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The assumption is that the nudger knows what is good for you and prioritises that. Far more likely is that the nudger knows what he wants and prioritised that, likely rationalizing that it's good for you.
Aside from being one of those books that drags a point for too long, I found that nudge, like most books in the field has very flimsy evidence. For most studies there’s a lot of perfectly good explanations that don’t imply irrationality, not to mention all the bad statistics, small sample sizes, etc… I also find the idea of nudging a bit concerning, because the authors insist on saying they’re nudging you into the best decision *for you*, but they’re nudging you into what *they* think is best for you. For a book about biased decision making, there’s very little acknowledgement of the bias of the nudgers.
@@RandomRUclipsr-h3y Agreed - I think this goes back to each person's goals and values - one thing that seems rational for one person could be irrational for the other.
@@joshbisig For starters it assumes that the nudgers know better. Paternalism Light™️, is also paternalism, and comes with most of it’s defects. We love the “organ donor” example because it trades something we (people in the west) value for something we don’t anymore. If you don’t see issues with defaulting, you’re just not looking hard enough. Let’s say a country decides that to cut costs and reduce paperwork, the new default on emergencies is DNR, then makes changing the default so cumbersome that a whole industry of experts appears. It will just cost you $1000/year to be out of the list. Congratulations, you’ve just killed lots of people just because they’re poor. It also suffers the “highway through Earth” problem. If someone doesn’t know what’s the default, or what they need to do to change it, in what sense aren’t you violating their rights?
@@theondono these are concerns about the execution of defaults, not defaulting itself. If they're poorly implemented, opting out of a default could be cumbersome or confusing, but defaulting as an intervention is not inherently cumbersome or difficult to communicate to the public
@@joshbisig I'd fundamentally disagree that you can easily separate the two. My point more broadly is that by "defaulting" you are affecting the choices of many people (that's the point of doing it in the first place) under two big assumptions: 1) If they really preferred the other option, they can always change it. 2) The choice made the new default is really the best for at least the majority of the people. Number one is almost never true when it comes to governments. Most government procedures are quite cumbersome, and a lot of times heavily penalize poor working people (those who can't easily take time off during office hours). It's also a bit paradoxical that defaulting works *because the process is cumbersome in the first place*. If becoming an organ donor is a PITA, maybe we should solve that, not force it on everyone and then have an equally cumbersome process to reverse it. For number two we have so many historical examples of it terribly backfiring that we have several names for it, with one of my favorites being "the Vision of the anointed".
4:45 I kinda hate this example. Without further clarification, "a bankteller" appears to implicitly include "who is not active in the feminist movement" when the two options are contrasted like this. It feels a bit like a bait and switch that preys on people using their everyday language sense in a setting where the language of formal logic is used.
Yes, thank you! The explanation sounds unnecessarily complicated to me. In normal life we constantly 'shorten' our sentences, so it feels like that's the case in this example too.
I couldn't finish Nudge as I found it got a bit boring as it went on. I finished listening to Evolutionary Ideas a few days ago. I really enjoyed that so thanks for the recommendation 👍
Ah… humans and there negativity bias. Nudging isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but people like to think it is because, well, people refuse to believe they do make 100% their own choices, and when they don’t feel as such, they resent the others they feel made it (that’s why pushy sales tactics never work).
the bank teller analogy is flawed because it's not about just stacking probabilities. we have all this background knowledge about Linda and people who fit her profile are more likely to be active in the feminist movement regardless of their industry, so her bank teller status doesn't play a role in calculating the probability of her being a feminist. the question is whether she's more likely to be a feminist than not, while the variable of her being a bank teller is actually a constant. it would be good to know whether female bank tellers are more or less than 50% feminists, so we could actually make this count in favor or against the probability of her being a feminist. similarly, you can ask the following question: Peter is 45yo. He runs a consulting company and has graduated from University of Pennsylvania summa cum laude. He started out in commercial real estate and moved into consulting 10 years ago, employing over 250 people. Is Peter more likely to be: A newest iPhone owner or A newest iPhone owner and also an owner of a Mercedes S-class car? He fits the bill. He's more likely to own a Merc than not, even though simple stacking of probabilities counts against that. or for example, how come earthquakes are so common in Japan, and Indonesia is so volcanically active? shouldn't the probability of repeated seismic and volcanic activity be extremely low after such tumultuous periods? well, purely mathematically, yes, but when you count some priors, like being situated in places where tectonic plates meet, that counts in favor of raising the probability of volcanic and seismic activity. so in conclusion, certain priors, i.e. background knowledge, even though when isolated always have a probability
I wonder what some of the negative impacts of nudging have been - could it have contributed to the rising distrust in the authorities in the UK and US where nudging has been heavily implemented by governments? People may be aware they're being manipulated and this could lead to a reaction against that manipulation.
how about the ‘negatives’ of a sizeable proportion of the populace being ‘nudged’ into unnecessarily taking an experimental medical intervention, with no long term safety or efficacy studies ?
Have you ever gone to a job interview and told them to hire the previous candidate because he was better than you? If not, then you've engaged in nudging. We like to think our choices are entirely our own, that we’re not being sold something, but we chose you buy it. The truth is, we’re all nudging others constantly, in conversations, at work, on a first date and in every other interaction…
Better for themselves?? Better for the "nudger"you mean. Nudging is basically: i rather want you to do this instead of that. The nudger has a reason or motivation for you to pick this over that, this motivation is often a financial incentive or a propaganda motive or whatever, rarely the nudgers beneftis are equal or lower then your benefits when given a nudged choice.
I would argue that 'nudging' and 'marketing' are the same thing, except that marketing concerns financial transactions (and someone that tries to maximize it's profit). Nudging is more in the public domain, and therefore should be better for the general public. It's like if you don't make a conscious choice, a nudge 'will make a choice for you'. But you can still decide to do otherwise. In that sense it differs from punishment or coercion.
The problem with any sophisticated management system developed by some nerdy professor is that it has to get handed to some rather less engrossed manager to install and implement. They usually fail to understand all the "science" and the nuances, etc. of the system in question. They have their own job to get on with anyway. They cobble something together that in the end is typically a misguided version of what has been handed to them on some two day course, and all the aims fail. The implications of all of this when these systems get in the hands of politicians and civil servants, whose lifeblood is already about trying to achieve unobtainable social ideals, is pretty horrendous. Soviet Union 2.0 here we come.
The donation example leaves some unanswered question that makes me a bit skeptical. 1) Were the donors already willing to donate before being given the suggested levels? 2) What were the net worth of the donors in each scenario? 3) Did all the donations take place at the same event and in the same manner? 4) What was the total amount donated by each group? 5) What was the number of donors for each group? Also, it might be significant that the average for the ($5) group was 400% of the suggested value while the average donation of the ($400) group was 38% of the suggested value. Just thoughts I had when listening to it... I have no background in any behavioral science, so it might be obvious to someone that did.
Thank you!!! This was really good video - I'm really glad I watched this. Going through the comments though, I wish there was less skepticism towards ideas like this. I feel like there are instances where nudge can be used for benevolence. Like, in the case of trying to go carbon-neutral - nudge theory thru something like default options has the potential to create long-term change in the way we interact w/ our environment and consume. I feel like there's a large majority of people that view any psychological study to be a guide towards manipulation. Just because we know it exists doesn't mean it's bad. I feel like I trust brands more when they nudge me, but that may just be the way I've been brought up to view marketing. Hopefully a switch comes where people view marketing and psychological study in a better light, if we remain ignorant it isn't doing anyone any favors - corporate entities love it, so there's that. Alright that's it from me. Thank you again, this video was really good and explained exactly what I needed for a portion of my thesis. :) Cheers!
Libertarian paternalism is nonsense and sounds like rationalization of corrupt behavior. Ethical behavior brings something beneficial to the individual or to society. Manipulating an individual’s or a population’s psychology for financial gain, political gain, or other self-serving benefit is unethical.
Yeh , well knowing this for a long time my eyes purposely look to the other areas so as to save s buck . Nudge me once , shame on you nudge me twice shame on me !!! No comply !
"Libertarian paternalism" is more commonly used by philosophers. Paternalism and libertarianism are established positions in social and political philosophy, so the concept fits right in. Nudging is just one of the tools of a libertarian paternalist state, however. I would hope that behavioral economists were curious about those ethical positions since they would presumably be the ones who design policies based on them
Nudging is Unethical. It make's People make Choives tjat are'nt the Best for them, but for someone Else who Profit's from it, Financially or Otherwise.
Experimental psychologists are always elaborating new and flashy theories on how stupid and clueless people are. So they have feelings of low self-esteem and worthlessness and need to go to a (clinical) psychotherapist. What a profitable partnership.
The earthquake study is an example of psycho-logic (sic). The conclusion/explanation is vastly under determined. Maybe people realized, temporarily, the consequences of a devastating outcome (rather than the likelihood of the outcome). Pathetic.
![Felix "Unfair" | [Stray Kids : SKZ-PLAYER]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/Oswujxm2Ag0/mqdefault.jpg)
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The assumption is that the nudger knows what is good for you and prioritises that.
Far more likely is that the nudger knows what he wants and prioritised that, likely rationalizing that it's good for you.
“It helps people make better decisions.” For whom, and to whose standards of “good”?
most recently, for Pfizer.
You don't have to worry about that Patrick.
It has all been taken care of.
Who is most likely to nudge, someone with your best interest in mind, or someone looking to maximize their profits?
"One of the most famous books in all of behavioral science"..
What a damning comment on the field.
Aside from being one of those books that drags a point for too long, I found that nudge, like most books in the field has very flimsy evidence.
For most studies there’s a lot of perfectly good explanations that don’t imply irrationality, not to mention all the bad statistics, small sample sizes, etc…
I also find the idea of nudging a bit concerning, because the authors insist on saying they’re nudging you into the best decision *for you*, but they’re nudging you into what *they* think is best for you.
For a book about biased decision making, there’s very little acknowledgement of the bias of the nudgers.
@@RandomRUclipsr-h3y Agreed - I think this goes back to each person's goals and values - one thing that seems rational for one person could be irrational for the other.
I'm not seeing what's concerning. Nudging isn't forcing you to choose. With defaulting, you can still opt out of being an organ donor, for example
@@joshbisig For starters it assumes that the nudgers know better. Paternalism Light™️, is also paternalism, and comes with most of it’s defects.
We love the “organ donor” example because it trades something we (people in the west) value for something we don’t anymore. If you don’t see issues with defaulting, you’re just not looking hard enough.
Let’s say a country decides that to cut costs and reduce paperwork, the new default on emergencies is DNR, then makes changing the default so cumbersome that a whole industry of experts appears. It will just cost you $1000/year to be out of the list. Congratulations, you’ve just killed lots of people just because they’re poor.
It also suffers the “highway through Earth” problem. If someone doesn’t know what’s the default, or what they need to do to change it, in what sense aren’t you violating their rights?
@@theondono these are concerns about the execution of defaults, not defaulting itself. If they're poorly implemented, opting out of a default could be cumbersome or confusing, but defaulting as an intervention is not inherently cumbersome or difficult to communicate to the public
@@joshbisig I'd fundamentally disagree that you can easily separate the two.
My point more broadly is that by "defaulting" you are affecting the choices of many people (that's the point of doing it in the first place) under two big assumptions:
1) If they really preferred the other option, they can always change it.
2) The choice made the new default is really the best for at least the majority of the people.
Number one is almost never true when it comes to governments. Most government procedures are quite cumbersome, and a lot of times heavily penalize poor working people (those who can't easily take time off during office hours). It's also a bit paradoxical that defaulting works *because the process is cumbersome in the first place*.
If becoming an organ donor is a PITA, maybe we should solve that, not force it on everyone and then have an equally cumbersome process to reverse it.
For number two we have so many historical examples of it terribly backfiring that we have several names for it, with one of my favorites being "the Vision of the anointed".
4:45 I kinda hate this example. Without further clarification, "a bankteller" appears to implicitly include "who is not active in the feminist movement" when the two options are contrasted like this.
It feels a bit like a bait and switch that preys on people using their everyday language sense in a setting where the language of formal logic is used.
Yes, thank you! The explanation sounds unnecessarily complicated to me. In normal life we constantly 'shorten' our sentences, so it feels like that's the case in this example too.
I couldn't finish Nudge as I found it got a bit boring as it went on. I finished listening to Evolutionary Ideas a few days ago. I really enjoyed that so thanks for the recommendation 👍
Banger!
That sounds more my alley! Thanks for both!
can never thank you enough for making this video
Ah… humans and there negativity bias. Nudging isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but people like to think it is because, well, people refuse to believe they do make 100% their own choices, and when they don’t feel as such, they resent the others they feel made it (that’s why pushy sales tactics never work).
Nudging (which is folk psychology parading as science) is, at best, social anthropology. It is not serious psychology (if such even exists).
Hello ,
Can you tell me more channels/resources like this to learn behavioral science
I want to nudge you to the podcast if books could kill. They explain in a very great way how flimsy this and others like it are.
Thanks for the nudge, you fizzy soda.
Keep up the 20minute book summaries! Could be 40-60minutes if you ask me!
Great video, thanks!
the bank teller analogy is flawed because it's not about just stacking probabilities.
we have all this background knowledge about Linda and people who fit her profile are more likely to be active in the feminist movement regardless of their industry, so her bank teller status doesn't play a role in calculating the probability of her being a feminist.
the question is whether she's more likely to be a feminist than not, while the variable of her being a bank teller is actually a constant.
it would be good to know whether female bank tellers are more or less than 50% feminists, so we could actually make this count in favor or against the probability of her being a feminist.
similarly, you can ask the following question:
Peter is 45yo. He runs a consulting company and has graduated from University of Pennsylvania summa cum laude. He started out in commercial real estate and moved into consulting 10 years ago, employing over 250 people.
Is Peter more likely to be:
A newest iPhone owner
or
A newest iPhone owner and also an owner of a Mercedes S-class car?
He fits the bill. He's more likely to own a Merc than not, even though simple stacking of probabilities counts against that.
or for example, how come earthquakes are so common in Japan, and Indonesia is so volcanically active? shouldn't the probability of repeated seismic and volcanic activity be extremely low after such tumultuous periods? well, purely mathematically, yes, but when you count some priors, like being situated in places where tectonic plates meet, that counts in favor of raising the probability of volcanic and seismic activity.
so in conclusion, certain priors, i.e. background knowledge, even though when isolated always have a probability
Hey Pete! I really appreciate your approach to this "review". I subbed! More videos like this please!
Great recommendation! I’ve been thinking about this book…
I wonder what some of the negative impacts of nudging have been - could it have contributed to the rising distrust in the authorities in the UK and US where nudging has been heavily implemented by governments? People may be aware they're being manipulated and this could lead to a reaction against that manipulation.
how about the ‘negatives’ of a sizeable proportion of the populace being ‘nudged’ into unnecessarily taking an experimental medical intervention, with no long term safety or efficacy studies ?
Have you ever gone to a job interview and told them to hire the previous candidate because he was better than you? If not, then you've engaged in nudging. We like to think our choices are entirely our own, that we’re not being sold something, but we chose you buy it. The truth is, we’re all nudging others constantly, in conversations, at work, on a first date and in every other interaction…
Better for themselves?? Better for the "nudger"you mean. Nudging is basically: i rather want you to do this instead of that. The nudger has a reason or motivation for you to pick this over that, this motivation is often a financial incentive or a propaganda motive or whatever, rarely the nudgers beneftis are equal or lower then your benefits when given a nudged choice.
I would argue that 'nudging' and 'marketing' are the same thing, except that marketing concerns financial transactions (and someone that tries to maximize it's profit). Nudging is more in the public domain, and therefore should be better for the general public. It's like if you don't make a conscious choice, a nudge 'will make a choice for you'. But you can still decide to do otherwise. In that sense it differs from punishment or coercion.
So so useful
Bank Teller example seems flawed to me. Where is not a bank teller option?
You don't need one, you can still say which one is more likely.
thanks, I've been a big supporter of nudge ideology for ages (more catchy name than libertarian paternalism)
The problem with any sophisticated management system developed by some nerdy professor is that it has to get handed to some rather less engrossed manager to install and implement.
They usually fail to understand all the "science" and the nuances, etc. of the system in question. They have their own job to get on with anyway. They cobble something together that in the end is typically a misguided version of what has been handed to them on some two day course, and all the aims fail.
The implications of all of this when these systems get in the hands of politicians and civil servants, whose lifeblood is already about trying to achieve unobtainable social ideals, is pretty horrendous. Soviet Union 2.0 here we come.
The donation example leaves some unanswered question that makes me a bit skeptical.
1) Were the donors already willing to donate before being given the suggested levels?
2) What were the net worth of the donors in each scenario?
3) Did all the donations take place at the same event and in the same manner?
4) What was the total amount donated by each group?
5) What was the number of donors for each group?
Also, it might be significant that the average for the ($5) group was 400% of the suggested value while the average donation of the ($400) group was 38% of the suggested value.
Just thoughts I had when listening to it... I have no background in any behavioral science, so it might be obvious to someone that did.
Honestly, it was not convincing to me as well.
Thank you!!! This was really good video - I'm really glad I watched this. Going through the comments though, I wish there was less skepticism towards ideas like this. I feel like there are instances where nudge can be used for benevolence. Like, in the case of trying to go carbon-neutral - nudge theory thru something like default options has the potential to create long-term change in the way we interact w/ our environment and consume. I feel like there's a large majority of people that view any psychological study to be a guide towards manipulation. Just because we know it exists doesn't mean it's bad. I feel like I trust brands more when they nudge me, but that may just be the way I've been brought up to view marketing. Hopefully a switch comes where people view marketing and psychological study in a better light, if we remain ignorant it isn't doing anyone any favors - corporate entities love it, so there's that.
Alright that's it from me. Thank you again, this video was really good and explained exactly what I needed for a portion of my thesis. :) Cheers!
Libertarian paternalism is nonsense and sounds like rationalization of corrupt behavior. Ethical behavior brings something beneficial to the individual or to society. Manipulating an individual’s or a population’s psychology for financial gain, political gain, or other self-serving benefit is unethical.
Yeh , well knowing this for a long time my eyes purposely look to the other areas so as to save s buck . Nudge me once , shame on you nudge me twice shame on me !!! No comply !
"Libertarian paternalism" is more commonly used by philosophers. Paternalism and libertarianism are established positions in social and political philosophy, so the concept fits right in. Nudging is just one of the tools of a libertarian paternalist state, however. I would hope that behavioral economists were curious about those ethical positions since they would presumably be the ones who design policies based on them
Nudging is Unethical. It make's People make Choives tjat are'nt the Best for them, but for someone Else who Profit's from it, Financially or Otherwise.
Spoken like a true… idiot
It depends on the one who implements it.
Learn to spell
Understand the difference between Nudge and Sludge
That's not in the philosophy of nudging.
Smitham Via
Experimental psychologists are always elaborating new and flashy theories on how stupid and clueless people are. So they have feelings of low self-esteem and worthlessness and need to go to a (clinical) psychotherapist. What a profitable partnership.
Avg Judo W
The earthquake study is an example of psycho-logic (sic). The conclusion/explanation is vastly under determined. Maybe people realized, temporarily, the consequences of a devastating outcome (rather than the likelihood of the outcome). Pathetic.
Donation study -- use real money possessed by real participants. Then see the outcome. Typical empirical nonsense from psychology.
obama's bible