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

Why 'Nudges' Hardly Help

theatlantic.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 21 posts

Re: Why 'Nudges' Hardly Help

#11

Post by weisser »

cryoshon wrote: post #8
weisser wrote: post #2

We're currently in beta with a DNA-based health advice service ( http://withinhealth.com ) and here are a few observations (this will be written about more in detail at a future date on my personal website) - People remember health information that is specific (personalized) to them. 88% of our beta users are able to remember their genetic insights/advice 3 or more days after receiving them. - A compelling, personali…

Tried to sign up, but got: "403 Forbidden qXTJJBys/ed4Gx1wX @ Tue, 08 Dec 2015 18:00:18 GMT BRICK-6"

Thanks - should be fixed!

Re: Why 'Nudges' Hardly Help

#12

Post by saidajigumi »

pbreit wrote: post #4

Author hardly demonstrates how nudges "hardly help". In fact, my guess is that nudges are extremely effective. Just the trivial 10c grocery bag fees (a "nudge", imo) can reduce bag use by 80% (whether or not bag reduction is good/bad is a different discussion).

As my other post in this thread gets into, this example of a "nudge" doesn't compare to the junk food case, since junk food is effectively designed to hack our brains' "food reward" mechanisms. Bag use is effectively neurologically "neutral", but junk food (and most other highly processed food) is very much not. "Pringles, can't eat just one!" turns out to be a lot more than a marketing slogan.

Re: Why 'Nudges' Hardly Help

#13

Post by Nadya »

saidajigumi wrote: post #12
pbreit wrote: post #4

Author hardly demonstrates how nudges "hardly help". In fact, my guess is that nudges are extremely effective. Just the trivial 10c grocery bag fees (a "nudge", imo) can reduce bag use by 80% (whether or not bag reduction is good/bad is a different discussion).

As my other post in this thread gets into, this example of a "nudge" doesn't compare to the junk food case, since junk food is effectively designed to hack our brains' "food reward" mechanisms. Bag use is effectively neurologically "neutral", but junk food (and most other highly processed food) is very much not. "Pringles, can't eat just one!" turns out to be a lot more than a marketing slogan.

That slogan is for Lay's potato chips. Pringles' slogan is "you don't just eat them".

Source: I love Pringles. http://i.imgur.com/oibfGJA.png

Re: Why 'Nudges' Hardly Help

#14

Post by Someone1234 »

pbreit wrote: post #4

Author hardly demonstrates how nudges "hardly help". In fact, my guess is that nudges are extremely effective. Just the trivial 10c grocery bag fees (a "nudge", imo) can reduce bag use by 80% (whether or not bag reduction is good/bad is a different discussion).

The bag reduction I would argue is a "good" thing, that being said, there have been reports about reusable bags causing nasty food poisoning.

The problem is a lot of reusable bags aren't easy to clean (e.g. cannot be placed in a washing machine) and people reuse bags for both uncooked meats and fresh vegetables then just leave them for long periods with food bacteria on them.

Most of the general public doesn't realise the risk, and unfortunately even if you do realise it, most re-usable bags aren't cleanable anyway. All you can do is spray them with disinfecting spray every so often and hope for the best.

Re: Why 'Nudges' Hardly Help

#15

Post by rjdevereux »

saidajigumi wrote: post #10

I'm a bit surprised that this article doesn't deal with the increasing amount of science behind neurological food reward mechanisms. The tl;dr is that our junk food (and much mass-produced food in grocery stores) has been tailored for a kind of hyper-palatability that mutes the effectiveness of our normal satiety mechanisms. So in the article's context the "nudge" is up against an evolving attack by industrial food a…

Related book by the former head of the FDA

"Dr. Kessler shows us how our brain chemistry has been hijacked by the foods we most love to eat: those that contain stimulating combinations of fat, sugar, and salt"

http://www.amazon.com/The-End-Overeating-Insatiable-American...

Re: Why 'Nudges' Hardly Help

#16

Post by saidajigumi »

Nadya wrote: post #13
saidajigumi wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As my other post in this thread gets into, this example of a "nudge" doesn't compare to the junk food case, since junk food is effectively designed to hack our brains' "food reward" mechanisms. Bag use is effectively neurologically "neutral", but junk food (and most other highly processed food) is very much not. "Pringles, can't eat just one!" turns out to be a lot more than a marketing slogan.

That slogan is for Lay's potato chips. Pringles' slogan is "you don't just eat them". Source: I love Pringles. http://i.imgur.com/oibfGJA.png

Thanks for the correction!

Re: Why 'Nudges' Hardly Help

#17

Post by chadgeidel »

Kluny wrote: post #6
vinceguidry wrote: post #5

> Thanks to problems like these, the economist (and frequent Atlantic contributor) Teresa Ghilarducci has called the 401(k) Is this true? Is your money better off in an IRA, even with an employer match?

If you just let your employer put your retirement savings in their default mutual fund, what you're going to get is some product sold to the company by a money manager who is taking 2-3% of your money off the top. Given how rare it is for a mutual fund to consistently return even 4% for any amount of time (seriously, if you know of one that does let me know and I'll sign up at once - 1-2% is more typical), you end up…

Forgive me if this is ignorant, but does that basically mean the "employer match" (common at orgs I've worked for) is basically doing nothing as it's a similar percentage?

Re: Why 'Nudges' Hardly Help

#18

Post by SilasX »

pbreit wrote: post #4

Author hardly demonstrates how nudges "hardly help". In fact, my guess is that nudges are extremely effective. Just the trivial 10c grocery bag fees (a "nudge", imo) can reduce bag use by 80% (whether or not bag reduction is good/bad is a different discussion).

Indeed they are, because they a) pick extreme lower hanging fruit, and b) completely trivialize the costs thereof.

Imagine that they start nudging in cases where the benefit of that option isn't nearly as clear, and you have to go through that for virtually every transaction:

You reach for an item on the shelf: "Wait! Did you know you can pick this other item with slightly less fat?" Repeat x100 for every shopping trip.

Your paycheck is now 80% deductions: "We found that the optimal budget buys these necessities in bulk under these programs. Don't worry! You can opt out of this first one by going to this office, the second by going to this office, the third..."

"We found we could increase employment and reduce dependence on public assistance by randomly changing the procedure for applying for benefits!"

Re: Why 'Nudges' Hardly Help

#19

Post by vinceguidry »

chadgeidel wrote: post #17
Kluny wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you just let your employer put your retirement savings in their default mutual fund, what you're going to get is some product sold to the company by a money manager who is taking 2-3% of your money off the top. Given how rare it is for a mutual fund to consistently return even 4% for any amount of time (seriously, if you know of one that does let me know and I'll sign up at once - 1-2% is more typical), you end up…

Forgive me if this is ignorant, but does that basically mean the "employer match" (common at orgs I've worked for) is basically doing nothing as it's a similar percentage?

Employers only match what you put in, whereas mutual funds take fees off of the returns. That suggests to me to contribute only enough to get your match, and roll it into an individual account after you leave the company for more control over where it goes.

Re: Why 'Nudges' Hardly Help

#20

Post by richmarr »

nickff wrote: post #7
richmarr wrote: post #3

It probably won't come as much of a shock to folks here, but this article has a misleading title. In the third paragraph, "Nudges hardly help" softens all the way to "nudging sometimes... isn’t effective". I've come across three groups of reactions to "Nudging": 1) Yay! Let's use science for good! 2) Yeah but it's not a silver bullet 3) I think they're brainwashing us Camp 1 is sensible, and has room for discussion a…

I have issues with nudging, but am unsure of whether I fit in one of your categories. My issues are: a) When a few people make de-facto decisions for everyone else, those decisions are prone to causing black swans because of a lack of (real) diversification of risk. One example of this would be if 20 countries used the default retirement portfolio scheme (that is often used to support nudges), and in one country, the…

Good points all.

Point (a) is a potentially a huge problem, I agree. An entire country suffering from poor pension investments all at once could have disasterous consequences.

My understanding of the typical pension opt-in change is that it opts you in to your company's default pension rather than a state default pension, so the nation as a whole would have diversification even if customers of some pension providers are at risk (unless that nation didn't have diverse pension providers, in which case they already have a problem). Could be wrong, not my area.

Issue (b) is interesting too. I'd say it fell into my third group because it seems to rest on people being lulled into a false sense of security and then taken advantage of. There are a couple of reasons why I don't think it'd be a problem... one applies to "good" nudge units and the other is more general.

Firstly, at a 'good' nudge unit they operate transparently, both at the point of intervention and when publishing findings after the fact. If you look at Richard Thaler's work, he uses 3 'laws' to define 'good' nudges that make it hard for abuse to seem possible:

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/01/upshot/the-power-of-nudges...

Secondly, a more general point. Nudge units on the whole use a tiny subset of the psychological arsenal that companies use daily. They only use the stuff there's clear scientific evidence for ploughing on layers of gamification, incentives, information assymetry, etc. Yet companies do not feel bound by Richard Thalers "3 laws of nudging", they rarely follow more than 1. That's fair enough, as it's harder to switch to a different government and governments have more power over us, but it does raise the question... if our decision making skills atrophy over time then that would have already happened with companies, and I'm not sure I've seen evidence to support that view. Again, could be wrong.

Post reply on HN