I find that a well ordered life with regular hours suits my temperament.
I feel uncomfortable when I don't understand the reason why an event occurred in my life.
I don't like to go into a situation without knowing what I can expect from it.
When I am confused about an important issue, I feel very upset.
I usually make important decisions quickly and confidently
I don't like to be with people who are capable of unexpected actions.
I dislike it when a person's statement could mean many different things
I'd rather know bad news than stay in a state of uncertainty.

OR

When I go shopping, I have difficulty deciding exactly what it is that I want.
I tend to put off making important decisions until the last possible moment
I would describe myself as indecisive.
My personal space is usually messy and disorganized
I tend to struggle with most decisions


Kruglanski, A. W., Webster, D. M., & Klem, A. (1993). Motivated resistance and openness to persuasion in the presence or absence of prior information. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 65 (5), 861-876

Environmental Decisions: Easy, Common, Info, or Tough

http://dispatchnie.com/live/export-content/sites/dispatchnie/pdfs/2010InWeather.pdf

Medical Decision-Making

When a doctor diagnoses a patient, who makes the decision about treatment? Perhaps the patient defers to the knowledge and authority of the doctor: "you're the doctor, you decide." Although the structure of power dynamics between the doctor and patient can bias decision-making, the final decision usually comes down to money, which is decided by the insurance company. So how does a large insurance company decide what procedure to pay for?

Others have pointed out that this is a system of misaligned incentives can lead to situations where, for example, insurance companies would be much more worried about over-prescribing rather than under-prescribing treatment. So how do insurance companies do this in practice? By conducting a scientific review of all published literature on a given treatment, and then evaluating it. For example, Aetna's Clinical Policy Bulletins lay down the law of what is, and isn't accepted medical diagnosis and treatment.

Toxic Bodies by Nancy Langston

"Toxic Bodies: Hormone Disruptors and the Legacy of DES" explores why our environment has become saturated with synthetic chemicals that disrupt hormones, and asks what we can do to protect human and environmental health. In this thorough undertaking, Environmental Historian Nancy Langston examines endocrine disruptors as a case study of environmental risk assessment and response. Interesting to compare this book's stance on weight-of-evidence to Our Stolen Future or The Secret History of the War on Cancer by Devra Davis. Compare that to a more formal report by the American Institute for Cancer Research.