
Dan Ariely and Irrational Comparison - brendancahill
https://brendancahill.io/brensblog/danariely
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noelwelsh
I think it is worth noting that some of the more surprising results in the
behavioural economics literature have failed to replicate. A quick search will
find many articles discussing this. I believe there is definitely a strong
core in behavioural economics, but the especially "pop science" experiments
(e.g. people walk more slowly when primed to think about old age, which IIRC
is in "Thinking Fast and Slow") should be taken with a grain of salt.

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2T1Qka0rEiPr
This is fair criticism from what I've seen too, though for passers by I'd just
say that it shouldn't necessarily entirely discredit the field. What
particularly interests me, is the "nudge" applications which have been adopted
by govts. over the past number of years. Whilst most of their plans miss, the
ones that stick are incredible, such as the setting of defaults to drastically
increase organ donors and improve pensions and investments.

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nostromo
I’m not sure I want the government opting me in to programs any more than I
want Google opting me in to things that may not be in my best interest.

If dark patterns start working their way into government, god help us all.

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sokoloff
In setting defaults, you’re always making a choice.

“By default, all drivers will not be marked as organ donors.” vs “By default,
all drivers will be marked as organ donors.”

“By default, all employees at companies with 401(k)s will save X% of their
eligible salary in 401(k)s.”

You’re making a choice for them in any event.

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ghaff
I agree with you but we also need to be careful given how powerful defaults
are. Even Thaler has, I believe, argued against organ donation being opt out;
rather I think he's argued for requiring a yes/no choice when driver's
licenses are renewed. (The argument is opt out would lead to next of
kin/families arguing that the deceased never made a choice to donate.)

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function_seven
Ad companies argued this when Microsoft updated IE (or was it Edge?) to set
the DNT flag to “1” by default.

I think they were right to argue as such, and wonder if MS knew that
defaulting DNT to on would poison the well like that.

It’s a good argument. When people argue over what a default should be, they
often don’t realize that it’s possible to have no default at all, and force an
explicit choice.

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sokoloff
If you require customers to make dozens of choices because you’re not willing
to make some sensible default choices, some of them will make the choice to
use another browser.

I’m not a Microsoft cheerleader (nor detractor) in general, but in this case,
I’m glad they took a position and chose a default on behalf of their
customers.

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Drdrdrq
Unfortunately (and predictably) it backfired though. If it no longer
represents a conscious user choice, DNT can be pretty safely ignored by Google
and the likes.

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2T1Qka0rEiPr
I read Ariely's "Predictably Irrational" years and years ago, and was
fascinated by it. I'd been an economics graduate, and was surprised that we
were only introduced to "Behavioural Economics" as a field in the final
semester of the course.

To be sure, if you want to read far more academic material, you should look at
Kahneman, Sunstein or Thaler's books - but Ariely's writing style is in my
opinion more fun and approachable to the lay person. It was definitely my
gateway drug into the subject matter.

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sprafa
Charlie Munger said "if economics isn't behavioral, what the hell is it?"

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beefield
A weird bastard child of ideology and mathematics.

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clairity
note that an ideology on its own is not bad (or necessarily good). it's being
ideological--adhering to an ideology against any and all evidence--that's bad.
humanity, including science, economics, the arts, etc., is driven by ideology,
ideas that take hold because of a tantalizing kernel of truth in them.
progress (and regress) happens on the back of ideology.

the rational actor at the center of economics is an ideological construct that
we act to always maximize our economic return. how we adhere, and the system
adheres, to that ideal has been the focus of a significant strain of economic
thought. behavioral economics is another ideological strain that focuses
primarily on those deviations (perhaps as a dominant mode) rather than the
adherences of the progenitor ideology.

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xondono
I've been very interested in the behavioural economics field in general, but
for some reason I always find that Ariely tends to jump too fast to
conclusions.

Most of his experiments I read about have other explanations that fit the data
just as well. For instance, the "The Economist" subscription has another
explanation to simple comparison, _choice deferral_.

People don't really know if they'll want the online or print version, so are
happy to pay extra for not having to make that choice _now_. If you only give
them the two choices, you force them to choose. I'm not saying he is wrong,
just that I miss him considering other alternatives (that to me sound way more
plausible, but are less publication-sexy).

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mekoka
Regarding choice deferral, perhaps you should take another closer look at that
experiment. It seems to me that you may have missed the fact that the choice
that was taken away is _not_ "online + print", but rather "print only", which
yielded 0 subscribers in the original batch.

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xondono
I didn't, think of it this way:

In the first experiment I can choose if I'd rather have online (59$) or print
version(125$). Either way I'm risking the disappointment of taking the wrong
choice, or I can choose online for 59$ plus a 66$ hedge against _choosing
wrong_.

In the second experiment you've eliminated the risk of choosing print and
realizing later that I wanted online, so hedging makes less sense (i.e. I'm
willing to pay less for hedging my choice).

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mojuba
Tricking the mind though can lead to higher churn rates (poorer retention
rates) later. Most people do realize what the true value of their purchase is
sooner or later - it might take a few cycles, e.g. monthly subscription
payments to make the right conclusions. You might have a spike in your revenue
figures now but you might see deteriorating retention indicators a few cycles
later. In other words some (many? all?) "tricks" work only in the short term.
In fact some of your users will leave your platform with the negative
aftertaste of having been tricked.

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vaidhy
I was originally fascinated by this book and others like it. During the course
of my reading, I stumbled upon Gerd Gigerenzer and I learnt a different
interpretation. In short, most of these experiments assume full information is
available to the testers and make an argument about rational process. As such,
their applicability in real life is small, in specific edge cases. The
question we should ask and answer is that, in a world of partial, incorrect
and misleading information, what is the most rational judgement to make? And
that mostly matches with how we behave.

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nate
If you're a fan of Dan's, I just realized recently he has a board game out!
[https://irrationalgame.com](https://irrationalgame.com)

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bobosha
Isn't this known as the Decoy effect? Having a middle tier makes the pricing
more palatable.

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coderintherye
His follow-on book: "The Upside of Irrationality" is also a great read.

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mdoms
It's almost the exact same book. I felt ripped off having bought both.

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sokoloff
You sound like an ideal customer for his next book: The Downside of
Rationality./s

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kwhitefoot
There is nothing irrational in seeing the right hand orange circle as bigger.
It even says so in the text: "depends on context". The word irrational in the
tile is just clickbait.

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cbsmith
The concept of anchoring is pretty ancient, no?

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mavelikara
And Joel Spolsky, in 2004, summarizing thoughts on pricing and segmentation:
[https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2004/12/15/camels-and-
rubber-...](https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2004/12/15/camels-and-rubber-
duckies/)

