
People Aren’t Dumb, the World Is Hard - dctoedt
http://freakonomics.com/podcast/richard-thaler/
======
skadamat
I would really really encourage everyone here to watch Alan Kay's recent talks
on how poorly we understand systems and why it's critical we get better at
managing them.

Some good ones: \-
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R1R2jH4PQEo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R1R2jH4PQEo)
\-
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N9c7_8Gp7gI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N9c7_8Gp7gI)

Some people have strong opinions about Alan Kay's CS / programming work and
I'd really encourage them to put them aside and deeply understand his points +
context. The programming parts aren't ever the point, he's deeply interested
in how as humans we improve our ability to collaboratively manage systems.

~~~
extralego
For similar reasons, I highly recommend a book called Capital: Critique of
Political Economy. And likewise, some people may have strong opinions about
the author’s work. I'd really encourage them to put them aside and deeply
understand his points + context.

~~~
HenryTheHorse
I can't quite tell if you're being sarcastic or earnest.

~~~
jjoonathan
The _descriptive_ work of he-who-shall-not-be-named is leagues ahead of his
_prescriptive_ work (not surprising -- fixing problems tends to be harder than
finding them).

The problems he addresses still abound and it's really a pity we have
culturally suppressed the vocabulary and arguments he put forward to talk
about them.

So, my guess: serious.

~~~
backpropaganda
Funny how when I replaced the big hyphenated word with the 4-letter name, it
actually triggered an emotional response in me which made me dismiss the rest
of your comment, even though I was fine with the comment without the
substitution. Weird how human brains work.

~~~
jjoonathan
Even crazier: I have the same emotional response to the substitution _and I 'm
the one who wrote the comment_.

------
simonh
I think people are dumb, and I'm not being derogatory about 'the 'masses' or
any such crap. I'm unbelievably dumb. It often takes me a ridiculously long
time to come to a solution to a problem, where the answer seems like it should
be obvious. Instead my slow, feeble mammal brain takes forever to grope
blindly around the issue before getting any traction.

Lets say there is a scale of sentience that goes from 1, which is the lowest
level of sentience necessary to develop a technological civilization, up to
who knows how high. Where are we on that scale? Well, given that we literally,
in evolutionary terms, only just barely got our civilization off the ground
we're pretty clearly very close to 1. I discussed this with my brother and he
pointed out most of us are below that, because we get taken along for the ride
by people who are at 1.0 or higher. They're the geniuses that truly drive
innovation forward.

So we are literally at the dumbest, most intellectually feeble level of
sentience required to get where we are, otherwise we'd have done it sooner.

~~~
Rainymood
To truly argue on this point you need to, I think or at least in my opinion,
settle on a definition of "smart" and "dumb".

I like to view our intellect as a tool for survival of our species. By that
measure, we are doing fairly well. We used to get wiped out by minor stuff
like not enough food, not enough protection from the elements and other
animals, diseases, we have eradicated the majority of these things hindering
our survival.

I hypothesise that most of the people here (on average) on HN are highly
educated. It's kind of fashionable and almost necessary social behavior to be
humble in your own intellect. By all objective measures the people on HN are
really fucking smart but you can't say that of course because that's
"arrogant". Yes, I too think I'm stupid and suffer from impostor syndrome
having two graduates degree in applied math.

Anyway, humans, compared to other animals we compete with for survival, food,
and territory, are doing really well. I don't see any cows on the moon yet.

~~~
deltron3030
> Anyway, humans, compared to other animals we compete with for survival,
> food, and territory, are doing really well. I don't see any cows on the moon
> yet.

Would all this be possible without other mammals? Or is the ecosystem
(including mammals) the enabler for us?

~~~
qkls
Probably yes, but on a longer timeline. Humans don't need other mammals to
survive.

~~~
leadingthenet
Maybe not survival, but would we be anywhere near where we are now without the
help of say, cows and horses? Possibly, but maybe not.

------
ppeetteerr
This is probably the greatest argument for big government. If we were to
eliminate the supervision of the establishment over the safety and security of
everyday life, it would be very time consuming to handle every single aspect
of it.

There is always the issue of an overreaching government, and that's where the
left/right party split comes in. Each party either creates more regulation and
protection or take some away. As voters, we have to recognize this duality of
our system and embrace it. It's our only way to control the people we elect.

~~~
rvern
No, this is one of the greatest arguments for small government or no
government. People are more rational when the cost to them of being irrational
is larger. Voting for good policies is a public good. When a voter is one
among three hundred millions of citizens, only 1/300,000,000 (on average) of
the benefits of the vote befall the individual voter. This gigantic
externality means that the democratic market will severely underproduce votes
for good policies. Simultaneously, social desirability bias means that voters
have a strong incentive to believe in policies that are harmful to them but
that make them look good to other people. Since the cost to them of being
wrong about politics is so small and the benefit large, voters have gravely
irrational beliefs. This conclusion is consistent with the results from social
science that show that voters are ignorant about politics and with the
widespread agreement with protectionist tariffs, price controls, restrictions
on immigration, and many other policies that cause great economic harm.

~~~
ucaetano
> People are more rational when the cost to them of being irrational is
> larger.

This isn't strictly true, and I'd love to see you provide extensive data on
such a exceptional claim.

There is a lot of evidence showing that harsher punitive measures often have
little to no impact on crime and wrongdoing.

~~~
throwaway37585
I don’t think the claim is exceptional, but I’d love to see more studies on
this. Check out the Centipede Game
([https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centipede_game](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centipede_game)):

“Parco, Rapoport and Stein (2002) illustrated that the level of financial
incentives can have a profound effect on the outcome in a three-player game:
the larger the incentives are for deviation, the greater propensity for
learning behavior in a repeated single-play experimental design to move toward
the Nash equilibrium.”

I recall reading somewhere that people also behave more rationally in other
games like the Dictator Game (and exhibit fewer cognitive biases) when the
stakes are higher, but can’t remember where.

~~~
afpx
What would the game’s results be if the financial incentives were unknown
and/or highly variable? That’s more like real life.

------
matt_s
An interesting bit from the article was that he talks about 'sunk cost' with
the defining example of ordering a dessert when you're nearly full and feeling
compelled to finish it.

> There was an economist once early in my career who said to me, “You know, if
> you’re right, what am I supposed to do? What I know how to do is solve
> optimization problems.”

A career economist not wanting to change their ways because they have spent a
career doing things when presented with a possible outcome that maybe those
things didn't matter as much. Also:

> If you think of companies that have come and gone, like Kodak, which
> invented the digital camera, but they had an almost-monopoly in film, and
> didn’t really think this digital thing would go anywhere. Blockbuster Video,
> which came along and put tens of thousands of mom-and-pop video stores out
> of business, only to be put out of business by Netflix.

These are human behaviors to recognize - sunk cost. It can sink a company.
Something to be wary of as a startup grows past adolescence and into
adulthood.

~~~
tynpeddler
Sometimes it's a mistake to think about how these companies could pivot to
adapt to new technology. A major feature of capitalism is that companies are
(relatively) unimportant and it's the market and society that really matter.
Without companies collapsing, it can be really difficult to recycle the
manpower and capital invested in obsolete business models.

Blockbuster's organizational, legal and physical infrastructure was wholly
devoted to video rental via physical stores. Decommissioning those
organizational components and creating the systems necessary to spin up and
run an online video portal would have required changes in the company so
massive that it would effectively be a different company.

Even if Blockbuster had bought Netflix early on, Blockbuster would have been
left running an organization they did not understand in a market that only
vaguely resembled something it was familiar with. Even worse, and totally
contrary to modern management theory, management skills alone are necessary
but not sufficient to operate a growing and dynamic company on the forefront
of technology. The entire management organization of Blockbuster would have
been totally unequal to the task of operating Netflix competently.

~~~
azernik
This is, by the way, a problem I see with a lot of public policy - in a market
system, what's good for _companies_ is not necessarily what's good for the
_system_.

Steve Eisman puts this well in [1] when talking about why he's investing in
bank stocks even though he thinks prospective rollbacks in Dodd-Frank reforms
are a bad idea: "There's two issues. There's what I think about the financial
_system_ and what I think about financial _stocks_ , and the two don't
necessarily correlate."

[1]
[https://youtu.be/NJodqhzqPKQ?t=4m10s](https://youtu.be/NJodqhzqPKQ?t=4m10s)

~~~
ctchocula
I liked the Steve Eisman character from The Big Short, but I was disappointed
his prediction bank stocks would do well didn't play out.

    
    
      KBE:   44.49 Jan 30, 2017, 47.82 July 11, 2018 = 7.48% price growth (I couldn't find numbers for total return and too lazy to compute from distribution history)
      VFAIX: 20123 Jan 30, 2017, 23569 July 11, 2018 = 17.1% total return
      VFIAX: 22291 Jan 30, 2017, 27729 July 11, 2018 = 24.4% total return
    
      KBE:   SPDR Bank ETF
      VFAIX: Vanguard Financial Index
      VFIAX: Vanguard S&P 500

~~~
collinmanderson
KBE total return is about 12.8% (42.70 to 48.19) based on
[http://stockcharts.com/freecharts/perf.php?KBE,VFAIX,VFIAX](http://stockcharts.com/freecharts/perf.php?KBE,VFAIX,VFIAX)
(those numbers are adjusted based on distributions and splits)

------
howeyc
This looks to be a bunch of discussion around receiving the Nobel prize.

Any pointers to where to find the information/studies that won him the prize.
What people should/shouldn't be doing when making financial decisions. For
instance, there was a reference to the fact that people "should ignore sunk
costs" but don't. What are some other things to watch out for, and the reasons
to do so?

~~~
frgtpsswrdlame
Here's the lecture he's gave for the Nobel:
[https://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/economic-
sciences/la...](https://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/economic-
sciences/laureates/2017/thaler-lecture.html)

If you're looking for information on nudges, check this:
[http://economicspsychologypolicy.blogspot.com/2013/08/nudge-...](http://economicspsychologypolicy.blogspot.com/2013/08/nudge-
database-ix.html)

It looks like they've stopped updating it but it has all sorts of economic
research on nudges in it. Beware that some of this research is debated though.

~~~
wgyn
There's another section of the Nobel site that provides background on the
work, both a popular version and an advanced version. The advanced version
amounts to a fairly substantive literature review. In general, you can find
both documents for _all_ Nobel Prizes, and the writing is very good.

Popular: [https://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/economic-
sciences/la...](https://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/economic-
sciences/laureates/2017/popular.html)

Advanced: [https://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/economic-
sciences/la...](https://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/economic-
sciences/laureates/2017/advanced.html)

------
raywalters
Having worked front line technical support, I have to disagree. People are
indeed dumb, many choose to stay that way.

~~~
expertentipp
It’s as if a person working in geriatric care claimed thet people are old. I
rarely call or contact the support, the though of being treated as a dumb
person make me solve the problem myself of abandon the service/product
instead.

~~~
relic
Well to be fair a lot of people contacting a front-line service center for a
non-specialized product/service can't even articulate their problem
accurately, if at all. I'm sure it'd be pretty easy to get jaded about people
after hearing "I don't know if it's on or not, it just doesn't work...fix it"
enough times.

~~~
Klathmon
That person calling in more than likely knows significantly more than you
about some other topic, and that's the point.

Someone calling in that doesn't know the difference between the PC tower and
the monitor and doesn't care to learn isn't "stupid" any more than you are
stupid for not knowing an alternator from an AC compressor, and chances are
you won't remember even if shown once or twice because you pay someone else to
know and maintain/fix that stuff.

~~~
russdpale
Yeh but what would the mechanic think if I didn't know the keys had to be in
the ignition? Such are the level of questions you field at First level tech
support.

~~~
Klathmon
You also get those kinds of questions at a shop.

Stuff like "where's my seat warmer?", "How do I turn off the windshield
wipers" and "why does my window go up all the way when I just touch the
button" are all questions I was asked when I worked as a mechanic.

And if they are coming to my shop to get those answers, then it's my job to
help them. Hopefully come tax time when I need to talk to that accountant he
wont laugh me out of the room because I didn't know I needed to keep my own
tax when working as a contractor.

~~~
expertentipp
"why does my window go up all the way when I just touch the button"

hmmm, in many cars the window dongle has two states. Half pull moves the
window only as long as it's pulled, full pull makes "the window go up all the
way" even after releasing the dongle... and it might depend on whether the
keys are inserted and whether the doors are open. Took me some time to figure
it out in my car.

~~~
Klathmon
Bingo! However this guy had owned his last Mercedes for almost 20 years and
had a million little questions like this about new features.

Really smart dude, but just needed some help with his new car.

------
francisofascii
There was an interesting NPR Planet Money episode about Richard Thaler back in
November.
[https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2017/11/01/561421807/epis...](https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2017/11/01/561421807/episode-803-nudge-
nudge-nobel)

------
jcutrell
B.E. is a subject I'm incredibly excited about. I'm glad to see this at the
top of YC today.

Every (somewhat major) decision I'm making now, I'm constantly reminding
myself of various biases and silliness that I participate in unwillingly (or
even sometimes willingly).

I would say this study has been immensely helpful, and Thaler is a huge
contributor to this for me. (Freakonomics, also, has been a great learning
resource.)

For anyone interested in this subject, I recommend Thinking Fast and Slow by
Kahneman. (You'd think I should get a referral bonus as often as I talk about
this book.) It quite literally changed my life. Of course, Nudge is the other
juggernaut in the field.

In fact, if anyone is particularly interested, I'd love to chat. Profile has
contact details.

~~~
mattnewport
Behavioral Economics falls prey to the same kinds of over simplifications it
was a reaction to in regular economics. There are useful insights to be gained
from both over simplifications but it's also good to remain aware of their
flaws. To over simplify myself, traditional economics starts from the
assumption that people are rational and then tends to over simplify the way
they reason and the models of the world they reason about; behavioral
economics questions whether people are rational and 'demonstrates' they are
not compared to over simplified models of the world they reason about.

A simple example is the "default choice" effect. The standard explanation is
that people are too lazy to check a box. A more sophisticated explanation
would be that people infer information from the default they are presented
with and allow it to influence their decision based on their assumption that
the form creator is well informed and looking out for their interests. There
is in general an under appreciation in behavioral economics that people are
likely being more rational than the over simplified models they are
benchmarking them against. There are lots of examples of this in the most
widely known results.

~~~
jcutrell
I think a "good" behavioral economist would not explain exactly why, but
instead provide theories with as much data to describe why those theories
exist.

A trial shows that people often exhibit behavior A. Why they exhibit behavior
A may be complicated.

In your example, there's a sense of authority and conforming to a norm that
can be used to describe those behaviors. But there's also the cognitive
barrier (which we call lazy) that requires someone to exert mental effort to
change away from a default.

It's not that one is wrong and the other is right. All of these may be right.
But B.E.'s best contribution to society isn't to explain so much of _why_ we
act in these ways - but instead to accept that despite our desires or
perspectives of rationality, we _do_ act in these ways.

Understanding the "why" may help us to make better decisions, certainly;
however, being too prescriptive about "why" may lead us down the wrong path.

~~~
mattnewport
The way that behavioral economics is very often presented is not with the
epistemic humility you describe here however. This is in part the fault of
media popularizers and entities that use behavioral economics to justify and
push their own agendas but in my experience the well known names in research
are also culpable, both in their own popularizations and applications of their
research and in their academic work.

There is an admirable strain in classical economics of epistemic humility:
assuming that when human agents act in the world in ways that don't appear to
match economic theory, it is at least as likely that the agents are acting in
their own best interests and the economic theory, model or data are wrong than
the reverse.

Behavioral economics tends to follow a less admirable strain of economic
thought that assumes when agents don't follow the predictions of our over
simplified model, it is the agents who are wrong and not the model. This is
merely misguided in it's benign form but becomes pernicious when it is
inevitably extended to "fixing" the agent's behavior through some form of
coercion.

My criticism of BE is when it makes too strong a claim to agents acting
irrationally rather than questioning where its own assumptions or models may
be incomplete.

I find it somewhat useful if overly simplistic as an aid to analyzing and
improving my own decisions. I dislike its use as another tool to justify
telling people what to do. I also find its lack of introspection into its own
flaws and limitations as a field disappointing.

------
aalleavitch
We’re dumb in comparison to the systems we’ve created. Increasingly, the
disparity between what our technology is capable of and our own limitations as
animals will become a pressing issue.

One thing that always bothers me is how we have this myth of personal
responsibility that supposes an individual is equipped to defend their own
interests against a multinational corporation on their own.

“Well I just don’t get why the baby didn’t defend itself from the bear.”

~~~
barrkel
And many of our problems are collective action problems: where it makes sense
for individuals to defect on their own, and they can only raise the standard
for the group if they act together.

At different scales this means unionization and professional organizations,
government regulation, and international regulation, to prevent whole
countries from defecting - this is in large part what the EU is about, and a
significant source of UK ill will towards it; and also generally what makes
nationalists upset at globalists.

Collective action problems require collective action solutions. Large actors,
however, tend to dislike collective action because it reduces their scale
advantage.

Collective action has its own problem: power structures encourage corruption
and misuse of the pooled power. Overall, I suspect government and
international systems are more likely to be less corrupt because they can
afford to build more checks and balances into their institutions, but the
distance from the people decreases their perceived legitimacy.

Not an easy circle to square.

~~~
gascan
As I see it, the corruption challenge of collective action is because it is so
often not carefully, purposefully structured. Government is constructed with
the express purpose of checking power.

I read a bit I liked a while back about early feminism, in which members
rejected wholesale the idea of power structures & authority, and established
no authority. The author relates, however, that the power vacuum was naturally
still filled- but because everyone wanted to pretend there was no power
structure, the one that developed was unusually cruel & unaccountable.

I liked the bit because to me it seems like the strongest argument for
official government- if the power vacuum must always be filled, let us be
deliberate in how we fill it.

~~~
dbingham
As someone who's participated in many organizations and movements that were
purposefully against power structures and authority, I can tell you that it
can go either way.

I've seen it work, where people found ways to fluidly hold each other
accountable and natural leaders gently stepped into the power vacuums with out
any kind of formalized authority. And I've seen it fail catastrophically in a
myriad of ways. It really comes down to the people who are involved, and how
intentionally they approach the organizational problem.

I've also seen larger scale organizations that intentionally attacked this
problem and created formalized structures that were built to minimize
concentrated power and instead keep it distributed. It was essentially a
formalization of the first case where the no-authority / structure model
worked.

So it's doable. You can have collective action with out concentrated power and
hierarchy. It just takes intention and strong (but compassionate) social
accountability.

~~~
dv_dt
Are there examples or reading you might be able to give regarding this? I'm
interested!

------
gdubs
Reminded of this timeless Carl Sagan quote:

"We live in a society exquisitely dependent on science and technology, in
which hardly anyone knows anything about science and technology."

~~~
enraged_camel
Asimov’s _Foundation_ series is an excellent commentary on this very
phenomenon. One of the antagonists is a galactic empire that is
technologically advanced, but has been stagnating and decaying slowly as those
in power start viewing scientists with disdain and distrust. Over time the
empire loses the ability to develop new technology, and ends up with those who
can only maintain/repair existing technology (which eventually becomes so old
that it is scrapped).

~~~
bitwize
I'm a bit reminded of the Zentraedi from _Macross_ , who know how to fly and
fight with advanced spaceships/mechs, but not how to repair them or how they
work. Except in that case it's because their patron race, the Protoculture,
deliberately kept them dependent; Protoculture factories supplied as many
ships and weapons as the Zentraedi might need, meanwhile, the average
Zentraedi was kept at about a five-year-old human's level of cognitive
development. (After Zentraedi culture integrated with human culture (thanks to
a frickin' idol singer), adult Zentraedi were at cognitive parity with adult
humans.)

All of which makes you wonder: on actual Earth, is there a class of tech-
company Morlocks keeping the disposable-income Eloi dependent with their
endless supply of disposable gadgets?

~~~
1996
Good catch! It reminded me the same thing, Macross.

There is indeed something keeping working class humans dependants: a focus on
growth at all costs (including population growth). It is pervasive (the
ideology is reinforced with ads) and makes you desire for example the latest
iPhone X.

With a permanent growth, the basic problem is all humans are still born with a
dependancy on housing and food (and other fancier things) that are in short
supply. To attain these, humans need to work. Their work is used not just to
maintain the basics, but to fuel growth.

Some people (mostly millenials) have found a solution: leave cheap, remain
childless.

It causes many people to freak out about the economy, the birth rate, and how
more immigration is needed to maintain growth. People don't really want that,
and end up voting funny.

~~~
mjevans
"The social contract", how an individual and society interact (and are
depended upon each other), is broken.

In the old days if someone didn't like how things were going there were spaces
with (far less) people that they could go off in to and do their own thing; if
it mattered that much.

In less old days someone was part of a community. They did things that
supported the community and return the community supported them.

In recent history people were part of national communities, there were careers
with 'retirement' plans and advancement tracks that enabled someone to achieve
most of their potential if they wanted it.

Today everyone wants a short term solution with no long term planning or
costs. There is no community because you don't know if you're going to be
there in 5 or 10 years. There is no investment because you don't know if
you're going to be there in 5 or 10 years. There is no sense of belonging
because there is nothing to belong to. Everyone is a disposable cog in a
machine that doesn't care about them.

-

People have always voted funny, and I think that's what has gotten us where we
are now.

~~~
1996
The "social contract" was an elaborate way to force people into an agreement.
But I agree with you, it was at least possible to leave. It wasn't organized
slavery. And the other side of the bargain was more or less kept, so it even
made some sense.

I don't think it is possible to leave anymore. Not just that, but we are
selling out our young generation and immigrants. We indoctrinate people to
borrow a debt that can't be legally discharged, just to acquire mostly useless
government sanctionned diplomas. We have rules for immigrant workers that to
me look like indentured servitude. And on top of that, we resent these people
that make modern society possible. I am waiting for them to shrug like Atlas.
I hope they will.

I am lucky to be outside out that, but it still disgust me. Like you said,
this is a society that wants to treat people like disposable cogs in a
machine, that doesn't care about them. I get that, and I could be on board, if
only it was honest and without lies.

I just do not agree that people have always voted funny. Their perspectives
were more aligned with the government before. Not so much now, and I don't
think it is fair to blame them.

Without bringing politics to HN, I think I have some unpopular libertarian
political opinions. But even for me, it goes way too far, and it is not
libertarian at all.

------
abetusk
Boy does it take a while to get to the main topic of the title. From the
article/podcast:

    
    
        ...
        THALER: Well, first of all, when we use this phrase 
        libertarian paternalism, we’re using libertarian as
        an adjective. And so we’re trying to say we’re going
        to design policies that don’t force anyone to do anything.
        So the claim that we’re trying to tell people what to
        do, or force them to do things, is just completely wrong.
        We are also not trying to tell them to do what we think is
        smart. We’re trying to help people do what they want to do.
    
        I like to use G.P.S. as an analogy of what we’re trying to
        do. So, I have a terrible sense of direction. And Google
        Maps is a lifesaver for me. Now, if I want to go visit you,
        I can plug in your address, and suppose I’m walking across
        the park, and I see, “Oh, there’s a softball game over
        there. I think I’ll go watch that for a while,” Google Maps
        doesn’t scold me. It will re-compute a new route if I’ve
        gone a bit out of my way. It doesn’t suggest addresses to
        me. It just suggests a route. And if there’s a traffic jam,
        it suggests maybe you should alter your route.
    
        So, we don’t think people are dumb. We think the world is
        hard. I mean, figuring out how much to save for retirement
        is a really hard cognitive problem that very few economists
        have solved for themselves. And it’s not only cognitively
        hard, it involves delay of gratification, which people find
        hard. It’s just like navigating in a strange city is hard.
        So, why not try to help? When I first was working with the
        U.K. Behavioral Insight Team, the first “Nudge unit,” the
        phrase I kept saying in every meeting with some minister
        was, “If you want to get people to do something, make it
        easy. Remove the barriers.” That’s what we’re about.
        ...

~~~
jerf
"suppose I’m walking across the park, and I see, “Oh, there’s a softball game
over there. I think I’ll go watch that for a while,” Google Maps doesn’t scold
me."

I've noticed just in the past few days an update has been pushed so that now
every time Google has to recalculate the route, instead just saying the new
directions "turn right on third street", now it says "OK, turn right on third
street", and I find myself having a somewhat negative reaction to the OK,
like, yes, of course it's fucking OK you stupid computer, I just did it.

I think it may be an uncanny valley effect; when the computer just blindly
told me the next turn after recalculation, I treated it like a tool and wasn't
offended that it was giving me output in reaction to my unexpected input. With
the addition of "OK" prefixing the new announcement, suddenly it's taken a
half-step towards being more human and conversational, and now my brain can't
help but run it through my human conversation templates, and none of them are
giving me a very friendly interpretation of the "OK" for the scenario "Someone
told you what you should do, you silently did something else without telling
them you were going to, so they said 'OK, do this thing instead'." My brain
hears sarcasm, like "OK fine make this turn instead", or exasperation, or
something like that. Especially as my current commute has a place where I'm
dodging around some construction that Google just hasn't picked up on so I get
three "OKs" in about a minute, and my brain says "ah, that must be
_increasing_ exasperation with you".

Obviously, as I've described it to you this way, I intellectually and
rationally know that nothing has changed other than the simple addition of a
single word announcing a recalculation. But that doesn't invalidate the
processing I'm getting from the rest of my brain. It just means I can identify
why I'm reacting the way I'm reacting. Many other people will not be so
introspective.

Which, getting back on topic, shows how hard all this stuff can be to get
right.

~~~
fjsolwmv
I haven't noticed that's but it's hilarious. "OK" is how you boss Google tech,
so "OK" is how it bosses you too.

------
grosjona
>> THALER: So my toast began by saying that my fellow winners had discovered
things like gravitational waves, and circadian rhythms. And I discovered the
existence of humans in the economy.

Funny quote. It's a testament to how complex things are and how far people go
to simplify them.

------
carapace
I remember starting to study economics as a kid and thinking "this is garbage"
for two main reasons, one of which is now addressed by behavioral economics,
to wit: the models of human behavior they were using were ridiculous. The
other reason is that economists occupy a critical nexus in the feedback loops
in human affairs. The best _operational_ economists accrue wealth and keep
their science a secret as best they can, and as an obvious part of that
_exterior_ economics can be (and is) filled with fluff and nonsense. It is
little better than numerology. It doesn't surprise me that Thaler "has been an
irritant to mainstream economists." More like an embarrassment, pointing out
their lack of grounding in reality.

------
dugluak
sometimes some people purposely create hard systems for others for their own
benefit.

~~~
expertentipp
The competition for resources, influence, safety, and sexual partners is an
attrition warfare. Try working in more than two countries in the same year and
preparing the tax declaration becomes an impossible task. Those with power or
money don’t even see their tax own declarations. Local politician or some
significant figure gets beaten - all media scream for justice, prosecutors
investigate, courts process the case. Average Joe gets beaten - welcome the
medical expenses, nobody cares, don’t even bother with the police procedures.
Freaking frontend development - HTML was designed as permissive so that anyone
can put together their silly website. Since Google, Facebook, and Microsoft
took over it’s among the most frustrating domains to work on, and so on...

------
jjtheblunt
Some people are dumb. I'm sure of that. Myself included at times.

------
known
It's hard due to
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complex_interdependence](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complex_interdependence)

------
jokoon
This scene of ex machina describes what human intelligence is really about:

[http://www.criticalcommons.org/Members/ccManager/clips/the-t...](http://www.criticalcommons.org/Members/ccManager/clips/the-
true-power-of-data-mining-search-engine/view)

"imperfect, impulsive, chaotic, fluid, patterned"

This is where the politics of emotion and marketing are winning the most.
Rational economics are only serving our moral standards, sense of merit and
our fascination with order.

------
kumartanmay
If behavioural economists are so good at predicting human behaviour, why
aren’t they popular among consumer facing companies? Why don’t such companies
have a special position for behaviourial evonomists? Why none of the
behaviourial Economists have ever tried starting up?

~~~
jcutrell
To be honest, this is kind of my hope for a future job.

I've wanted to practice behavior economics meets technological innovation for
a long time now - but you're right, there doesn't seem to be a demand for
this.

~~~
Ironchefpython
> but you're right, there doesn't seem to be a demand for this

You mean outside the entire advertising industry? Now you might argue that
advertising companies are more focused on selling ads to clients than
optimizing the ad experience for victims, but it's an entire sector of the
economy focused on exploiting the poor decision-making abilities of humans.

~~~
jcutrell
Yes, I think the lack of demand is for non-exploitative roles.

Of course, as long as we have had enough understanding that we can affect
others, there has been a demand for exploitation through bias.

I think the hope here is that we would create positions that allow BE to
benefit others AND businesses by helping people make better decisions. It
sounds a bit utopian, but it's certainly not impossible that everyone _could_
benefit from people making decisions that are beneficial to their well-being.

------
curo
I know this is off-topic, but does anyone know if these interviews are
scripted? It feels like their reading their back-and-forth banter to each
other. (Nothing wrong with that.)

------
pascalxus
I understand that a nobel peace prize winner can NOT say that people are dumb.

However, there are people on this planet that believe the earth is flat.

~~~
frockington
Intelligence like everything else in nature has outliers on both sides. I have
no idea why people seem to disagree with you, it's simple biology and
statistics

------
nathias
and the world is hard(er) because people are dumb

------
invalidOrTaken
...but what this works out to is that you should behave as if people _are_
dumb. So.

------
nixpulvis
The world doesn't need to be as hard as it is. Or what I should really say is,
we spend more time/energy dealing with things than we shouldn't really need
to, taking away from the time/energy we should be spending on other things.

------
anotheryou
Title gets discussed at ~50min of a 60min podcast...

------
sametmax
The word being hard does not justify the success of reality tv, tabloids,
lotery, music that is forgotten the next year or smoking.

Who do you think has the most chance to buy a lotery ticket. Somebody with 130
or 90 IQ ?

~~~
opportune
It's arguably pretty poor design if the world is only livable for people in
the top 2.5% of intelligence (>130 IQ)

~~~
sametmax
High intelligence is nowhere closed to be the most important factor to be
successful in our society, gene propagation wise. Or being happy. It's merely
a tool.

~~~
eeZah7Ux
> gene propagation wise

Can we avoid the social darwinism, please?

~~~
sametmax
Can we avoid the godwin point please ?

------
cvaidya1986
I reject the tyranny of OR.

------
tw1010
The negation of the former is true but the latter is also true.

------
stephengillie
_Life is hard, it 's harder if you're stupid._ \- John Wayne

~~~
qaq
I actually often see the opposite less intelligent people are often carefree
and more happy.

~~~
paidleaf
Ignorance is bliss.

Quotes are like bible passages. There is one for every occasion and every
perspective. Given one quote, you can find an equally poignant and
contradictory quote.

Time and tide wait for no man!

Slow and steady wins the race!

This is why I cringe when I see people leading their lives based on quotes.

~~~
stephengillie
_Quotation is a serviceable substitute for wit._ -Oscar Wilde

 _A witty saying proves nothing_ -Voltaire

------
raywalters
Having worked front line tech support, I have to disagree. People are
inherently dumb, and choose to stay that way in many cases.

~~~
lwelyk
I'm sure your car mechanic, doctor, electrician, plumber, etc feel the same
about you. You can't know how to do everything.

~~~
anticensor
The opposing view is also true: You cannot _ignore_ everything.

------
captainbland
The world isn't that hard, some people just like to hoarde resources.

~~~
loa-in-backup
And the incentive for this is emotional, to the detriment of rational needs of
everybody around except some kind of gang-resembling circle s.

------
hutzlibu
I admit I only skimmed the article, but I still throw in a potential
controversal counterthought (even though I don't disagree with the article
from what I read):

People* are dumb.

Why?

They have been breed like that for many generations. Because all the classic
Civilisations and Empires needed lots of dumb workers and peasants who were
able to do their simple work, but not smart enough, to organize any opposition
against the current empire.

And this in many different forms, from total slavery to all kinds in between.

Now with the Hypothesis, that smart people don't want to get exploited, they
would rise up sometimes, where they grew in numbers - and got beaten down and
crucified, hanged, quartered, etc. - so strong selection pressure for smart
people not born into the elite and not wanting to become a monk.

Now with all that being said, I believe it is probably more a cultural mindset
of "stupidness" than "stupid" DNA in the people, because smart people also
keep their heads low and pretend to be stupid, when they can't win a fight.
But this got into a habit of not wanting to think. So the solution to all the
complex problems in the world I don't think is a super government, thinking
for all their dumb sheeps, but rather smaller systems, less complex - and
letting people get smart again, by giving them the opportunity to make
decisions again about their life. Not just a allmost meaningless vote which
allmost counts nothing among the millions of other votes, but voting the
decisions down at their very local lifes. When you have to think for yourself,
you will start thinking again. And then you don't want those decisions taken
away from you. Thats only comfortable when you forgot how to do it.

* with "people" I mean the average person in the street, the one from the famous Churchill quote

~~~
gilbetron
That seems like an incredibly uneducated view of what the world was like
previously.

~~~
hutzlibu
Interesting, care to provide arguments?

I provided mine: we had empires as default, they needed lots of slaves. Slaves
must be strong, but stupid. Smart slaves were trouble. So got sorted out.

Simplified, yes, but "uneducated" where?

~~~
gilbetron
> Interesting, care to provide arguments?

Read a history book. Hell, read Timeline by Michael Crichton.

~~~
hutzlibu
Not an argument. I believe I read a lot of history books. So can you then
provide me with your enlightened wisdom that you got, I apparently failed to
grasp?

~~~
gilbetron
"needed lots of dumb workers and peasants who were able to do their simple
work"

Sounds like a very Monty Python-esque view of history, that's all. Perhaps you
have a far more nuanced view, but it doesn't come across as such.

