DISQUS

mk · 1 year ago

To me it's not even the fact that a) homo economicus is an unachievable "ideal", b) ought implies can, c) therefore, not-ought.

I would instead just say there's never been any independent argument about why homo economicus is desirable. It's supposedly desirable because it leads to the maximum utility according to... assumptions about utility that define homo economicus. The whole thing is circular. Why shouldn't I go gambling in Vegas every once in a while to get the endorphins flowing?

It would probably be more fruitful to look at internal conflict -- just take people at their word when they say things like "I want to exercise more, but for some reason I don't" and then see what sorts of decision-contexts, etc. can help them meet their goal. The actions people say they want to do are different from their actual actions, and it is worthwhile to investigate the discrepancy and see if happiness increases when the discrepancy is somehow removed. But this is not holding flawed human behavior up to a pristine ideal of action-- it's a scientific study of internal conflict.

Will describes this in a pretty good way, but I would just say I think the "ought implies can" is a bit of a red herring.

Dan · 1 year ago

I think he falls victim to a number of confusions common among behavioral economists that are inevitable when you completely destroy the formal neoclassical economic model of rationality but insist on using it as a benchmark of rationality anyway.

It's fairly common in the judgment & decision making area to make a distinction between descriptive (how people actually behave), normative (the ideal behavior for a being without limitations), and prescriptive (the best that people can do given our inherent limitations). You seem to be suggesting that the prescriptive is relatively close to the descriptive, with the prescriptive-normative gap almost as large as the descriptive-normative gap. If you're interested, a book that covers this area pretty well is Stanovich's Who Is Rational. He does a good job of laying out the main arguments over whether the prescriptive is closer to the descriptive (meaning that we're doing about as well as we can) or the normative (meaning that we don't do nearly as well as what we're capable of). He also brings in his own arguments based on his research of individual differences.

Unit · 1 year ago

I also felt uncomfortable with some of his arguments that almost seemed borderline pop-psychology. I understand the creativity in trying to find special cases that don't seem (at first glance) to conform with a well-established theory, but to claim a whole new field (behavioral economics) one needs to advance a whole new set of axioms.

a Duoist · 1 year ago

Beavioral economics, like political psychology and neurobiology, are the new sub-disciplines which will wrench us into a better self-understanding. Somewhere in their inquiry--likely in neurobiology by the end of this century--they will find the sources of both freewill and human happiness.

But then, under neoclassical economic theory, 'absolute divergence' likely sets in between the science cultures (the West) and the non-science societies, so that the rich get happier and richer and happier and...

Good interview. Very cutting edge topic, with huge implications.