After two weeks in which this list has been dominated by amateur psychology
about the motivations of humans and other intelligences, I thought the
following review about a book written by an MIT economist about human
behavior might shed some light.
From
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/16/books/review/Berreby-t.html?ref=review
a NYTime book review of "Predictaly Irrational: The Hidden
Forces that Shape our Decisions, by Dan Ariely..
In its most relevant section it states the following
"At the heart of the market approach to understanding people
is a set of assumptions. First, you are a coherent and unitary self. Second,
you can be sure of what this self of yours wants and needs, and can predict
what it will do. Third, you get some information about yourself from your
body - objective facts about hunger, thirst, pain and pleasure that help
guide your decisions. Standard economics, as Ariely writes, assumes that all
of us, equipped with this sort of self, "know all the pertinent information
about our decisions" and "we can calculate the value of the different
options we face." We are, for important decisions, rational, and that's what
makes markets so effective at finding value and allocating work. To borrow
from H. L. Mencken, the market approach presumes that "the common people
know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard."
"What the past few decades of work in psychology, sociology
and economics has shown, as Ariely describes, is that all three of these
assumptions are false. Yes, you have a rational self, but it's not your only
one, nor is it often in charge. A more accurate picture is that there are a
bunch of different versions of you, who come to the fore under different
conditions. We aren't cool calculators of self-interest who sometimes go
crazy; we're crazies who are, under special circumstances, sometimes
rational."
Ed Porter------------------------------------------- agi Archives: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: http://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244&id_secret=98558129-0bdb63 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
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