And I remember trying very hard to get certain people for a program - they didn't work out. I reluctantly took someone into the group (I was forced to) and he turned out to completely outstrip the expectations I had for the people I tried so hard to get!
I love Richard Thaler's ideas and can appreciate his dry wit but he is calm/low energy and it takes a little effort to stay focused on his message in this format.
Sorry to be offtopic but does anybody know of a way to log back into an Instagram account? I stupidly lost the login password. I would appreciate any help you can give me.
Brilliant video. It's great to have both Malcolm Gladwell and Thaler on it (pity Kahneman didn't participate). My favorite parts are : the comments regarding decision making at companies such as GM choosing CEOs and why schools should admit students right out of undergrad
"Dick" Thaler was in my class in grade school. Haven't seen him since. He was whisked off to prep school before ninth grade. Very interesting that he's now a Nobel laureate. Wait! Saw his cameo in The Big Short.
Why behavioral economics needs a Copernicus. A major criticism of behavioral economics is that it is merely a compendium of the many ways economic behavior veers from the ‘rational actor’ model of individual incentive that is foundational to classical economics. However, neurologically based explanations of incentive are very different from this model, and arguably can explain many of the findings of behavioral economics from first principles, like the movements of the planets in the night’s sky from the Copernican theory of the solar system. Presented here is precisely this argument from the perspectives of evolutionary biology and affective neuroscience, with detailed explanatory sources linked below. Ultimately, the idiosyncrasies of behavior must be derived from first principles, namely an understanding from human neuroscience as to how incentive motivation works. Without this we are forced to rely on separate correlations between external observations and external events, with behavior acting in eccentric patterns like the planets in the night sky. In his critique of behavioral economics, the economist Jason Collins used just this analogy to describe how a lack of a deep and foundational understanding of how the world works can make the solar system seem positively deviant. “So, I want to take you to a Wikipedia page that I first saw when someone tweeted that they had found “the best page on the internet”. The “List of cognitive biases” was up to 165 entries on the day I took this snapshot, and it contains most of your behavioral science favorites … the availability heuristic, confirmation bias, the decoy effect - a favorite of marketers, the endowment effect and so on …. But this page, to me, points to what I see as a fundamental problem with behavioral economics. “Let me draw an analogy with the history of astronomy. In 1500, the dominant model of the universe involved the sun, planets and stars orbiting around the earth. Since that wasn’t what was actually happening, there was a huge list of deviations from this model. We have the Venus effect, where Venus appears in the evening and morning and never crosses the night sky. We have the Jupiter bias, where it moves across the night sky, but then suddenly starts going the other way. Putting all the biases in the orbits of the planets and sun together, we end up with a picture of the orbits that looks something like this picture - epicycles on epicycles. But instead of this model of biases, deviations and epicycles, what about an alternative model? The earth and the planets orbit the sun. Copernicus, of course, it’s not quite as simple as this picture - the orbits of the planets around the sun are elliptical, not circular. But, essentially, by adopting this new model of how the solar system worked, a large collection of “biases” was able to become a coherent theory. Behavioral economics has some similarities to the state of astronomy in 1500 - it is still at the collection of deviation stage. There aren’t 165 human biases. There are 165 deviations from the wrong model. So what is this unifying theory? I suggest the first place to look is evolutionary biology. Human minds are the product of evolution, shaped by millions of years of natural selection.” Perspective on incentive from evolutionary biology evonomics.com/please-not-another-bias-the-problem-with-behavioral-economics/ A lay account of incentive from affective neuroscience. www.scribd.com/document/495438436/A-Mouse-s-Tale-a-practical-explanation-and-handbook-of-motivation-from-the-perspective-of-a-humble-creature An academic account of incentive from affective neuroscience- Berridge lsa.umich.edu/psych/research&labs/berridge/publications/Berridge2001Rewardlearningchapter.pdf Berridge Lab, University of Michigan sites.lsa.umich.edu/berridge-lab/ And wiki list of biases en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases
My 8th grade Algebra teacher was flummoxed by all the people who were racing to buy two boxes of something when the sign said, "SALE! - one box 7 cents but two boxes for 15 cents".
His empirical findings and theoretical insights have been instrumental in creating the new and rapidly expanding field of behavioral economics."[7][8] "en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Thaler"
Thank you! I thought I was the only one who noticed that. Thaler must be one of the most arrogant people. Great achievers always come with a good dose of humility.
"if markets are not efficient, some people might think that government should intervene". Yes, they are the people who think that if you work for the government, you are not a human being, you are an "econ" or a "governbeing", which are superior to the rest of us. I hate this thought
Nora Casiello you may be thinking the the market is the best solution to every problem. It is for most problems, but not all. See, Nick Hanauer: The dirty secret of capitalism -- and a new way forward
if Thaler didn't want to educate us with answers like Gladwell sought he should have stayed home -- this is the worst example of a dull man presenting what otherwise would be fascinating subject-- Gladwell is great though and you can feel his frustration with this guy-he barely contained that frustration but did>>>unfortunately -- next time stay home Thaler
I totally agree!!! Did Thaler not read Outliers???? Of course Gladwell would try to ferret out what drives Thaler as an outlier. Unfortunately Thaler is inept at introspection. He seems to have little patience or skill for self reflection.
@@shaynelee487 thank you! I agree to everything you said. I'd just like to add, Thaler could replace some of the arrogance that he boasts in abundance with, with some humility.
Or you might think that he’s watched a lot of X-Files and other such tv shows. Or he reads tons of conspiracy-theory and thrillers. Oh, WAIT- economists don’t read thrillers- but Nobel don’t yy Laureate Richard “Bad Boy” Thaler (he was a CPF of 🤫*shh!* that radical genius, AMOS!) is a wild 🤭and crazy🤪 maverick! 😲 (He’s read the *Forbidden* Keynes!! Oooo! and *gasp* books on psychology!) He’s notorious for doing all kinds of zany! madcap! NON-STANDARD! shenanigans (his BOOK was NOT EVEN A PROPER BOOK, it was SO far OUT THERE, it was foolhardy to write it, but what the heck? They acted like it was practically heresy! Anti-econ porno! But he just told them all to go to hell! Maybe it was totally avant-garde, but BY GOD, he was going to risk it all for TRUTH) 🤭, and non-economistic-type hijinx (he took the cashews!! What, REALLY? The rascal!). And finally, he’s -aw, shucks- just so modest too… (I just love it when a guy protests to the crowd that, “gee whiz, it warnt nuthin’… naw, I ain’t all that… I’m no good at this stuff…”, arguing and ever-so-humbly insisting that oh no, he’s not some fabulous XYZ, when nobody else has said he was, or really much of anything at all, let alone suggesting that he *is*. 😏
…yeah, I was tired and irritable and expecting another great Gladwell interview only to get *this* pompous egotist, smirking so smugly and repeatedly making sure that MG & the rest of us know just how hip and amusing and done-that he is, how bad-boy and subversive, and how easily far *beyond* he is, compared to all the pleonastic unfantastic lesser beings and plebes around him - Malcolm Gladwell, for example. Oh, MAN. I wish I could’ve heard MG’s thoughts through that hour…! Obviously, he is a master of self-restraint. The nicest, most tolerant interviewer of all time.
Malcolm keeps talking about psychoanalysis even though it's pseudoscience and Thaler doesn't even seem interested in it. Totally weird to derail the topic with it.
Gladwell let's his imagination run wild as a writer. If he can imagine it then he can't understand why it isn't true. Look at his misrepresentation of Daniel Kaneman's work in Blink or even his interviews with Michael Lewis.
Gladwell is interesting but too much off topic to be effective probably because of his training in pseudoscience like freudian psychology. It would be more interesting to have a proper behaviourist doing the interview
Nah, they're on the same level, but coming from different angles. Gladwell from an emotional/social approach and Thaler from a self-preservation approach. A Rotweiller can have warmth of heart and forebearance for a little Pomeranian. Doesn't mean the Pomeranian doesn't contribute anything to the relationship.
Malcolm Gladwell is an extremely talented interviewer. Give this guy a talk show!
And I remember trying very hard to get certain people for a program - they didn't work out. I reluctantly took someone into the group (I was forced to) and he turned out to completely outstrip the expectations I had for the people I tried so hard to get!
I love this interview. Thanks for sharing it! Alessio from Italy
Malcolm's magic power is that 9/10th of life turning bs into interesting entertainment. Thought fertiliser for Excellent teamwork.
It's pretty amusing to be listening to the closing Q&A in April 2024. Bridges falling down? Who could have predicted!
I love Richard Thaler's ideas and can appreciate his dry wit but he is calm/low energy and it takes a little effort to stay focused on his message in this format.
Sorry to be offtopic but does anybody know of a way to log back into an Instagram account?
I stupidly lost the login password. I would appreciate any help you can give me.
I am not a big Gladwell but the way he fucks with Thaler id just amazing.
Brilliant video. It's great to have both Malcolm Gladwell and Thaler on it (pity Kahneman didn't participate). My favorite parts are :
the comments regarding decision making at companies such as GM
choosing CEOs and
why schools should admit students right out of undergrad
"Dick" Thaler was in my class in grade school. Haven't seen him since. He was whisked off to prep school before ninth grade. Very interesting that he's now a Nobel laureate. Wait! Saw his cameo in The Big Short.
Love this chat. Here are some of the moment(s) I like.
6:30 Gladwell: Let's talk about your feeling
Malcolm Gladwell is truly a great interviewer.
Watching this because Thaler got the Nobel prize :D
Why behavioral economics needs a Copernicus.
A major criticism of behavioral economics is that it is merely a compendium of the many ways economic behavior veers from the ‘rational actor’ model of individual incentive that is foundational to classical economics. However, neurologically based explanations of incentive are very different from this model, and arguably can explain many of the findings of behavioral economics from first principles, like the movements of the planets in the night’s sky from the Copernican theory of the solar system. Presented here is precisely this argument from the perspectives of evolutionary biology and affective neuroscience, with detailed explanatory sources linked below.
Ultimately, the idiosyncrasies of behavior must be derived from first principles, namely an understanding from human neuroscience as to how incentive motivation works. Without this we are forced to rely on separate correlations between external observations and external events, with behavior acting in eccentric patterns like the planets in the night sky. In his critique of behavioral economics, the economist Jason Collins used just this analogy to describe how a lack of a deep and foundational understanding of how the world works can make the solar system seem positively deviant.
“So, I want to take you to a Wikipedia page that I first saw when someone tweeted that they had found “the best page on the internet”. The “List of cognitive biases” was up to 165 entries on the day I took this snapshot, and it contains most of your behavioral science favorites … the availability heuristic, confirmation bias, the decoy effect - a favorite of marketers, the endowment effect and so on ….
But this page, to me, points to what I see as a fundamental problem with behavioral economics.
“Let me draw an analogy with the history of astronomy. In 1500, the dominant model of the universe involved the sun, planets and stars orbiting around the earth. Since that wasn’t what was actually happening, there was a huge list of deviations from this model. We have the Venus effect, where Venus appears in the evening and morning and never crosses the night sky. We have the Jupiter bias, where it moves across the night sky, but then suddenly starts going the other way. Putting all the biases in the orbits of the planets and sun together, we end up with a picture of the orbits that looks something like this picture - epicycles on epicycles. But instead of this model of biases, deviations and epicycles, what about an alternative model?
The earth and the planets orbit the sun.
Copernicus, of course, it’s not quite as simple as this picture - the orbits of the planets around the sun are elliptical, not circular. But, essentially, by adopting this new model of how the solar system worked, a large collection of “biases” was able to become a coherent theory. Behavioral economics has some similarities to the state of astronomy in 1500 - it is still at the collection of deviation stage. There aren’t 165 human biases. There are 165 deviations from the wrong model. So what is this unifying theory? I suggest the first place to look is evolutionary biology. Human minds are the product of evolution, shaped by millions of years of natural selection.”
Perspective on incentive from evolutionary biology
evonomics.com/please-not-another-bias-the-problem-with-behavioral-economics/
A lay account of incentive from affective neuroscience.
www.scribd.com/document/495438436/A-Mouse-s-Tale-a-practical-explanation-and-handbook-of-motivation-from-the-perspective-of-a-humble-creature
An academic account of incentive from affective neuroscience- Berridge
lsa.umich.edu/psych/research&labs/berridge/publications/Berridge2001Rewardlearningchapter.pdf
Berridge Lab, University of Michigan sites.lsa.umich.edu/berridge-lab/
And wiki list of biases en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases
Those some have the link to the article about hindsight bias he was talking about
nice pieces, heard of it then in its sort.
My 8th grade Algebra teacher was flummoxed by all the people who were racing to buy two boxes of something when the sign said, "SALE! - one box 7 cents but two boxes for 15 cents".
His empirical findings and theoretical insights have been instrumental in creating the new and rapidly expanding field of behavioral economics."[7][8] "en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Thaler"
I wish there were checks on arrogance
Thank you! I thought I was the only one who noticed that. Thaler must be one of the most arrogant people. Great achievers always come with a good dose of humility.
"if markets are not efficient, some people might think that government should intervene". Yes, they are the people who think that if you work for the government, you are not a human being, you are an "econ" or a "governbeing", which are superior to the rest of us. I hate this thought
Nora Casiello you may be thinking the the market is the best solution to every problem. It is for most problems, but not all. See, Nick Hanauer: The dirty secret of capitalism -- and a new way forward
if Thaler didn't want to educate us with answers like Gladwell sought he should have stayed home -- this is the worst example of a dull man presenting what otherwise would be fascinating subject-- Gladwell is great though and you can feel his frustration with this guy-he barely contained that frustration but did>>>unfortunately -- next time stay home Thaler
I totally agree!!! Did Thaler not read Outliers???? Of course Gladwell would try to ferret out what drives Thaler as an outlier. Unfortunately Thaler is inept at introspection. He seems to have little patience or skill for self reflection.
@@shaynelee487 thank you! I agree to everything you said. I'd just like to add, Thaler could replace some of the arrogance that he boasts in abundance with, with some humility.
NFL owners play the game to the expectations of their fans. Like the modern GOP, it pays to be wrong if you are all wrong together.
You know he's an economist when he uses the word colluding***
Or you might think that he’s watched a lot of X-Files and other such tv shows. Or he reads tons of conspiracy-theory and thrillers. Oh, WAIT- economists don’t read thrillers- but Nobel don’t yy Laureate Richard “Bad Boy” Thaler (he was a CPF of 🤫*shh!* that radical genius, AMOS!) is a wild 🤭and crazy🤪 maverick! 😲 (He’s read the *Forbidden* Keynes!! Oooo! and *gasp* books on psychology!) He’s notorious for doing all kinds of zany! madcap! NON-STANDARD! shenanigans (his BOOK was NOT EVEN A PROPER BOOK, it was SO far OUT THERE, it was foolhardy to write it, but what the heck? They acted like it was practically heresy! Anti-econ porno! But he just told them all to go to hell! Maybe it was totally avant-garde, but BY GOD, he was going to risk it all for TRUTH) 🤭, and non-economistic-type hijinx (he took the cashews!! What, REALLY? The rascal!).
And finally, he’s -aw, shucks- just so modest too… (I just love it when a guy protests to the crowd that, “gee whiz, it warnt nuthin’… naw, I ain’t all that… I’m no good at this stuff…”, arguing and ever-so-humbly insisting that oh no, he’s not some fabulous XYZ, when nobody else has said he was, or really much of anything at all, let alone suggesting that he *is*. 😏
…yeah, I was tired and irritable and expecting another great Gladwell interview only to get *this* pompous egotist, smirking so smugly and repeatedly making sure that MG & the rest of us know just how hip and amusing and done-that he is, how bad-boy and subversive, and how easily far *beyond* he is, compared to all the pleonastic unfantastic lesser beings and plebes around him - Malcolm Gladwell, for example. Oh, MAN. I wish I could’ve heard MG’s thoughts through that hour…! Obviously, he is a master of self-restraint. The nicest, most tolerant interviewer of all time.
Malcolm keeps talking about psychoanalysis even though it's pseudoscience and Thaler doesn't even seem interested in it. Totally weird to derail the topic with it.
Gladwell let's his imagination run wild as a writer. If he can imagine it then he can't understand why it isn't true. Look at his misrepresentation of Daniel Kaneman's work in Blink or even his interviews with Michael Lewis.
Gladwell is interesting but too much off topic to be effective probably because of his training in pseudoscience like freudian psychology. It would be more interesting to have a proper behaviourist doing the interview
Malcolm Gladwell sucks at asking interesting questions.
guy is living in a privileged bubble
Malcolm is not good enough to interview him . Celebrity is often mistaken for substance
You're probably right. I was an early defender of Gladwell until I read the criticism and the source works.
Nah, they're on the same level, but coming from different angles. Gladwell from an emotional/social approach and Thaler from a self-preservation approach. A Rotweiller can have warmth of heart and forebearance for a little Pomeranian. Doesn't mean the Pomeranian doesn't contribute anything to the relationship.
What a waste of time, listen to charlie munger if you want to know about humans emotions in biz