82,387
edits
Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces that Shape Our Decisions: Difference between revisions
Jump to navigation
Jump to search
Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces that Shape Our Decisions (view source)
Revision as of 11:04, 24 October 2021
, 24 October 2021no edit summary
Amwelladmin (talk | contribs) No edit summary |
Amwelladmin (talk | contribs) No edit summary |
||
| Line 5: | Line 5: | ||
All fine — as you would expect, some of Ariely’s examples are eyebrow raising — but it really shouldn’t be news and it certainly doesn’t require Dan Ariely to tell us that our liberal western societies aren’t as rational as we like to think (incontrovertible proof of that, not offered in Ariel’s book, being the politicians we elect and the amount of attention and money we collectively devote to cosmetics, fashion, celebrity and professional sport), especially as deeper epistemological examination reveals the idea of “rationality” isn’t wildly coherent anyway. | All fine — as you would expect, some of Ariely’s examples are eyebrow raising — but it really shouldn’t be news and it certainly doesn’t require Dan Ariely to tell us that our liberal western societies aren’t as rational as we like to think (incontrovertible proof of that, not offered in Ariel’s book, being the politicians we elect and the amount of attention and money we collectively devote to cosmetics, fashion, celebrity and professional sport), especially as deeper epistemological examination reveals the idea of “rationality” isn’t wildly coherent anyway. | ||
Uri Gneezy and Aldo Rustichini’s investigation into whether late pickup fees on parents at a daycare centre would be effective deterrent, and which concluded quite the opposite, is interesting: | |||
{{quote|“Before the fine was introduced, the teachers and parents had a social contract, with social norms about being late. Thus, if parents were late — as they occasionally were — they felt guilty about it — and their guilt compelled them to be more prompt in picking up their kids in the future. But once the fine was imposed, the daycare centre had inadvertently replaced the social norms with market norms. Now that the parents were ''paying'' for their tardiness, they interpreted the situation in terms of market norms. In other words, since they were being fined, they could decide for themselves whether to be late or not, and they frequently chose to be late.”}} | |||
but even here others have done a better job: {{author|David Graeber}}’s {{br|Debt: The First 5,000 Years}} puts that observation in much better context to much more powerful effect. | |||
But just as some anecdotes are enlightening, the implications of others are not nearly as plain or convincing as Ariel thinks they are, and some of his experiments struck me as being particularly glib, superficial and susceptible to plenty of alternative interpretations. | But just as some anecdotes are enlightening, the implications of others are not nearly as plain or convincing as Ariel thinks they are, and some of his experiments struck me as being particularly glib, superficial and susceptible to plenty of alternative interpretations. | ||