Hacker News Reader

We're constantly swimming in a stew of nudges from the private sector, from social norms, in addition to hard-and-fast rules and laws.

Giving some thought to how they impact behavior and how one might improve them seems like a pretty low bar.

In particular the private sector spends hundreds of billions of dollars to nudge you towards a lifestyle that's more profitable for them, via ads to get you to eat unhealthy foods, buy a premium vodka that's indistinguishable from the next one on the shelf, not to mention gamble, smoke, etc.

Someone comes along to study these polluted waters and ask why the fish are so unhealthy and the fish say, "what's water?"

Let's not even study this stuff, since God forbid the gummint varmints use it to, I dunno, get people to save for retirement by default or sign up as organ donors, those bastards.

Some further discussion

http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2015-05-13/wonks-expla...

I ate margarine instead of butter for many years because the government said it was healthier. Turns out, it's much worse than butter.

Be very careful of the idea that "nudges" from the government means they are correct.

Eh, it was not like that was a conspiracy. They genuinely thought it to be better.

Right now we have the whole gluten thing, and while it might not affect you personally, a non-governmental nudging is changing millions of people's diet to something more expensive for no good reason what so ever. So it's not like the government has a monopoly and poor health advice.

Yeah, this is just how science works - there is no One Truth but a never ending attempt to approach it. That does mean sometimes they got it wrong, yet the scientific consensus is still the best approximation of reality you will find.

Think about the shape of earth or the theory of gravity. It isn't truly round nor was Newton fully correct but both theories were more correct than their predecessors and we improved on them since. And probably will improve more in the future.

The fact that science isn't perfect doesn't mean it is useless - compare it to medicine. The fact that in complicated cases no two doctors would pic the exact same therapy does neither mean it makes no difference (there certainly are ways to do things wrong in medicine) nor that there is no way to judge. It is 'just' complicated.

The world is full of people who genuinely believe they know what is best for you. Most of them are wrong. Many of them are in positions of power in government.

My point is that just because a "nudge" is coming from the government is no reason to believe it is correct, free from bias, has no ulterior motives, or is applicable to everyone.

True, the food pyramid seems like it's effed up and should change. People should be skeptical.

So, is studying diet and medicine and coming up with peer-reviewed consensus recommendations a terrible idea?

People who followed that food pyramid would probably be better off than the average.

I just think margarine is kind of a second-order problem, and you fix it, do better research and change the recommendation and work on more/better research.

I kind of worry about folks who spend their days working on adtech to nudge people, wearing fitbits to nudge them to get up and walk around, saying OMG a nudge in the direction of the food pyramid is a slippery slope to insidious government mind control. If anybody should know the power of defaults and good UX to help people make better choices, it's people around here.

I also worry about 300lb people in electric scooters, saying hands off my Big Gulp, I'm losing my freedom because somebody is trying to show calorie counts and reduce portion sizes and 'nudge' me.

More generally, the entire field of "behavior economics" has a very strong paternalistic, authoritarian subcurrent to it. The message is: people can't be allowed to make decisions for themselves because they aren't capable of acting rationally or in their own self-interest. Of course the idea that the government is more likely to act in people's best interest than people themselves is laughable, yet is actually being advocated as a policy rationale.

Right, because people seldom act rationally, and often act against their own self-interest. The message is an observation.

As for the government acting in people's best interest, yes, exactly, that's what it's for. You are calling your state rep to discuss issues, right? If you're articulate, you can probably even book a 15-minute meeting to chat with them and tell them what's important to you, a citizen in their district.

That's not as fun as posting hur-hur-gubmint-sucks on the internet, though, even though it's definitely more rational and self-interested.

Politicians don't make poor decisions because they don't know any better. They make poor decisions because of the incentives that are presented to them. I don't think you'll be able to have a rational debate and come out ahead with a politician. At best you could bring up some inflammatory story that he can use to his benefit.

I would argue that debate on online forums is much more meaningful. I wouldn't go as far as to say someone's one comment really changed my mind on a big issue but reading discussions on forums like hn has certainly opened up my mind.

The most promising aspect of new technology is that it is being done outside of the traditional power structure, rendering politics less and less meaningful to our every day lives.

As the Chinese proverb goes, "Heaven is high and the emperor is far away"

How much experience do you have in talking to your elected officials?

I'm a little disappointed by the downvotes, and the lack of response; I'm guessing the parent poster has zero experience actually engaging politically, and that's why they said the stuff they did about not having rational discussions with politicians. That stuff just sounds like shallow stereotyping, it doesn't sound like it reflects reality at all.

You're right, I don't regularly go talk to politicians. I wrote emails to a few politicians regarding some issue I felt strongly about and got a canned response that didn't say anything (I believe it was something about internet security or copyright laws and the response was how that politician understands my concern and thinks its important to balance security and simultaneously promote competition).

I did consider going to local council meetings in my home town of New York City, but (without exception) every meeting takes place between late morning to early afternoon on a weekday so I am unable to attend [0]. It might be coincidental, but that kind of scheduling doesn't exactly scream out inclusion for average citizens. Maybe I'm just cynical. If you look at some of the minutes, it's incredibly dull and menial. I randomly selected Council Chambers - City Hall Jointly with the Committee on Consumer Affairs from 5/1:

1. A Local Law to amend the administrative code of the city of New York, in relation to the promotion of health and safety at nail salons. (NY Times article drummed up some controversy. Perhaps if they were to talk about immigration policy and extending more rights to undocumented workers, it would be interesting but from what I hear, this will amount to a shake-down and publicity event)

2. A Local Law to amend the administrative code of the city of New York, in relation to requiring the posting of information related to services offered at licensed appearance enhancement businesses. (Yelp probably does a better job at this)

3. Resolution calling upon the New York State Legislature to pass, and the Governor to sign, legislation amending the general business law to require periodic retraining of persons licensed to practice appearance enhancement and the Department of State to increase the number of health and safety inspectors who inspect appearance enhancement businesses. (More regulation of hair salons because, you know, public safety of getting a bad perm)

4. Resolution calling upon the New York State Legislature to pass, and the Governor to sign, legislation amending the General Business Law to authorize the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene to enforce State health and safety regulations against appearance enhancement establishments and to allow the Department to create a letter grading system for these establishments. (Letter grading hair salons? Really?)

Maybe it's just a New York or US thing. But I personally lost faith in the democratic process for all but the absolutely most mundane and necessary processes required to run a locality.

[0] http://legistar.council.nyc.gov/Calendar.aspx

Being able to engage politically is a skill; it generally must be learned.

Your city councilperson isn't going to care about internet security; what could they do about it even if they did? They are going to care about that boring, mundane shit involved in supporting the wide variety of businesses and citizens in a city. Hair salons are important to a lot of people, even if they're not important to you.

Your state rep might have more to say about internet security or privacy or something, but if they're not actively involved, then you can't just go in and say "This is important, do this." Look for other politicians who are pushing privacy regulations for your state, and bring that to the attention of the politicians.

Also, phone, don't email. They've all got a staff of one to several people responding to emails for them, and those people are all so busy that, if you want to build a rapport with them (to eventually be able to set up a 5-minute meeting with the representative in question!), the phone is the way to go.

And remember: what's in it for them, if they're meeting with you? Are you informing them about one person's opinion? Do you represent 150 of your colleagues in NYC tech? Are you speaking on behalf of a trade organization, and these views are important to many voters, not just you?

Yes, this all takes time. If you want to have an impact with the political route, you may have to reprioritize how you spend your free time.

The whole field of UX has a strong paternalistic feel to it, guiding people toward 'defaults' and making it as easy as possible to make 'correct' choices as if they can't act rationally or in their own self-interest.

I think there is some merit to the practice from a product design standpoint, though - the commonly cited example of a door with such ambiguous design that it needs a "push" or "pull" sign seems to apply here. Sure, we could leave the door as a blank surface with no hints (design or signs or otherwise) and let people decide whether to try and push or pull on their own, but doesn't that just waste everyone's time?

A paternalistic approach isn't necessarily a bad thing if you're being guided through decisions with the benefit of someone else's experience. It helps avoid spending mental effort on decisions which don't matter as much, so utmost attention can be given to those which do.

Maybe, though I'm pretty sure it's also about reducing cognitive load for the user.

Considering that the typical reaction is to ban things instead of taxing or otherwise making them less convenient, I'm pretty happy with these sorts of policies. Perfect is the enemy of good and all that.

There's all kinds of nudging I'm sure you can get behind, such as opt-out organ donation. Or would you rather everyone be forced to donate their organs at brain-death?

Since "nudging" is rather new, there are many more opportunities for it to benefit society, either by discouraging a popular behavior or encouraging an unpopular one. For example, I despise loud cars and motorcycles. They have crazy externalities, yet there are few laws regarding them (and even those are rarely enforced). A Harley[1] riding through a dense city can distract and annoy thousands of people. Bystanders can even have their hearing permanently damaged. Some of my friends wish they were banned. I'm more sensitive to noise than most, but I disagree. A tax commensurate to their damage would satisfy everyone. Granted, such a tax would be quite steep. But if someone really wanted to, they could pay it. That's the sort of nudging I can get behind.

1. I realize not all Harleys are obnoxiously loud and many other vehicle brands can be annoying. It's just a stereotypical example.

BTW, that's not nudging. Nudging would be mandating building bikes with mufflers that the consumer could remove if they really cared.

> The idea is that the right government policy can nudge the individual to perform the obviously rational self-interested choice.

I would be concerned with any discussion of that idea that is unaccompanied by a discussion of public choice. Discussing the "right government policy" is interesting, but not very useful without also discussing whether we're more like to get the right government policy than the wrong one.

This is a slippery slope argument. Social Security has been around for a long time, and although folks said it would lead directly to a socialist overthrow of American democracy, it hasn't happened...

>This is a slippery slope argument.

And there's nothing wrong with those. Things can and do progress to worse outcomes all the time.

>Social Security has been around for a long time, and although folks said it would lead directly to a socialist overthrow of American democracy, it hasn't happened...

Probably because the US has some of the worst, and less socialist, social security system in the West.

The US system is socialist, by any meaningful definition of socialism. Medicaid, medicare, "public-private partnerships" abound.

Right, but my point was that passing Social Security didn't turn the U.S. Into a socialist country -- which was a concern of many. I'm saying we might not want to throw out individual ideas because we're afraid of a slippery slope.

I'm not quite sure how that isn't a pretty darn good example of a slope being slipped upon.

None of those government programs have anything to do with worker control of the means of production, the only definition of socialism that matters.

The US system isn't Socialism by a standard definition of the social ownership of the means of production. From wikipedia's definition of Socialism:

"Socialism is a social and economic system characterised by social ownership of the means of production and co-operative management of the economy,[1][2] as well as a political theory and movement that aims at the establishment of such a system."

Cuba and North Korea are properly Socialist.

The US is a market, welfare Democracy like the rest of the developed world.

Unless you envision some other form of "social ownership" than what the US government already exercises[1], I don't follow your objection. The wikipedia article has thirty-two thousand words, describing eight varieties of socialism, and its introductory paragraph mentions:

> There are many varieties of socialism and there is no single definition encapsulating all of them.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allodial_title

If the US of today is "socialist", the word has lost all meaning. They can't even increase health care coverage without ensuring that corporations profit off of it, never mind the economic waste.

The wikipedia article also contains this apt observation:

"The term socialist has also been used by some politicians on the political right as an epithet against certain individuals who do not consider themselves to be socialists, and against policies that are not considered socialist by their proponents."

Does nudging actually cause you to give up any autonomy?