The Challenge of Mountaineering ... for Utility Theory
I suspect that there will be fewer than five people who will appreciate this remarkable confluence of interests. Yeah, that probably includes me.
A choice quote:
To illustrate the importance of motives that are unconnected to consumption, I will focus on personal accounts of a specinc activity: mountaineering. Why mountaineering? Admittedly, I examine mountaineering in part because it so obviously is not about pleasure from consumption. Serious mountaineering which I define broadly to include polar exploration - tends to be one unrelenting misery from beginning to end. The reason why mountaineers are so often asked why they climb mountains, and the reason why their explicit answers are so often unilluminating (e.g., Mallory's 'because it is there') is precisely that their reasons don't fit neatly into materialistic notions of human motivation. Dentists, investment bankers, and real estate brokers are rarely asked why they are engaged in these activities (though I suspect that the extent to which they are motivated by material considerations is exaggerated).
Although mountaineering is ideal for illustrating these non-consumption-related motives, it could be argued that, as a pathological activity engaged in by a small number of unusual people, it has little relevance to economics. The descriptions of mountaineering included in this essay will do nothing to dispel such opinions. But, as I argue in the conclusion, the motives that drive mountaineers are also pervasive in the general population in diverse domains of behavior.
If mountaineers aren't very good at answering the 'why' question when it is posed directly, a close reading of the mountaineering literature reveals myriad clues about their motives. In this essay I draw on works by and about mountaineers to illustrate the importance for human behavior of motives that don't directly involve pleasure from consumption.
Grab the full text here. You can also find the last strange intersection of interests here.
10 comments:
That guy just doesn't understand! I had heard him use this example before, it drives me nuts. It is the the clearest illustration of the fact that he does not understand (or chooses to misrepresent) standard economic theory.
Yes, but is he an alpinist?
Good question, I never asked him, but I doubt it. I know a few things that he practices, but I think this should go off the record...
What an awesome find, Brian. I'm going to have to give this a serious looksee.
From a naive perspective, though, doesn't the fact that the choice was made to enter the mountains simple enough for utility theory?
YES!
Thank you, I knew I could count on you Kenway.
"... doesn't the fact that the choice was made to enter the mountains simple enough for utility theory?"
Um, hardly a satisfying explanation for the choice, no?
1. Its not about explaining the choice.
2. But even if what we want to do is explain the decision, nobody said utility is maximized by enjoying what you do at every moment. Women who give birth don't regret having children because the delivery is painful.
Ah, but maybe they regret not having the C-section...
Yeah Brian, admittedly not a good explanation for why, but Lowenstein's motivation apart from consumption seems a little straw man to me. Particularly framed as it is as a challenge to utility theory.
Alpinists like suffering. Maybe not the actual moment of suffering, but something about the survival through it. Maybe it's contextual, and everything seems better by comparison.
Can't imagine an animal choosing that kind of suffering though. Perhaps some evolutionary maladjustment in our burgeoning cortex?
1. How is his paper not about explaining choice? Does Loewenstein not use his example to frame the question, Why do people choose to mountaineer when it appears that the consumption would lead a rational person to choose otherwise?
2. I took him on his word that standard utility is typically construed of as a function of consumption (is this not the case?). I assume Loewenstein would argue that your childbirth example is not unlike his mountaineering example in that the pain of childbirth does not seem to justify the choice. However, your example is much easier to explain, as genetic fitness trumps pain. I thought the pains he went through in writing his paper have to do with the fact that there is no immediately obvious motive for mountaineering.
Re. animals choosing suffering. I'm pretty sure that most animals suffer (in the physical sense) more in nature than what a mountaineer can put themselves through for a few days (the death rates speak for themselves, no?). No need to choose it, they get a hard life for free.
"I took him on his word that standard utility is typically construed of as a function of consumption." That was a mistake... and it is easy to see utility is not about consumption since many things that are not consumed but that one chooses can be represented using a utility function. A utility function is a construction, not a description!
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