
Richard Thaler made economics more messy - adventured
https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2015-05-29/richard-thaler-the-economist-who-realized-how-crazy-we-are
======
dang
Comments moved to
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15432617](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15432617).

------
abrax3141
Isn’t all this the same thing that Simon got a Nobel for in 1978? (And
Kahneman in 2002.) Why does economics keep rediscovering that people’s
thinking is complicated, and thinking its a new discovery?

~~~
matt4077
Because "it's complicated" isn't usually considered an exhaustive exploration
of the topic?

It's also a great symbol, emphasising how economics is trying to incorporate
new knowledge of all the "failure modes" of classical models. There are enough
people retelling that "square chicken" joke over and over, and such prices
help to spread the word that, contrary to public opinion, there are lots of
efforts to make the models match closer with behavioural realities.

~~~
abrax3141
> Because "it's complicated" isn't

> usually considered an exhaustive exploration

> of the topic?

Okay, fair point. Maybe what tweaks me is the media always reporting just what
the Nobel committee says, which is just the same gloss as S&K: cognition
matters. In physics they don’t keep saying the same thing about each Nobel’s
contribution. Maybe it’s just that physics is easy, and cognitive science is
hard.

