On Nudge

If I have a high expectation of a book due to hearing many praises of the book, would I end up liking the book more or less? The authors of Nudge may suggest that due to our tendency to conform to what other people do, I would value the book more highly for reasons involving the information conveyed by other people’s judgments and the peer pressure. Well, I don’t have peer pressure in the context I am in now, so that’s maybe why I was somewhat disappointed.

The book is easy to read and yet by no means shallow. I strongly agree with the authors on many points, especially on marriage and education. The book presents a strong justification of what the authors call liberal paternalism. Many applications of Nudge seem appealing.

Yet I had a difficult time finishing the book. Some examples and concepts, although very interesting and even inspiring, appeared to be too stretched to make connections with the book’s main points. I felt that the book was jumping here and there, sometimes digressing to wilderness and sometimes coming back to the same point over and over. The flow of the book was less than ideal.

I was also little concerned with the recurring dichotomy of Humans and Econs, the irrational and rational aspects of an individual. I don’t think even the classical economists necessarily assume that individuals always behave rationally, that they make complex mathematical calculations to behave optimally. Rather, they would claim that people’s economic (and other) behaviors can be explained through rational and mathematical models. I thought that many of the cases in which people fail to behave optimally were due to lack of information rather than due to irrational aspects of human nature.

With all that, I do think that the principles of Nudge presents a great possibility for improvements in all kinds of things as the authors claim. I think one of the bonus nudges, discouraging college students from using trays in cafeteria, can be easily employed in UChicago.