Comments on: The Segway of Social Science

By: paulbjaylee

paulbjaylee — Sun, 05 Jul 2009 18:26:04 +0000

Money markets, Treasury Inflation Protected Securities (TIPS) and broad equities are represented. There are also five model portfolios, as Robertson notes that participants often make mistakes when it comes to asset allocation.The five portfolios range from “stable,” which are heavy in low-risk investments, such as bonds, to aggressive, which is mostly fidelity 401k allocated in large-cap growth and value funds. Most of the ETFs offered are from the iShares and SPDR families

By: Devin Shirley

Devin Shirley — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 19:52:10 +0000

your blog is great 537 gratz!

By: Anittah

Anittah — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 22:23:08 +0000

NB the word modified a particular club and not necessarily its individual members

By: Will Wilkinson

Will Wilkinson — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 04:18:37 +0000

I'll be interested to see if even I agree with myself by then. Yawnworthy!?

By: Anittah

Anittah — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 03:54:52 +0000

I'm going to add this blog post to my GCal, September 2018, to see if I've disproven you yet.

And:

http://flickr.com/photos/anp/476143054/in/set-7...

!!!

By: The Drunken Priest

The Drunken Priest — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 21:19:26 +0000

For modern man, the consequences of acting on our neolithic intuitions are catastrophic. Therefore, in the spirit of Sunstein and Thaler’s Libertarian Paternalism, I propose the following “nudge.” If ever a crises arises, and you think either there ought to be a law or you want to seize someone else’s money to solve it the issue (both outcomes of neolithic default settings), stop your thinking right there. Rewind and then reset your default settings. Remember, this is your neolithic mind at work. Instead think: how can voluntary cooperation to mutual advantage solve this better than an appointed bureaucratic god? With this “choice architecture” in place, we can rest assured that people will be better off–by their own lights–than they would be under our original default settings.

By: Will Wilkinson / The Fly Bottle » Blog Archive » More Thoughts on “Choice Architecture” and “Libertarian Paternalism”

Wed, 01 Oct 2008 05:10:37 +0000

[...] the comments below, Berger writes of my Nudge review: this seems pretty caustic…especially when you seem to [...]

By: Hosting

Hosting — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 01:20:01 +0000

Good points, i'm always interested in political posts.

Regards,

Hardy
Web Hosting Provider.

By: nobody.really

nobody.really — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 20:38:43 +0000

Wilkinson's review of Nudge, summarized: "I agree, but would have chosen different words. Oh, and I'm sneering as I say this."

To be fair, Wilkinson raises an interesting point about choice architecture. Choice architecture recognizes that the choice I make will be influenced by the way the options are arrayed, even if all options remain available to me. Wilkinson observes that the act of making one option the default option sends a symbolic message that the default option is the Right Choice. Wilkinson is leery about creating such a stamp of approval for options he doesn’t like for himself – choices such as having people donate organs or perform national service unless they specifically opt out.

In one sense, this is a very practical objection: Moving to an opt-out world could send a symbolic message that opting in is good, and that the choice to opt-out exists solely at the government’s discretion. (It would also create the possibility of social pressure being brought to bear on people who opt out. Ideally the choice to opt out could be made with some degree of confidentiality to minimize these concerns.)

In another sense, this is a doctrinally challenging objection. I’m often arguing that function should trump form, and that legitimate governmental interests trump symbolic matters. It may look bad to have the White House surrounded by concrete blast barriers; too bad. You’re religion may require you to carry a knife on your person at all times, even on airplanes; too bad. So I’m flummoxed to be in a position to say that we should not adopt a policy that might achieve a legitimate governmental purpose more efficiently merely because doing so would send a symbolic message that offends me.

I’ll noodle on this. But more generally, Nudge seems pretty benign to me.

By: HappyDork

HappyDork — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 01:18:23 +0000

Yep Segways are dorky – and tons of fun. Whee! You've obviously never ridden one for very long. They just have an awesome retro-Jetsons feel, much different than a bike.