Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

People Aren’t Dumb, the World Is Hard

freakonomics.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

161–170 of 453 posts

Re: People Aren’t Dumb, the World Is Hard

#161

Post by notabee »

alexmat wrote: post #33
cafard wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is something curious about posters on a techie site lauding the superiority of the hunter-gatherer life.

It may not be obvious from the context and the limited excerpt, but in the book Sapiens, the author is careful to make the point that this is not an invitation to revert to the hunter/gatherer lifestyle, in fact, we're past the point where that's a possibility. Rather we have to innovate our way out of the predicament we find ourselves in (the irony of fighting fire with fire is not lost on me). But in my mind, it ma…

The people immersed in technology should also be the ones to best understand both its potential and its limitations. Anyone who has dealt with the unpredictability and pitfalls in maintaining human-created complex software systems should also easily intuit our limits in understanding or controlling other even more complex systems such as the planet's biosphere.

Re: People Aren’t Dumb, the World Is Hard

#162

Post by pm90 »

rvern wrote: post #135
ppeetteerr wrote: post #34

This is probably the greatest argument for big government. If we were to eliminate the supervision of the establishment over the safety and security of everyday life, it would be very time consuming to handle every single aspect of it. There is always the issue of an overreaching government, and that's where the left/right party split comes in. Each party either creates more regulation and protection or take some awa…

No, this is one of the greatest arguments for small government or no government. People are more rational when the cost to them of being irrational is larger. Voting for good policies is a public good. When a voter is one among three hundred millions of citizens, only 1/300,000,000 (on average) of the benefits of the vote befall the individual voter. This gigantic externality means that the democratic market will sev…

On commenting on an article about why people have difficulty comprehending complex systems, you have just delivered an example of the phenomena.

Your basic point seems to be that a big Government will be so well run that individuals would rely on it to provide them with benefits, even in the case that the Government make poor decisions on policy choices. That is the whole point of a Government: to make life easier for people by taking care of things that are too expensive or complicated for people to do individually.

Re: People Aren’t Dumb, the World Is Hard

#163

Post by Retric »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #137
ppeetteerr wrote: post #34

This is probably the greatest argument for big government. If we were to eliminate the supervision of the establishment over the safety and security of everyday life, it would be very time consuming to handle every single aspect of it. There is always the issue of an overreaching government, and that's where the left/right party split comes in. Each party either creates more regulation and protection or take some awa…

> This is probably the greatest argument for big government The article talks about institutional inertia. The advantage of a market economy is your Blockbusters get replaced by Netflix. Imagine if film renting were a public agency. It would be much harder to disrupt. Governments are, by design, immortal. A crucial design decision is choosing what, in our society, we want to be immortal and what we want to be replace…

Netflix is still mailing out DVD's and library's have both computers and books. Which is very telling, most often new methods supplement existing systems not simply replace them. The real transition has been cheaper shipping costs replacing the need for local retail and that's been spreading across the economy for decades.

Further governments are often first adapters. Many legacy government IT systems exist, but as they generally work and cost less to maintain than replace. Really the advantage of free markets is information exchange and diminishing returns not simply building large scale systems.

Consider, some cars come with built in refrigerators yet we ended up with roadside stores selling cold beverages. That's the kind of tradeoff markets are great for identifying.

Re: People Aren’t Dumb, the World Is Hard

#164

Post by wgyn »

frgtpsswrdlame wrote: post #19
howeyc wrote: post #14

This looks to be a bunch of discussion around receiving the Nobel prize. Any pointers to where to find the information/studies that won him the prize. What people should/shouldn't be doing when making financial decisions. For instance, there was a reference to the fact that people "should ignore sunk costs" but don't. What are some other things to watch out for, and the reasons to do so?

Here's the lecture he's gave for the Nobel: https://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/economic-sciences/la... If you're looking for information on nudges, check this: http://economicspsychologypolicy.blogspot.com/2013/08/nudge-... It looks like they've stopped updating it but it has all sorts of economic research on nudges in it. Beware that some of this research is debated though.

There's another section of the Nobel site that provides background on the work, both a popular version and an advanced version. The advanced version amounts to a fairly substantive literature review. In general, you can find both documents for all Nobel Prizes, and the writing is very good.

Popular: https://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/economic-sciences/la...

Advanced: https://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/economic-sciences/la...

Re: People Aren’t Dumb, the World Is Hard

#166

Post by webkike »

rvern wrote: post #135
ppeetteerr wrote: post #34

This is probably the greatest argument for big government. If we were to eliminate the supervision of the establishment over the safety and security of everyday life, it would be very time consuming to handle every single aspect of it. There is always the issue of an overreaching government, and that's where the left/right party split comes in. Each party either creates more regulation and protection or take some awa…

No, this is one of the greatest arguments for small government or no government. People are more rational when the cost to them of being irrational is larger. Voting for good policies is a public good. When a voter is one among three hundred millions of citizens, only 1/300,000,000 (on average) of the benefits of the vote befall the individual voter. This gigantic externality means that the democratic market will sev…

People will be irrational regardless of its cost. Here's some evidence to support my claim with no citation: people will gamble their entire life savings away, regardless of how much money they have.

Re: People Aren’t Dumb, the World Is Hard

#167

Post by throwaway37585 »

ucaetano wrote: post #156
rvern wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, this is one of the greatest arguments for small government or no government. People are more rational when the cost to them of being irrational is larger. Voting for good policies is a public good. When a voter is one among three hundred millions of citizens, only 1/300,000,000 (on average) of the benefits of the vote befall the individual voter. This gigantic externality means that the democratic market will sev…

> People are more rational when the cost to them of being irrational is larger. This isn't strictly true, and I'd love to see you provide extensive data on such a exceptional claim. There is a lot of evidence showing that harsher punitive measures often have little to no impact on crime and wrongdoing.

I don’t think the claim is exceptional, but I’d love to see more studies on this. Check out the Centipede Game (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centipede_game):

“Parco, Rapoport and Stein (2002) illustrated that the level of financial incentives can have a profound effect on the outcome in a three-player game: the larger the incentives are for deviation, the greater propensity for learning behavior in a repeated single-play experimental design to move toward the Nash equilibrium.”

I recall reading somewhere that people also behave more rationally in other games like the Dictator Game (and exhibit fewer cognitive biases) when the stakes are higher, but can’t remember where.

Re: People Aren’t Dumb, the World Is Hard

#168

Post by skadamat »

skadamat wrote: post #80

I would really really encourage everyone here to watch Alan Kay's recent talks on how poorly we understand systems and why it's critical we get better at managing them. Some good ones: - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R1R2jH4PQEo - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N9c7_8Gp7gI Some people have strong opinions about Alan Kay's CS / programming work and I'd really encourage them to put them aside and deeply understand h…

Some more talks by Alan, for people who are interested: https://tinlizzie.org/IA/index.php/Talks_by_Alan_Kay

Re: People Aren’t Dumb, the World Is Hard

#169

Post by StanislavPetrov »

ppeetteerr wrote: post #34

This is probably the greatest argument for big government. If we were to eliminate the supervision of the establishment over the safety and security of everyday life, it would be very time consuming to handle every single aspect of it. There is always the issue of an overreaching government, and that's where the left/right party split comes in. Each party either creates more regulation and protection or take some awa…

>it would be very time consuming to handle every single aspect of it.

Life is complicated. It is time consuming to become an knowledgeable, aware person capable of contributing intelligently to society. It is also absolutely necessary if we want to have a self-governed society worth living in. You can't have a worthwhile government - let alone a big government - governed by the will of the masses when the masses are largely ignorant and unable to offer informed consent due to lack of understanding.

Re: People Aren’t Dumb, the World Is Hard

#170

Post by notabee »

peacetreefrog wrote: post #97
aalleavitch wrote: post #2

We’re dumb in comparison to the systems we’ve created. Increasingly, the disparity between what our technology is capable of and our own limitations as animals will become a pressing issue. One thing that always bothers me is how we have this myth of personal responsibility that supposes an individual is equipped to defend their own interests against a multinational corporation on their own. “Well I just don’t get wh…

"One thing that always bothers me is how we have this myth of personal responsibility that supposes an individual is equipped to defend their own interests against a multinational corporation on their own." 1. Our wiring isn't perfect, but who is better equipped to defend a person's interests than the individual themself? Serious question. 2. I don't think the "power" and coerciveness of multinational corporations is…

No one has the time, energy, or capacity to become expert in all domains within a complex civilization that could materially affect them. You are confusing "better equipped" with "having the most substantial interest". A person has the most substantial interest in their own safety and benefit, but that in no way implies that they will be the best equipped to attain that in all cases, or even understand how to. By all means, that person should seek out such knowledge, but it will never be as comprehensive as the accumulated wisdom of experts, or even compete with a motivated group of non-experts. You can advocate for personal agency and also still realize that a person standing alone is likely to get screwed over.
Post reply on HN