Episode 43: The Nature of Nudges

Very bad. Wizards is a podcast with a philosopher, my dad, and psychologist Dave Pizarro, having an informal discussion about issues and science. That the discussion contains bad words that I'm not allowed to say, and knowing my dad, some very inappropriate jokes. World needs bad men. But keep the other bad men from the door. Welcome to Very Bad Wizards. I'm Tamlar Summers from the University of Houston. Dave, I'm struggling with this. Is it JIF or is it GIF?

So there's a big there's a big nerd debate about this, and the guy who originated the file format, here we're talking about the little animated pictures of cats and stuff that Matt Welch has made. part of uh of the Very Bad Wizards podcast. There's a big nerd debate and it's it's either so the guy who invented that format swears up and down that it's pronounced GIF.

But I don't think that he's the final arbiter of this. Like I actually think it's gif. It's too close to gift for me to actually care what that guy says. So you're like the Derrida? Exactly. He's not He has no say. But I think in this case w first of all G I often is soft. It's a soft G for G I magic. It's not magic, right? It's like a magic trick. Well like giraffe, right? Yeah, yeah. But second of all um By the way, I'm David Pizarro from Cornell University. Yeah you are.

I I think you just leave it up to the guy, given that it could go either way. The other thing that fucks me up is that the peanut butter that's called JIF is spelled with a J, so I have a very clear in my head notion of what JIF is supposed to look like when it's spelled out. And it's with a Uh you know, I dn didn't think of that, but now I'm starting to come Trying to see it your will. Write a strongly worded letter to the guy. All right.

Well your boy Vladimir Putin, uh, he's he's p starting a lot of trouble right now and it's there's there's there's deep questions about uh what it is that we should do and You know, unfortunately I don't think either of us know enough about it or virtually anything about it really. I'm sort of a I'm aware of this person named Putin that you mentioned. And you're now aware that there is a country called Ukraine. Uh some of my best friends are Ukrainian.

I was watching Jeopardy the other day and this is what I do now, you know, with my injury. And uh There was y geography categories are the ones I do the worst on. There was one question, it was like borders. This country is bordering the something something river and this country

And this country, you know, and someone immediately got the answer. I had never heard of any of the the the things or places that they were talking about. Like if you like any of the I I never heard of the river, I'd never heard of any of the countries. The countries that were Might as well have been Middle Earth. Exactly. If you had just asked me is is it a real country? Like yes or no, I would have I I would have had a fifty fifty chance of getting

You know, I I blame the uh Soviet Union mm for disbanding. Um because when when we were growing up it was very easy. Uh you're just like everything was the USSR, you know, and now now we have to learn all these other countries. So first they do that, first they fuck up our geography and now they're starting trouble in Ukraine. It's a problem. So according to I know some politicians, Obama needs to step up and do something about it.

I tend to think that that's wrong, but I'm not basing that on any uh any geopolitical.

Maybe I can segue into this this flash episode by saying maybe what he should do is apply subtle psychological techniques. And therefore influence him to do the right thing. That is a great segue.

So this sort of this this came out of our discussion with Paul Bloom when we were mentioning the the power of reason. And one of the things that we mentioned was one of the studies done by my good friend Jonathan Lavav and

Uh a couple of his co-authors, Dan Zigger is the the lead author, on Israeli judges and their decisions about parole. This is a paper that made quite quite a bit of impact. But in a nutshell, what that paper shows is that When these judges are making parole decisions, they're pretty drastically affected by whether they make that parole decision before they get a chance to take a break and have a snack. This is one of the findings that Paul Bloom sort of brushes aside.

But and it's weird'cause having having looked at the data, it's it's hugely significant. It's like you go from having a sixty five percent chance of being paroled right after they've had their their you know, their their breakfast uh and they're early in the day to having a zero percent chance of being paroled. It's not like normal social psychology where it's just like, you know You mean all all the papers that you read?

Y you have to massage the statistics and give them a happy ending in order to like get anything to

No, I know. And and there are you know, there are a lot of objections. Um there there were a lot of objections raised, but as far as I know, this this finding stands. I mean so so um it doesn't Y it it is not as if the prisoners are somehow non randomly assigned to time of day, it's not as if the really bad prisoners get get presented first, it's not as if the bad attorneys forget to make appointments until later.

it it really does seem to be just the mere presence of the brakes. Now, these aren't decisions about culpability. These are criminals already, so it's not they're not guilty or not guilty decisions. But they are decisions about whether or not somebody should stay in prison or be be released. Yeah. Especially to the guy. To the person, right. Imagine imagine if if you learned that that had had an influence on on your decision. It'd be like throw the judge a power bar.

Yeah, you bring like some muffins. Like they do for if you're ever on a thesis committee and they know why they they bring the muffins or the donuts. I remember at Yale they they started banning um b uh apparently there became there was an arms race. Bringing like champagne and shit. And they had to put they had to squash it. Yeah. Right. Bring like some really good single mile scotch and you know like

So the the nature of these subtle influences so so there can be a debate as as we sort of had with Paul about whether or not so how important and pervasive these are. But what we what I think is is is pretty clear is that A lot of these things can be manipulated. So nobody here in this i is arguing that that we should manipulate judges by by not giving them food or giving them food. But there are lots of findings where it it becomes sort of the natural next step to ask whether or not

these tactics should be used to influence people. And that's what I wanted to talk to you about uh today, because the field of behavioral economics and judgment decision making, uh, as it's growing in popularity and power, it's becoming increasingly a real option to use some of these subtle what what some Dick Taylor and Kass Einstein have termed nudges.

um becoming increasingly a a popular alternative to say, well, if we want to manipulate people, let's let's use some of these m manipulations that we glean from the psychology literature and the behavioral science literature to try to influence people.

uh one way or another. And full disclosure, I uh work with a team, B E Works out of Toronto, um, where we do this for a living. So we're uh a a consulting company and We ha that's that's what we do. We meet with corporate clients and we tell them how they can use psychology to make more money. And sometimes I feel dirty about But I want to know whether I should.

So so yeah, that that's the topic f for today. But before we leave this study, there's a couple of interesting questions that just this finding itself raises. It shouldn't matter what order you're being presented for parole. That shouldn't make any difference in terms of the judgment of whether you're granted parole. Right. Right. I don't know what normative theory would say elect. Well they deserved it because, you know, he went at eleven thirty. They hadn't had anything to eat. Right.

For two and a half hours. Uh and they're so he had it coming. The question is what you do about that and one thing you could do is is really codify the law, put it into categories, take it out of the hands of these parole boards. And just make it something like you add up their points based on some sort of system, you know, then it just doesn't matter what they've eaten. All they have to do is make the necessary calculations. You probably wouldn't even need a hearing.

seems to be what we have now. And there has been a movement in criminal justice. Well, there's movements on both sides. It's a big debate of how much discretion judges and juries should have. And I'm definitely on the side of giving judges a parole boards and as much discretion as possible. But these kinds of findings fuck with me because they if they're l so much less likely to grant somebody parole after they haven't eaten for two two hours. And there's gotta be so many other of these biases.

It's disturbing, right?'Cause you can take care of one but you don't know but it seems like a Hydra. Like you never know what at an individual level, for instance, if if the judge didn't get enough sleep. Right? I mean these presumably these effects are due to to fatigue of some sort, right? I love the quote that they end with says, Yeah, right, Justice is what the judge ate for breakfast might be an appropriate caricature for human decision making in general.

That should really bother people. Right. That should really bother people. And this is It'd especially bother people like me who want ca who don't believe that a a predetermined category uh are the way to go when it comes to justice. Who really think you need human beings taking every particular case, because cases are unique, and taking all the factors from a particular case.

and and making a judgment based on that. I mean I'm I'm so firmly in that camp. But when it comes to things like this, and God only knows what race the person is However the size of the person, the you know, the looks of the person, all of these things have gotta have a big effect. There's a couple of things. Like so one, you don't have to think that these uh these small influences have a long lasting or enduring effect on something like attitudes, right?

It doesn't need to be demonstrated that judges change their view of the penal code or something because of this. All that matters is that it that it affect them temporarily, but briefly, and in a subtle way, and then it can have these huge huge implications, right? These huge effects. And and so so that's an that's enough right there to make us scared.

It does seem like there might be ways to address a situation like that. Like so maybe you don't y you have to set it up so that the person comes twice at two different times of the day. Or that they you know That they only make their decisions at the end of the day. They don't make their decisions right at the time when they have the hearing or something. Right.

is that it's unclear w which of the decisions is the normatively correct one. So uh so the implication here, given all of the research on say decision fatigue and say information overload is that the inferior decision is made when you don't have the appropriate sort of cognitive resources to think about the case. But um but it's not entirely clear that what's maybe in fact the fatigue judges are are closer to to accurate.

I was just reading a paper today about the influence of disgust on judgments of punishment. And it turns out that if if a crime these are are these are just scenarios presented to to individuals. Um but when you give people a description of a crime that was committed, if it has disgusting things as part of the crime, uh people are actually closer to what the model penal code says you ought to do.

than if it doesn't. So imagine these two pairs of cases. Uh The model penal code, I guess, gives guidelines for how much punishment um is deserved by certain kinds of criminal violations. So one is s a person stabs someone in the neck and in the arm and there's lots of blood spurting everywhere. And another one is a person uh pulls out a gun and attempts to shoot someone but misses.

I don't know if those two examples are the exact right ones, but imagine that both of those the law says are equivalent in terms of what punishment you should dole out. Well it turns out that the that the presence of something disgusting like blood spurting everywhere actually makes people more severe in their punishment judgment.

Which makes sense. But it turns out that they are actually closer to the model penal code's recommendations. It's the people in the dry, non disgusting situations that are undershooting. May see what you're saying. You're saying that like it might be that these emotions that we would o sort of automatically assume might be biases that w they might actually be the thing that are There might be tools for us to accurately calculate what the proper judgment is.

And as soon as I read that I thought, Oh Tamler's gonna love this finding'cause you you often argue that that disgust might play a a an important role in sort of energizing energizing intuitions about injustice. Here's the problem with that a with this whole with that whole approach is the model PETO code is not something that you know, it itself could be overly harsh.

No, true, true. But that's that's one of the few that actually has some sort of normative comparison. So so yeah, it could very well be. It could very well be that the intuitions that gave rise to the model penal code are are a result of over sort of But no matter where you stand on the degree and I I want to do a whole episode on how much emotions should matter in in criminal justice, no matter where you stand on that issue. you should think that it shouldn't matter how m how hungry you are.

Absolutely. Right. So if you're right, if you get closer to the right answer, it's completely by fucking accident. And that's not a reliable way to And that's not fair, right? It's just not fair. So even I would say that and I normally have no patience for this kind of everything has to be systematic a and consistent.

Right. So this is why I like this. This is I'm gonna say something nice about social psychology and all this research is the more we know about these kinds of things, the more we can address them. you know, taking away the discretionary power of a of a hearing board without taking away discretionary power. So so you can get all the benefits of the discretion that you give to human beings.

rather than some sort of, you know, codified system of law and you can eliminate as many of these biases as possible. It doesn't it seems like that's something that's a third alternative that I'm r I'm really torn about this because on the one hand I I get it like I do want there to be sort of the power to make to make exceptions that take into you know, no fucking algorithm can take into account

um you know, all the nuances of a situation. But at the same time, I'm I'm struck by the feeling that most of these biases are working against people and that if you can cut down on errors by establishing clearer rules and constraining the the say in this case the judge's ability to go outside of them then because who knows how many of these biases.

We we it's like whack a mole. You'll you'll we take care of this bias and then a new bias comes up. Right, right. Uh So it may very well be that you implement a power bar, you know, like during during deliberations policy. Yeah. Uh which leads to to another question is, you know.

If we're willing to do that, then it does seem like a natural uh the the natural reaction is to therefore implement some sort of policy to change to to remove this bias. An even more interesting question is whether or not these findings should should allow the government

say in terms of making public policy to to n use these kinds of tactics in favor of getting people to act as they ought to act. Now what if I want to make people less likely to eat fatty foods? Right. More likely to give blood or All right, well let's uh take a very quick break and we'll talk about that um in a second. Let me tell you a little bit about Tyler Dirk. Tyler was a knight first.

While the rest of us were sleeping, he worked. He had one part-time job as a projectionist. See, a movie doesn't come all on one big reel, it comes on a few. So someone has to be there to switch the projectors at the exact moment that one reel ends and the next one comes. You can see these. little dots come into the upper right hand corner of the screen. In the industry And cigarette burns. That's the cue for a changeover. Shit job. because it affords them other interesting opportunities.

So when the snooty cat and the courageous dog with the celebrity voices meet for the first time in Real 3, that's when you'll catch a flash of Tyler's contribution to the film. Nobody knows that they saw it.

Welcome back to Very Bad Wizards. Um okay, now we're gonna get into some nitty-gritty about the problem of psychological manipulation and behavioral economics and everything that that entails. But before we get to that, I wanted to say, Tamil and I wanted to say

Uh we really appreciate all the support you guys have been giving us. And there's a couple of ways if you're a new listener and you like us enough to want to support us, you can go to our webpage at very badwizards.com and under the support tab you'll find a couple of ways. One you can donate via PayPal.

directly or two you can click on the Amazon link and there are instructions there. Do your regular shopping through Amazon. You won't get charged any more but we'll get a little bit of what you buy. And uh you can follow us on Twitter at Tamler at peas and at Very Bad Wizards. That account is generally run by Matt Welsh. Uh Matt Welsh also runs our extremely popular Tumblr page. I think it's definitely the most Well like that.

and and uncontrovers well not uncontroversial, but popular thing about the podcast. controversially popular. It probably will it will probably outlast the actual podcast. The podcast is almost a side effect of the t of the Tumblr page, even though it's causally in in the wrong direction. The necessary evil of the of the of the Tumblr page, I think.

That's right. Accusing uh Matt Welsh of being drunk, which is um what one of our recent iTunes I assume they're accusing you because I'm always so sober in in thought and in in in thought and in alcohol. Oh, they're accusing you.

If they're not, it means I am not as good at h at holding my liquor as I as I as I thought. Uh You definitely are not Oh uh speaking of iTunes on iTunes, uh you can uh you can rate us, which we love, but also you can check out our old episodes and one of the things that Dave and I

are going to do from now on is just recommend an old episode from our archives to listen to that we particularly like. Now, just'cause we like it that doesn't mean that other people will like it. In fact We're very bad at predicting which is going to be our most popular ones. That is true. Um but uh but you know, for what it's worth, here are some of our favorites. So Dave, what's your recommendation for this week?

So one of my favorite, even though it's one of Tamlar's least favorite, is the one uh episode twenty nine on performance enhancing drugs, tenure pills and hyperbolic chambers, which was an allusion to your co common mispronunciation. Maybe that's why I don't like that. Maybe that's why people think you drink a lot. I still think she might have been referring to you. I think you might sound drunk at I I generally have the giggles.

So mine is um episode seventeen. I really like this episode. Uh it's called Learning About Bushmen by Studying Freshman. It's about the main topic is a paper by Joe Henrik and at all, I guess. Um uh that that that talk about how most psychology and and um behavioral economics Most of that work is done studying undergraduate college students in the United States and that is a very weird population. It's not representative of the psychology of uh humans around the world.

And it's also an episode that I don't remember what we were fighting about, but we were fighting. You and I were arguing a lot about that episode before it and then for some reason it's one of my favorites. Like it just came out really well. So Yeah, yeah, that's right. And we were and we were arguing quite a bit. So I don't think we're gonna argue too much today, although who knows. But for this segment at least, what I wanted to talk about was since this is a short episode.

It really is. I I'm I'm cheating a little bit because it's a topic that's been on my mind because I feel dirty for some of the behavioral economics consulting work that I've been been doing. And the question is really, you know, as we Plus well no I never feel guilty about that. As Walter Synod Armstrong told me the other day, guilt is a useless emotion. I'll keep that in mind in my interactions with him.

So uh now that we know a lot about how to influence and persuade, and we have decades of research not just from behavioral economics but but social psychology, we know a whole lot about how to influence individuals. The government through its communications could influence us. Um Uh corporations can influence us pretty easily through sort of using this consumer psychology or judgment decision making research. And have for a while.

And they have been doing for a while. The UK has this nudge unit dedicated to sort of altering the behavior of of the people of the UK by using these psychological nudges, um these tricks from behavioral economics. And I and I think it's a it's it's a question that's been bugging me a little bit'cause I wanna know how guilty to feel. What level of manipulation, psychological manipulation, is is ethically appropriate? And I don't know what the answer is, but

Um but let me give you some examples. So one is I think that everybody agrees that if if you are right deceive a consumer. that it's wrong. Right? So so I just wanted to anchor on that. Right? If you just lie to people and say like this this will make you lose fifty pounds in one month, um, and that's why you sell, that that's just wrong.

But that's not what what the science of nudging is is all about. But then you have let's let's call this a a grayer what I think is a grayer area, but some in between land where you have the classic Um uh unconscious sort of manipulations. And that's what the the little clip from the Fight Club is alluding to. So you flash something at at uh and subconsciously um below the threshold of awareness. So the consumer never knows whether they're being manipulated or

Now it used to be thought that this didn't work, but there is some evidence that at least in some cases it works. So here the consumer never even knows that that they've been manipulated. Right? They didn't they're they have no knowledge that there's even been an attempt at manipulation. And then finally you have just a little bit of a little bit of a little But that's not the nudging either, right? I mean that's not what Sunstein and and Thaler are

No right. That's not that's not what they're recommending, right? What they're recommending is just presenting the right information. So you give everybody access to the information. They know that they're being targeted. They know that they're being um that there's an attempt made to persuade them.

but you use some sort of changing the context in which the information is given, change the comparison condition, and and you alter their behavior. So a good example of this is presenting a uh decoy price option. So you have two two options that you're trying to sell a consumer, a cheap one, an expensive one, a g a better one, and a worse one. And um you can alter which one they go for by simply presenting a third decoy option. It's a third option

that should make n absolutely no difference when you're comparing the first two. Now, here you've given people the same exact information as before. It's just that you're using sort of this g psychological conjuring, this sort of manipulation in order to convince people. Framing, right?

Exactly. So, I wanna know, is even this last level, what do you think? All right. Well d I'm glad you uh asked me because I'm a philosopher, I'm an ethicist, and this is what I do. Right I've come up with a theory of conditions Necessary and sufficient. That's right. Done some conceptual analysis. No. Yeah. of uh of come up with a theory. Um'cause we've talked about this a a little bit before. Pretty smart for a drunk.

So so there's two things, there's two factors you have to consider. Two moral vectors, I guess. Vectors, is that right? Vectors, valences. It's a it's something with a V. Anyway, it's something with a V. So uh uh so so the first is What the benefits of the of the particular manipulation or framing or whatever you wanna call it? How is it going to benefit society, right? So that's the first vector or some V word. The second is um is is the effect on our autonomy.

Right. So the more manipul manipulative it is, the worse. The greater the threat or the attack, I guess, on your autonomy, the greater uh the worse it is. And then a and then the other is the greater the benefit to society or to the consumer or to the citizen or whoever then then the better it.

And you just have to these two things go against each other and you just have to, you know, weigh the two against each other and try to come to some conclusion about whether w one of them outweighs the other. Now, last thing I'll say about this, right? So what does it mean by autonomy here, right? Because we're not talking about free will.

They're not an attack on our ability to do otherwise in the strong metaphysical sense, right? But I think there is a sense of autonomy that we're really concerned about in these cases. And I think it's the I think it's what the person would want to do upon reflection. Right, what they would endorse upon reflection, the choice that they would make upon reflection. The more you're taking them away from that. the greater the threat to their autonomy. The more you might be nudging them towards that.

The gr the less the threat to the autonomy, you might even say that it's actually some uh a kind of a positive. It's actually making them freer. Right. Philosophers call this, you know, w you know, whatever matches their higher So you can

Frankfurt thing. So let's take the organ donation. Although quickly, you know, this is there's a clear case in which people do this to themselves. Uh hypnosis in order to stop smoking cigarettes, for instance. They're more than willing to bypass their own autonomy, like listen to subliminal tapes in order to to Because they're second order desire.

Exactly. Yeah, it's an example of what's wrong. Right. That that we're sometimes willing to bypass our our own autonomy in order to meet our higher order desires. So let's take the organ donation example. The idea is there are certain countries where filling out your form to get your driver's license and they say, If you die in a car accident, do you wanna donate your organ?

For some countries, the default option, the option that you just if you don't say anything will be the option you take is that you donate your organs. And for some the option you actually have to check a box in order to donate. Right. Right. So in the US you have to check a box. In the US you have to check a box. And this has a huge effect, right? And there are cool stats. And I looked at this. Yeah, no, it's as clear it's a it's as strong as effect as you can get. And Dan Arielli, your boy.

does this. Um he takes similar countries and he sort of compares them. So like Austria and Germany, right? Two two just countries filled with just evil people, right? But but There are some Germans who I love and they know who they are. Yeah, I know. I lo I love Germans, they're great. Yeah. But the point is it was all part of one big Prussian Jew hating empire. Right. So Austria has an o

that you have to opt out of donating your organs and Germany has you have to opt into donating your organs. Austria, ninety nine point eight percent of the people donate their organs. Germany, twelve percent of people. Donate the Americans. Right. Uh Belgium and the Netherlands. Again, two countries that nobody knows the difference between other than you can go to Amsterdam and smoke pot. Well I know Jean Claude Van Damme is from is from one of them. Right. Yeah.

Ninety eight percent for Belgium because they have yeah uh yet they have the default option being donate your organs. Netherlands twenty-eight percent uh because they don't, right? Sweden and Denmark. Eighty-five percent for uh Sweden because they you have the default is donate. Uh Denmark four percent. So it's a huge difference. It makes all the difference in the world uh right here. So what do you think about it?

So actually, you know, I part of it depends on what's going on. Right. So so one version of what's going on might be that um people aren't paying attention to the information. So nobody's paying attention and therefore they gloss over the thing, they don't check, they don't bother to act.

And so uh because they haven't processed the information appropriately. And so they just move on to the next question, no noting only that they don't need to do anything. And they get opted in. That's one version of what could be happening. The other version is that that somehow it's communicating a norm that you know what, we all do this.

And communicating that norm says, Well, I guess I'll do it too. I won't change it. Um and that that in some way uh philosophers like this in some this gri a Grecian sort of communication, right? Oh yeah. Yeah, uh great. Sorry. Um shout outs to Calm again. Um so in that case it's less disturbing.

What I wouldn't want is for it to be a case of deception. You don't want it to be the case of the credit card company who puts a big ol' in big old numbers they put three percent APR and then really tiny numbers they put after six months it's twenty one percent. Right. You don't want it to be a case of that.

So I would be and and what I don't know actually, I'm embarrassed to not know, but I don't know if there have been any studies done on whether people after the fact, if they're asked, you know, d did you Did you choose this? Did you know about this? I in the US you get a big old sticker right on your license that says I'm an organ donor. Right. Or at least in some states. That can help you.

That's right. You're an organ. That's right. Uh so it's crucial to me that that people aren't being deceived.

But see, here's the interesting so these are two separate questions, right? So what if? So we're assuming that this is just good for society. if people don't more people donate their organs. So I think that's pretty much a given. So then the issue is t what to what extent this is a threat to autonomy. Right? And so So here's the question, right? The way I framed it at the beginning, what would matter was would be what these people would want to do upon reflection.

Yeah. Right. Now it could be that what they want to do upon reflection is donate their organs. So it might be, right, that um that you have to trick people into in this case, because they're at the DMV, they don't want to fucking be there. They're not thinking about being moral. They're thinking about getting the fuck out of there. And so the it might be that you have to trick people into doing what they would want to do upon reflection when they're really thinking about it Yeah, yeah.

Is that okay? Kind that's kind of what my distinction gets at, because if people upon reflection would want to do it you All you would have to do is just present the information in this sort of tricky default, like opt in way. Um what I don't want, what I'm afraid of is that there are plenty of people who upon reflection would not want to do that. Right. Yeah. If what you're saying is that even if those people

um don't want to donate their organs, that that gets outweighed by the greater good to society that being an organ donor gets then than I'm no, I gotta say, I I don't think it's a trade off. Like I don't wanna bypass autonomy. If someone wants to be an asshole and be selfish Uh I wanna l I want I wanna let him do it. But here's the interesting thing about this case, right? You are letting them do it, right? That's right. The opt out is not forcing them. Like they could easily check the buck.

Right. It's not like you're you're hypnotizing them or something like that. If they have a religious objection or whatever. They can have like I I just don't like I don't want anyone benefiting from my death. Like they could have that whatever it is, they can just check the box.

It reminds me a little bit of the uh of the rebate programs, right? So so uh Psychologists have and behavioral economists have known for quite some time that that even if you give people if you say like fifty dollar rebate, mail-in rebate.

People will look at that and they'll say, Oh, and they'll take mentally they'll take fifty dollars off the off the cost of the pro of the product that they're trying to buy and they will never turn in that rebate. The law only requires that all of the information be present.

when people are making the decision. So people know that they're gonna have to mail it in. They just make this error of optimism. They just think that the like they they think, oh, I'm gonna totally turn it in and they don't at all. How many rebates do you think you've had and how many have you turned up? Yeah. I've maybe mailed in one thing in my life and I to f for for the life of me I don't even remember if I got a rebate back.

But like that's the other thing. I have no I have no recollection. I mean the losses that they have to give it back, but you know they could easily make it so that that you could just like uh register over email and they'd like electronically deposit. But they don't because the law doesn't require that of them and and they they they make bank. Fully giving them all of the information and the ability to to opt out doesn't it's not enough Right. And so

really matters then what people would want to do. I think that that you know, if you want to decide about this organ donation thing, which seems to me like in the end kind of a no brainer.

But but for me to make for me to be confident in that judgment you would need to take a poll of people who come out of there and ask them and give them some time and say, Okay, what would you want to do and make a to get their actual judgment and if their judgment is that they're fine with doing it and that matches up even close to what the actual numbers are with the opt in version.

Uh or th I mean with the o you know, the the the the version where it's the default position, then then I'm totally fine with it. But if there's a big difference, then I agree there does seem something problematic about it. But what is that? Because it's like benefits society, it can't hurt them, they're dead. Well so I I I mean I I think that one of the problems is is that that in isolation this case seems fine but but really what what's at the heart of it is

somebody might be manipulating you into doing something that that is not f for the benefit of society. And who's to decide what is and what isn't. You know, and this is always this a bit of a a a concern of mine with these psychological studies on persuasion. When we show that manipulating disgust changes people's attitudes in the in the sort of conservative political direction. Now I these aren't very powerful or long lasting, I don't think, at least. But um

Um when I speak to liberal audiences, they just wanna know how to manipulate. How do they get, say, conservatives to go to be more liberal? Um It's offensive when people are trying to use it to do something that you don't agree with.

And there is a lot of stuff that's up up in the air. It's up for debate. And I don't wanna have a position that that is something like this, which I think you might have, but but correct me if I'm wrong, which is It's okay so long as I agree with the the s the end goal. You think I might have that? Yeah, yeah. I think that I think that you somehow endorse the the uh manipulation is okay as long as it meets my goal.

But it's not okay if it's if it's in the service of something that I am in disagreement with. No, I actually don't have that because it's not like in favor of totalitarian regime. No, but but when you say if something is good for society or Right. No no no. I I I didn't I I said like that that is sort of a con well, you're right. Right, right. So I did say that, right? Um I also said that organ donation was good for society, but in my theory this is the problem with theories. Ha ha ha.

who's all excited about about theory. It's like a theory boner for a second. You haven't had that one since grad school. I I got this justice thing licked. Three things. You know, like this is something like I need to see a psychiatrist. The fact that I don't wanted to to uh put forth a theory uh in the first place is just problematic. It's troubling. Yeah. I'm calling you this ankle thing, it fucks with your head. But anyway, so um so Wait, what were we talking about?

Uh whether it's good whether it's Uh yeah, right, right. So like what's good for society? I totally agree that's the tr troubling part. And this is how all to you know, a l I think a lot of totalitarian societies Start out with the idea that they're doing what's best for the people and coercing them into doing what's best for them, right? before you know it you're getting caned for chewing bubblegum. Well I think that I like that.

So no no no, but this is actually uh Isaiah Berlin, right? This was his point when he's talking about the so called positive freedom versus negative freedom. Negative freedom being lack of interference, positive freedom being I am free to do what's best but often y we don't want to do what's best for us and so the idea that that that coercion

uh into doing what some government or some other people think is best for us is making us more free. There's something extra insulting about that, right? And I agree completely with you. uh that that's troubling, that that's a problem. But I totally respect somebody and I guess I have a lot of family that's like this'cause I think Orthodox Jews um don't allow organ donation.

Uh so but so yeah, some people are are opposed to it. I I would I would hope that that the people uh the people who are extra opposed to organ donation are the ones who read that. extra carefully. They read there it would be nice to show that those are the people least likely to be influenced by the opt uh opt-in versus opt out.

Yeah, it would be. It would be nice to know that they weren't being tricked into doing something that was against their personal convictions. And I I and you know, it may well be it's not like we've done a ton of research on this, it may well be that someone has shown that. Um or it may not, but I do think that's important. If we're trying to decide whether to switch our I mean my my intuition is that this is something we should do. Given those statistics.

that this is something we should do and we should do it fast because like people are dying because we have a default option that shouldn't be the default option. So right my intuition is we should do it and we should do it fast. But I do think It by any means necessary. Any like a fender bender should just turn into a fatal car accident. I'm just like I might as well just call myself Herman Goering right now.

Okay. Getting out of the life and death situation, there is one example that I want to give'cause it's actually I think probably relevant to y you may have given it some thought. And that is in the in the consumer as they say, in the consumer space.

Um I didn't know that. They the people say that. So uh and lately it's been in the news a bit if you're a tech nerd. IOS games, right, on your iPad on your iPhone. Or on Android or whatever, where they're in app purchases for games. So uh the Simpsons tapped out, you build your own community and you could do it all

without paying any money. But in order to to get to that next level, it's like it it's easy if you just buy some donuts to help Homer build, um and that costs you five dollars a pack. And there's a tons of kids games like this. Basically People have taken all of the lessons that we've learned from the psychology of learning and all of the lessons we've learned from the addiction of gambling, and they've ported it into these iOS games.

And people are spending thousands of dollars a month on these in app purchases and games. And like Candy Crush or Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And that is just that is per perfectly taking like the the stupid part of human psychology and just juicing it, right? And someone who has spent seventy five thousand dollars on candy crush. Ha ha. I f I would fully support Apple. You're still on level twenty. I'm still on level three. Right. No, no. Yeah. I it's interesting'cause I've

I've been there. I'm I'm not that bad actually and I and what I do is I just delete the games. I've probably deleted Candy Crush from my daughter's iTouch, my wife's iPad, my iPhone, at least two times each and maybe more. Um like I I get it and then I figure out, okay, I'm good now, I can handle it again and then put it back on and then I delete it up. I I realize

If you could sign up for the inability to ever uh install it again onto your device, would you do that? Absolutely. I would do that in a second. Right? Like I I I want those apps, those apps, those commitment device apps. Yeah, yeah. It's like when Google when Google had a little app that you had to that you had to do math problems in order to uh to not email people when you goggles. And Google. That's what that was. That was awesome. I I used to have that. I don't know why I got rid of it.

Because you would never be able to email anyone. But but but that's an interesting question because I know that psychology. I don't know if you've been there but like and it's not the money because I haven't spent very much money all joking aside. It's the time. It's like but but I get this psychology of I I I'm doing this but I don't wanna be doing this. I even know in not even the back of my mind, in the close to the very front of my mind, that I don't wanna be doing this anymore.

And it's making me d something that's making me do it. These something about these games that like I and I and I am very addictive when it comes to these things, which is why I you know, I have to place so many external constraints on myself. I'm not, but I dre I I dr I dread like my kid doing something like that, right? And g and getting like super, super duper addicted to it.

You know what's worse is when your kid is totally fine with it, but you're So you have to be deleting games from your own child's I touch. She's like, fuck you, Dad. No. It's like not my fault that you you can't control yourself. But she just like she grew up with it, so she just accepted. So sad? I I guess I have a bit of a libertarian streak where where I I want more I want there to be a market for pre pre commitment devices.

Yeah. Like what you say. Like that to me would be the ideal solution'cause 'Cause as you as you say, it's even in the front of your mind. You're not being deceived really. You're you're being manipulated by these games in a way that you f you know full well. It's not unconscious, it's not you know it i it is much like drug addiction in that sense. Um

where you know that you don't want the drug but you have to have it. So what I want is like rehab programs for for these sorts of things. I want I want there to be a market for for the kinds of apps or the kinds of of of messages to consumers or the kind the the things that would combat the other. Yeah. Like with drugs, I've always thought this that like the thing that saved me from being a drug addict is that everybody thinks I'm a narc.

Anytime I ask for droplets. When I was younger, I mean I don't still do that. But they're just like, No, get away from me, Narc. What happened? It's'cause people don't call it Mary Jane anymore. So that was... Kids, could I get some reefer?

I couldn't be an addict. You can't be an addict if you can't get any drugs in the first place, right? So with these games I'm like a celebrity. I'm like a celebrity that can have any Any drug they want at any point, price is no object, access is no object, like Can you can you imagine if porn internet porn had been around when you were thirteen? We would have been a waste of a life. My hats are off to like function. Nang. I know. I know. I'm so glad I don't have a Yeah. All right.

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