Tyler Cowen: belief

Transcript context

…It’s not my question, but yes. But you can take that money and save human lives. I think Oxfam has claimed it’s a few thousand dollars well spent if it could save a human life. Whatever the sum is, it’s not ginormous, right? So, how much would you have to be paid to strangle a cat? One reason why I have liked that question is, people want a lot of money. In fact, this was an experiment done by Thorndike, the great behaviorist, over a hundred years ago, and he asked that question. He also asked people, “How much would I have to pay you for you to take a pair of pliers and pull out one of your front teeth?” And people want more money to strangle a cat than to have this painful, agonizing, disfiguring thing, which, I think, says something nice about people. But then the fact is that it’s not so nice about people from a strict utilitarian calculus. You should actually ask to be paid some amount of money for which you can then save many, many lives — or, for that matter, save many, many cats. Our morality doesn’t work that way. We have a visceral response to certain behaviors. It doesn’t translate to a cold-blooded assessment of pain and pleasure.…

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