The piece on the new theory of human behavior and how it can influence policies was excellent. Thank you! You summarized it perfectly with that 1-liner:
Another brilliant framework on rationality vs irrationality.
When I started my reading and work on public policy, I started off on a paternalistic note - that people are irrational and thus government has to nudge people away from these irrational paths. This was also the time Richard Thaler won the Nobel prize in Economics and I was completely sold for it.
Eventually I started observing irrational things in my own behavior, but which I feel (obviously biased) are helping me. A simple example is my fondness for Tea. Despite a lot of research saying that plain Black Coffee has better health benefits over Tea, I was not able to force myself out of Tea. Tea boosts my mood and I feel great! I found it perfectly reasonable to continue with Tea.
Ever since I started reading/writing fiction, I am better able to appreciate reason over this rationality-irrationality dichotomy. In fiction, we deal with characters, not agents. And characters are often reasonable, taking decisions based on their contexts, information, hormones and emotional status. I think policy folks should get some training to write stories to be able to come up with more reasonable policies :)
The piece on the new theory of human behavior and how it can influence policies was excellent. Thank you! You summarized it perfectly with that 1-liner:
"Our starting assumption matters. A lot."
thanks!
Another brilliant framework on rationality vs irrationality.
When I started my reading and work on public policy, I started off on a paternalistic note - that people are irrational and thus government has to nudge people away from these irrational paths. This was also the time Richard Thaler won the Nobel prize in Economics and I was completely sold for it.
Eventually I started observing irrational things in my own behavior, but which I feel (obviously biased) are helping me. A simple example is my fondness for Tea. Despite a lot of research saying that plain Black Coffee has better health benefits over Tea, I was not able to force myself out of Tea. Tea boosts my mood and I feel great! I found it perfectly reasonable to continue with Tea.
Ever since I started reading/writing fiction, I am better able to appreciate reason over this rationality-irrationality dichotomy. In fiction, we deal with characters, not agents. And characters are often reasonable, taking decisions based on their contexts, information, hormones and emotional status. I think policy folks should get some training to write stories to be able to come up with more reasonable policies :)
The AI article is well thought out and balanced... Good work!
"Deli mutation"?
Is it spelling autocorrect of "delimitation"?