Bryan Caplan wrote:
At least on my reading, a lot of cognitive psychologists want to say
more than "People occasionally reason imperfectly, and policy might
improve on that." Rather, they are saying "We now know that human
judgment is quite poor, and economic models that presume otherwise are
Robin Hanson wrote:
To me the central issue is instead human meta-rationality. If cognitive
errors make workers sometimes miss-estimate the safety of a job, but
workers realize that they might make such errors, then wiser-than-thou
academics just need to *tell* workers that their particular
Bryan Caplan wrote:
... If people have time-inconsistent preferences, but realize this fact,
then it can be enough to give them means to commit to future choices.
If people can neglect possible ways a contract can go bad, but realize
this fact, they can give arbitrators discretion to deal
Robin Hanson wrote:
People talk a lot about their difficulty in committing to long term plans.
They choose savings plans that they can't get out of. They take efforts to
avoid being around tempting candy bars.
These look more like conflicting preferences to me than
"meta-rationality."
