Like I’m expecting them to do exactly what you say they should do, which is talk about how the book over-reaches sometimes. I can’t say much more since I only just started the episode but that’s the early vibe I’m getting.
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Nope haven’t gotten there yet so I’ve got to bow out for now.
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I finished it and it did seem about as I expected. Even as they were discussing the small impacts at the end I think they acknowledged that it could be meaningful. My summary of their argument is that focusing on “nudges”, a poorly-defined term that seems to encompass basically anything they want it to, only produces these small impacts, and they’re small compared to the impact that could be achieved through actual wielding of government power.
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Ok, fine, but this is a bit of a false argument IMO. A lot of the areas where nudges are relevant are areas where this is significant resistance to “mandatory” solutions. I’ll go back to retirement savings again because it’s the only thing that I really know anything about. Sure, the impact that could be achieved through the actual wielding of government power is immense. Me and thousands of people in my field could totally eliminate concerns about retirement income adequacy if you pretend we are in a fantasy land where government power can be wielded with no limitations. I can design a social security system in about 10 minutes that eliminates societal concerns about old age retirement income security. That system would never, ever, ever in a million billion multiverses get implemented in, say, the US. Retirement saving nudges, on the other hand, have been voluntarily adopted by large corporations at significant short term cost to shareholders and to the monumental benefit of employees. These same companies actively campaign and lobby against payroll taxes (TAXES BAD!). That’s a HUGE achievement in the real world for the concept of nudges.
Right and they acknowledge the success that nudges have in small circumstances, citing retirement savings specifically as one area where the impact is substantial. I think the issue is taking that and generalizing it to this “everything can be fixed by nudges” attitude that leads to the outrageous idea that small nudges could ever make a difference with something like climate change. That’s why people are harping on the self-described “Libertarian” angle of this, because it’s another way of undercutting government power to enforce necessary solutions by pretending that we can do it through small actions instead.
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They miss the entire point of how regulations get made. Small nudges are what lead to social buyin for the huge regulatory changes. Recycling programs are a great example of this.
Their fatal logical error across much of their show is the idea any effect short of perfect is essentially worthless.
They did this for freakononics and gladwell too.
I’m critical of your critique of the podcast’s critique of the author’s critique.
Fair enough.
Listened to the podcast, haven’t read the book…
It all comes off a bit Gladwellian which makes it a seemingly good fit for the show. There are examples where policies that seem to fit a pretty clear definition of a “nudge” have positive impacts. Enough for a podcast, or a New Yorker piece. To turn it into a best-selling book about a revolution in public policy requires making the whole thing a bit nebulous.
I imagine a meeting where some wonk is pushing a policy idea to a bunch of bored decision makers and getting nowhere until it hits him to label the policy a “nudge”.
I’d say this is an example of where having only one host having read the book hurts the episode.
Haven’t listened to the podcast, but do they discuss the “Nudge Unit” in the UK?
“Nudge Unit” | Institute for Government.
On the one hand, I can see how being too focused on nudges could make the government too myopic and unable to tackle big issues. On the other hand, if done well and focused in the right areas, it does seem like a good way to pick some low hanging fruit.
Examples of things the UK group has worked on:
“The Nudge Unit has worked on a wide range of policy areas (detailed on its website) – but early examples included work on prompting people to pay their tax on time, turn up in court, work with Jobcentres to improve outcomes and increasing organ donation.”
They mention many countries have them and then say it’s all nonsense or at best near nonsense.
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My read was that the nonsense is having dedicated units for what is effectively a buzzword. I don’t think governments having policy makers with backgrounds in behavioral economics gets mocked.
Except it’s not a buzzword. In any way. They even admit they show effects. They just stupidly don’t understand that small effects scale to huge effects on a population level. It’s awful analysis. It’s so bad it had to be purposely disingenuous.
It absolutely is a buzzword. In every way. Why do you think it exists? It’s a textbook example of a buzzword.
“a word or phrase, often an item of jargon, that is fashionable at a particular time or in a particular context.”
They admit what does? Specific examples of policies that can be described as “nudges”?
No one is denying that altering how people interact with a decision can change outcomes. No one is denying that they can produce positive outcomes.
I haven’t finished the ep yet but I think their problem with it is exactly the over-generalization and fuzziness in the word “nudge”. Like it seems like all the really effective interventions involve changing what the default choice is, as in the organ donation thing or the insurance plan example from upthread, but the book is kind of like “now we’ve demonstrated how effective nudges are, what if we required companies to disclose their CO2 emissions publicly to help solve climate change” which is both completely different and completely useless. So while some of what is categorised as “nudges” is very effective, it’s not clear that the central concept of the book is actually helping illuminate what is good public policy and what isn’t. This is, as Mendoza said, the classic Gladwell problem of supporting some totalizing uberthesis with limited examples which don’t actually support such a sweeping generalization.
The idea nudges can’t be used to fight climate change is so stupid they have to be knowingly making a bad argument.
Choice architecture is used for getting people to buy electric vehicles, low mileage ones, eat less meat, eat local, recycle, drive and fly less, even to believe in climate change itself.
It takes exactly 30 seconds of googling to find all this.
The pod is purposely disingenuous. It’s bad hack job intellectualism with equally bad jokes.
This is a big part of it, but I think the core idea at the heart of “nudges” is that you make it more difficult, but possible, for someone to do something you don’t want them to do and you make it easy for them to do the think you want them to do. “Smart defaults” is a very important special case of this, but it’s not the only case of this. Even just the way that an Ikea store is organized counts as a nudge. They don’t make it easy for you to go in and get one thing and leave, for example. They do make it easy for you to follow a set of arrows that take you past every single thing in the whole store.
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Exactly. Imagine knowing anything about a modern grocery store and thinking nudges are not impactful. 
The entire pod is the hosts falling into the first year university student logic error over and over again thinking “I found an overstatement or error” is the same as “the whole thing is worthless”.
One thing about the whole “nudges” industry is that a lot of the people who are really excited about it like to talk about how behavioral economics can be used to nudge people to better outcomes, but it’s less exciting to talk about how it can also be used to nudge children to buy potato chips. So it’s not hard to pick away at the idea as being less good than it’s marketing suggests. Of course that it true of all marketing.
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For sure. There is no doubt it’s gotten hyped and the Thaler book is guilty of overestimating some of the likely effects. Some of the effects have turned out smaller than hoped but still statistically significant which is a point the pod constantly misunderstands. When it comes to massive social issues it’s so weird to see them argue we should basically ignore proven solutions rather than adopt them as part of a wholistic approach.
The host politics (which I basically share) totally cloud their criticism because they are clearly in favour of top down government solutions but for some reason they don’t seem to understand those types of interventions are only strengthened by nudges. I’ve read the book (something both hosts can’t even claim) and it’s crystal clear the authors are in favour of the same combination.