Book 53 - A Year of Magical Learning

Reflection Title - With Knowledge comes power, choose wisely how you apply it in the world.

Book: Nudge: Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth, and Happiness by Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein

Book Description: The book draws on research in psychology and behavioral economics to defend libertarian paternalism and active engineering of choice architecture. The book also popularized the concept of nudge theory. A nudge, according to Thaler and Sunstein is any form of choice architecture that alters people's behavior in a predictable way without restricting options or significantly changing their economic incentives. To count as a mere nudge, the intervention must require minimal intervention and must be cheap.

Reflection:

The more I learn on this journey about the fundamentals of humanity and things like how our bodies came to be, how our minds work, our collective shared history, and how our emotions impact everything; the more seemingly responsibility that falls on my shoulders on how I intend to use that knowledge (if at all).

Sometimes, ignorance really IS bliss.

When we don't know, we just act out of instinct. Whatever happens...happens. On the other hand, when we are armed with just a little bit of information, that makes us pretty dangerous sometimes as we think we actually know how this world works (when we all know we don't). This is the story of humanity throughout time. We are sometimes too smart for ourselves and think we know better than the universe.

Nudge, is one of those really interesting, and at the same time dangerous, methodologies of how to apply our knowledge into the world. "Nudging" someone is the act of understanding how most humans think and behave and then cleverly designing choices for someone else to "nudge" them into one direction or another. You don't make the decision for them, but you certainly set the stage to point them in one direction or another.

Nudging is super clever, but also very scary in my mind. Nudging allows the nudger (the choice architect) to feel like they kept their hands clean while strategically manipulating people toward a desired end outcome of their choosing. That is where nudging someone gets dangerous in my mind. Who the hell am I to "nudge" anyone toward one decision or another? That is assuming that I know what is "right" for someone else or society at large. It is very clever, but I sure as hell don't want that responsibility on my shoulders.

The concept of libertarian paternalism is kind of messed up at its core, because father often doesn't know best. I know my father, and while I love him to death, I'm pretty damn sure that he doesn't know best on most everything in this world. He may think he does, but we all know he doesn't. We are all mere mortals and don't understand anything at the end of the day.

Learning is fun, and I don't want to ever stop in my life; however, with learning comes great responsibility in how we use this knowledge and apply it to our world. At the end of the day, that is your choice on how you proceed...I just encourage you to choose wisely and respect the power that you hold in your mind.

Question: How are you applying your knowledge in this world?

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Links:

What is The Year of Magical Learning? An Introduction

YOML Podcast Discussion - Nudge

YOML Bookstore - Nudge by Cass R. Sunstein and Richard H. Thaler