IBM Watson Personality Insights

IBM claims that it can provide insights to my personality by analyzing the text I write. Let's test this by separately feeding it the text of my last few blog posts and seeing what it says about each one:

Organ Donor Safety Exemptions:

You are shrewd, unconventional and can be perceived as indirect.

You are imaginative: you have a wild imagination. You are laid-back: you appreciate a relaxed pace in life. And you are intermittent: you have a hard time sticking with difficult tasks for a long period of time.

Your choices are driven by a desire for prestige.

You are relatively unconcerned with tradition: you care more about making your own path than following what others have done. You consider helping others to guide a large part of what you do: you think it is important to take care of the people around you.

Well-Being Analysis:

You are shrewd, inner-directed and can be perceived as indirect.

You are unconcerned with art: you are less concerned with artistic or creative activities than most people who participated in our surveys. You are intermittent: you have a hard time sticking with difficult tasks for a long period of time. And you are imaginative: you have a wild imagination.

Your choices are driven by a desire for prestige.

You are relatively unconcerned with both taking pleasure in life and tradition. You prefer activities with a purpose greater than just personal enjoyment. And you care more about making your own path than following what others have done.

So far, pretty consistent. But both of those blog posts were technical academic analysis. What happens when I give it a first-person account of a more emotional experience?

Chen Guangcheng:

You are social, boisterous and unconventional.

You are empathetic: you feel what others feel and are compassionate towards them. You are assertive: you tend to speak up and take charge of situations, and you are comfortable leading groups. And you are confident: you are hard to embarrass and are self-confident most of the time.

Your choices are driven by a desire for efficiency.

You are relatively unconcerned with tradition: you care more about making your own path than following what others have done. You consider helping others to guide a large part of what you do: you think it is important to take care of the people around you.

That is a big change in the 'you are' and 'driven by' lines, and the first paragraph is entirely different. The only commonality is the 'unconcerned with tradition' and 'helping others' parts of the last paragraph.

Now, what does it think about my account of going out and helping people who got their cars stuck in the snow?

Car Shoving:

You are heartfelt.

You are empathetic: you feel what others feel and are compassionate towards them. You are unconcerned with art: you are less concerned with artistic or creative activities than most people who participated in our surveys. And you are calm-seeking: you prefer activities that are quiet, calm, and safe.

Your choices are driven by a desire for well-being.

You consider helping others to guide a large part of what you do: you think it is important to take care of the people around you. You are relatively unconcerned with tradition: you care more about making your own path than following what others have done.

Again, it says something almost completely different. It is interesting to note that the personality analysis for the last two are backwards. I think that this paragraph describes the Me who attended the Chen Guangcheng talk, and the previous one describes the Me who went out to shove cars. It is particularly funny that it reacts to my description of shoving cars around in hilly slippery roads by saying 'you prefer activities that are quiet, calm, and safe'.

Now we go back to a more a more analytical post, but a different kind of analysis:

Media Musings:

You are shrewd, somewhat inconsiderate and can be perceived as indirect.

You are laid-back: you appreciate a relaxed pace in life. You are carefree: you do what you want, disregarding rules and obligations. And you are imaginative: you have a wild imagination.

Your choices are driven by a desire for efficiency.

You consider both independence and taking pleasure in life to guide a large part of what you do. You like to set your own goals to decide how to best achieve them. And you are highly motivated to enjoy life to its fullest.

The first line looks like its reaction to my other bits of analysis, and the 'desire for efficiency' is a repeat, but the rest is mostly things it has not said about me before. What might it say next?

Confusing Social Norms

You are a bit inconsiderate, somewhat critical and excitable.

You are melancholy: you think quite often about the things you are unhappy about. You are intermittent: you have a hard time sticking with difficult tasks for a long period of time. And you are unconcerned with art: you are less concerned with artistic or creative activities than most people who participated in our surveys.

Your choices are driven by a desire for connectedness.

You consider helping others to guide a large part of what you do: you think it is important to take care of the people around you. You are relatively unconcerned with taking pleasure in life: you prefer activities with a purpose greater than just personal enjoyment.

Some new and different stuff, some repeats. That post was more of an expression of confusion and questioning than an account or analysis. Let's chalk that one down to the small sample size, it was just 360 words after I chopped out the quotes and links.

The next one should be more informative, as it combines analysis and first-person accounts, and talks about something that is more connected to my identity:

Lego in Asia

You are inner-directed and skeptical.

You are calm-seeking: you prefer activities that are quiet, calm, and safe. You are empathetic: you feel what others feel and are compassionate towards them. And you are deliberate: you carefully think through decisions before making them.

Your choices are driven by a desire for prestige.

You are relatively unconcerned with both taking pleasure in life and tradition. You prefer activities with a purpose greater than just personal enjoyment. And you care more about making your own path than following what others have done.

The overall analysis sounds familiar and kind of accurate, but it jumps out at me that it says 'you are skeptical' to a blog post that I would characterize as being filled with the wonder of shared experience and progress and connectedness. It has not said that about any other post.

Cargo Cult Crafts:

You are excitable.

You are laid-back: you appreciate a relaxed pace in life. You are empathetic: you feel what others feel and are compassionate towards them. And you are calm-seeking: you prefer activities that are quiet, calm, and safe.

Your choices are driven by a desire for well-being.

You are relatively unconcerned with tradition: you care more about making your own path than following what others have done. You consider independence to guide a large part of what you do: you like to set your own goals to decide how to best achieve them.

Okay, that one just confused the algorithm. It says that I am both excitable and laid-back, that I 'prefer activities that are quiet, calm, and safe' when the entire focus of the blog post is about how I like to hack at real pumpkins with real knives and learn by taking risks, and that I am 'unconcerned with tradition' when I defend the traditions of my childhood against a shallow commercial substitute.

Its reaction to Important Information, Important Caveat is about the same as its reaction to most analysis posts, so no sense repeating it. But I want to feed it one last post, a rant, to see how it reacts:

Whack Rant

You are a bit compulsive, somewhat critical and skeptical.

You are intermittent: you have a hard time sticking with difficult tasks for a long period of time. You are unconcerned with art: you are less concerned with artistic or creative activities than most people who participated in our surveys. And you are melancholy: you think quite often about the things you are unhappy about.

Your choices are driven by a desire for efficiency.

You consider achieving success to guide a large part of what you do: you seek out opportunities to improve yourself and demonstrate that you are a capable person. You are relatively unconcerned with tradition: you care more about making your own path than following what others have done.

That is actually about how you would expect someone to react to an intellectual takedown of something I hated.

Overall, it is pretty clear that the system does not have any deep personality insights. It is reacting almost entirely to the rhetorical choices I make for each particular post. Anyone who has any writing skill or understanding of rhetoric knows that you should use a different voice, tone, and approach in different situations.

The only thing consistently output, in eight of ten writing samples, was that I am relatively unconcerned with tradition. Nothing else showed up in more than half of the results. This probably reflects my consistent use of scientific and analytical language.

Five of the results claimed that 'You are intermittent: you have a hard time sticking with difficult tasks for a long period of time.' and another five claimed 'You are unconcerned with art: you are less concerned with artistic or creative activities than most people who participated in our surveys.' I consider both of these claims to be dubious, and I am not really sure where they came from.

Four of the results claimed that I am shrewd, empathetic, driven by prestige, guided by helping others, and/or unconcerned with taking pleasure in life. Again, that seems kind of random and not really connected to who I am.

As a final bit of fun, let me plug the output of the system into its input, so we can see what it says about itself:

You are confident and generous.

You are assertive: you tend to speak up and take charge of situations, and you are comfortable leading groups. You are calm under pressure: you handle unexpected events calmly and effectively. And you are respectful of authority: you prefer following with tradition in order to maintain a sense of stability.

Experiences that give a sense of well-being hold some appeal to you.

You are relatively unconcerned with tradition: you care more about making your own path than following what others have done. You consider helping others to guide a large part of what you do: you think it is important to take care of the people around you.

Organ Donor Safety Exemptions

The following question was posted on the EA Policy Facebook page:

General idea: should exemptions be granted to certain safety laws if you sign up to be an organ donor?

Would such policies likely be a positive or negative for organ donation and safety compliance?

My response turned into a full blog post:

The biggest possible failure is that it discredits the idea of voluntary organ donation, resulting in less organ donation from other sources. I have no idea how big this effect might be.

Concrete examples help analysis, so I will consider this by looking at motorcycle helmet laws:

It is possible that telling people 'We will allow you to ride a motorcycle without a helmet if and only if you agree to become an organ donor, so we can harvest your organs after you crash and become brain-dead.' might shock them into wearing their helmet voluntarily, which seems like a simple good thing with no side effects aside from the possible organ donation discrediting.

Assuming that people are rational agents, some of whom experience large amounts of utility from riding without a helmet, we can expect the following:

1) People take the deal and ride without a helmet (good effect, social utility increases).
2) Motorcycle crashes decrease due to risk compensation (good effect).
3) The crashes that happen are more likely to cause death or brain injuries to motorcycle riders (bad effect).
4) More organs are available for use, both from the crash victims and people who take the deal and die from other causes (good effect).

I expect effects 3 and 4 to be the largest. More riders will die, or become disabled and require a lifetime of expensive medical care, and lives of people waiting for organ transplants will be saved.

Fatal motorcycle crashes tend to be an excellent source of donor organs, but I am fairly sure that most of them will cause a net decrease in QALYs, even the ones that result in many useful organs. Organ recipients tend to be old and unhealthy, so the organ does not give them that many QALYs. If the rider was young and healthy, they likely lose more QALYs than all the combined recipients of the organs would gain. If the rider was middle-aged and unhealthy, the organs are not likely to be as useful.

However, organ donation makes the QALY loss from those fatalities significantly less than most fatalities. (A nonfatal crash resulting in permanent disability will cause a larger QALY loss than a fatal crash.) If the rate of motorcycle crashes among people who take the deal is small enough, then the good effects of all of their organ donation will outweigh the bad effects of their crashes, and the policy is good.

I suspect that the crash rate is low enough that the policy of offering these exemptions is good. I think the breakeven would be something like ten new organ donors for every lethal or disabling crash, and I am almost sure that the lifetime risk of such a crash for motorcycle riders is significantly less than 10%.

Well-Being Analysis

This is a technical post, only of interest to people doing policy analysis. Much of it was originally written in response to a Facebook post related to Effective Altruism Policy Analytics, and I am reposting it here so it is in a more permanent place that I can link to.

One of the group members posted a link to the following paper:

Well-Being Analysis vs. Cost-Benefit Analysis

and asked me if we should consider using this method.

Briefly, well-being analysis is an attempt to measure the costs and benefits of a policy using a direct measure of human happiness or well-being, instead of using dollar values. My response was divided into two sections:

Well-being analysis in any form is not currently useful for people submitting policy comments:

1) Any comment that relied on a well-being analysis would likely be summarily dismissed. As the paper states, regulatory agencies are required by law to do cost-benefit analysis, and that is what they understand. They do not understand this new alien thing, have no way of judging its quality, and have no incentive to care about it.

2) The language of policy right now is monetary costs and benefits. We will influence policy by speaking the language currently used, and speaking it well. Lojban might be a better language than English, but it would be folly to submit comments in it.

3) There is a good chance that in 30 years, an overall framework like this will replace cost-benefit analysis and be required by law. This does not make it useful to us. 30 years ago, cost-benefit analysis was a bizarre fringe thing that nobody cared about and that would not affect policy in any way.

Well-bring analysis as presented in the paper has serious flaws:

4) Their example analysis dramatically undervalues monetary costs. They claim that "If that same individual's income decreased from $100,000 to $36,700, she would lose 0.11 WBUs" on a scale of 1 to 10. By comparison, "Unemployed individuals suffer a loss of 0.83 WBUs per year during the time that they remain unemployed." However, we know that people who have lost their jobs routinely choose to remain unemployed rather than settle for jobs that pay less than what they earned before.

4a) The data they use to determine well-being will systematically undervalue money, because they do a regression that separately counts the effects of money and health. Treating money and health as separate and exogenous is a grave error. Money and health are heavily correlated because money buys health. Most of what rich people do with their money is to rearrange their lives so they will be healthier and safer. When you take away money, health goes down. Their data on the 'well-being effect of income' is just the residual effect of money after 'correcting' for all the things that the money bought.

5) To a first approximation, the well-being analysis they present is just a way to ignore the compliance costs of any regulation that does not cause observable layoffs. Widespread use of this system in its current form would encourage a horde of very expensive regulations. Given how cheap it is for individuals to purchase lives with money, this is a huge problem. If 0.001% of the compliance costs of the EPA regulation they support would have otherwise gone to effective charities, the regulation has reduced well-being.

6) According to this analysis methodology in its current form, job losses dominate any consideration of economic efficiency, technological growth, or cheaper, better goods. Consistent use of it to analyze policies would result in support of policies that enforced stagnation on an economy, preventing almost any kind of innovation that had the potential to cause layoffs unless that innovation had an immediate and obvious health or safety benefit. Specifically, a "Ban computers" policy analyzed 40 years ago would probably score highly on a well-being analysis.

I do hope that, at some point in the future, all government actions will be evaluated on how they are expected to affect the well-being of all people, measured directly. Money is an imperfect measurement of how things affect well-being, because different people value money differently and a lot of important goods are hard to put money values on.

But right now, measuring things by their monetary impact, and the health and life impacts converted to their monetary values, is the best we can do. There is simply far more data available on money than there is on direct well-being measurements, and an imperfect system you can actually use is better than a theoretically ideal system that cannot be implemented.

Also, money is a much better measurement tool than most people realize. The money cost of doing a thing is a signal that includes a very good estimate of most of the resources consumed by that thing. Pollution and other externalities often make the money price of a thing an underestimate of its true cost, but in a competitive market it is rare for a money price to overestimate the cost of a thing. Whenever you think something should be cheap, but it costs a lot, that almost certainly means that you are missing something important. Regulators tend to miss important side effects and assume that things will be cheaper than they really are, because they only look sat narrow technical effects without considering larger impacts. Measuring the monetary impacts of a rule can correct for this.

However, as more research on well-being accumulates, and we get more data on how things affect quality of life, and we develop a better understanding of the complicated chains of causality that dominate all human interactions including the economy, we will probably move toward some kind of well-being analysis. The monetary costs and benefits will become a subset of the analysis. But it will likely take decades to get to that point.