
Plato knew a lot about behavioural economics - __ka
https://aeon.co/essays/what-plato-knew-about-behavioural-economics-a-lot
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samirillian
One of my favorite rules of thumb came from the Nichomachean Ethics where
Aristotle said that in considering how much you should pay for a service
rendered, you should consider how much it was worth to you before it was
accomplished. Not sure it's a documented bias, but it should be: the universal
tendency to underappreciate what we already have.

~~~
ams6110
Colloquially, the call girl principle.

~~~
Ntrails
I don't understand - the implication being that post "service" people tend to
feel it wasn't worth the price?

~~~
mattmanser
You lose power, the service has already been rendered but you've not been paid
yet. You can't negotiate for payment by threatening to withhold service.

Same thing happens to freelance developers and why some add kill switches[1].
You deliver, the client then says "It's not quite what I asked for, I'll give
you Nothing/10%/50%/80% of what we agreed".

Obviously it's worse for call girls as they can't take you to court in most
countries, hence why they always ask for money up front. Their post-service
negotiating position is extremely weak. So no money up front, no service.

[1] I personally think that as long as you make it clear to the client + part
of the contract that they only have a temporary licence key until full-
payment, kill switches are fine. Adding it on the sly is not.

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mrxd
This explains why Kahneman's book "Thinking, Fast and Slow" was such a hit.
The easiest way to write a bestselling book is to tell people what they've
heard a hundred times before.

It does call into question the feasibility of the book's objective of
correcting human biases and cognitive errors. We've been trying to do that for
2500 years.

~~~
senthil_rajasek
Kahneman is a researcher known for his prospect theory [1].

He may have said what we've heard repeatedly but also backed it up with actual
research.

[1]
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prospect_theory](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prospect_theory)

~~~
RodericDay
backing fairly common sense stuff with "actual research", like all things, can
be done to excess

> Think of it like this: the takeaway of Bartels’ post is that something like
> a 1% exists. (It’s actually more like a 10% for the purposes of the study he
> cites.) I refer back to Occupy’s figuration for two reasons. One, I imagine
> that Bartels would be rather sympathetic to the liberal-progressivist ends
> to which this slogan was put, or at least not hostile. Two, it’s a figure
> that drew upon pop economic knowledge, that attempted to derive from the
> latter the kind of epistemic aura that numbers hold for Serious People. It
> would have been utterly natural for Bartels to have referred to this figure,
> to the social movement that buoyed it, to the knowledges that sustained it.
> Instead, he directs us to “a flurry of commentary” surrounding McCutcheon v.
> FEC, a case adjudicated well, well after Occupy. If Occupy was a movement
> touting an idea whose time had come, Bartels refuses to validate forms of
> knowing that know too soon, forms of knowing that short circuit the
> positivist time of coming-to-know with the punctuality of a deeply plebeian
> “Shit’s fucked up and bullshit!”

[http://clrjames.blogspot.com/2014/04/ideas-whose-time-has-
be...](http://clrjames.blogspot.com/2014/04/ideas-whose-time-has-belatedly-
come-or.html)

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woodandsteel
Yes, Kahneman and Tversky are repeating insights Plato had 2500 years ago. But
what they added was experimental verification that is helping persuade
economists who have long mistakenly believed that human beings are far more
rational than they really are.

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saturnian
Plato was not doing 'behavioral economics.' This is so dumb. Academia is
broken.

~~~
lr4444lr
Not sure why you're getting downvoted. I have a huge respect for the enduring
legacy of Greek philosophy, and I too thought links in this article were
extremely tenuous, and smacked of whatever the fallacy of appealing to ancient
wisdom is called. Anyone who's read Plato's dialogues will find that one of
their enduring hallmarks is how even the most intelligent and formidable
interlocutors are eventually compelled at least to admit the weakness of their
arguments within the course of a conversation, if not change their mind to the
more persuasive character's (often Socrates') point of view on some profound
subjects. It's actually a beautiful and instructive aspect of the literature,
but it's an idealized progression of thought among well-educated men - not a
realistic portrayal of the average person's psychological progression.

~~~
mmmpop
For the same reason Ted Dzubia no longer writes blog posts--the internet can't
handle cutting the crap and being blunt.

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aninhumer
"This is so dumb. Academia is broken." is not simply "blunt" it's hostile,
vague and adds almost nothing to the discussion.

There's a reasonable argument to be made here, but they did not make it.

