Why 'Nudges' Hardly Help | Hacker News Reader

Why 'Nudges' Hardly Help

theatlantic.com

18 pointsRyanMcGreal20 comments

I'm a bit surprised that this article doesn't deal with the increasing amount of science behind neurological food reward mechanisms. The tl;dr is that our junk food (and much mass-produced food in grocery stores) has been tailored for a kind of hyper-palatability that mutes the effectiveness of our normal satiety mechanisms. So in the article's context the "nudge" is up against an evolving attack by industrial food against very low-level neurological mechanisms.

I don't have a good "lay" source for this field, but I'd recommend digging into Stephen Guyenet's blog[1], that is if you're up for wading through an academic's professional musings. He's a neurobiologist and obesity researcher, and as such the blog provides his perspectives on ongoing work (his and others') in this field. Warning: DO NOT go here expecting any specific answers, and be able to deal with a fair bit of hypothesizing (i.e. untested, maybe totally wrong) both on Guyenet's part and via the work he reviews. You'll only really get a sense of how this field is going as you pick up enough context of ongoing work. IMO, the most interesting self-contained posts that go by are the significant negative results, where robust work comes to light that just crushes an existing hypothesis.

[1] http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.com/

Related book by the former head of the FDA

"Dr. Kessler shows us how our brain chemistry has been hijacked by the foods we most love to eat: those that contain stimulating combinations of fat, sugar, and salt"

http://www.amazon.com/The-End-Overeating-Insatiable-American...

It probably won't come as much of a shock to folks here, but this article has a misleading title.

In the third paragraph, "Nudges hardly help" softens all the way to "nudging sometimes... isn’t effective".

I've come across three groups of reactions to "Nudging":

1) Yay! Let's use science for good!

2) Yeah but it's not a silver bullet

3) I think they're brainwashing us

Camp 1 is sensible, and has room for discussion about ethics, rigour, etc. Camp 2 is arguing against a straw man. Camp 3 is a reasonable position to hold if you have government trust issues and don't understand what's happening, so is an education and operational transparency problem more than anything.

Edit: disclaimer, I've worked closely with a nudge unit but am not an employee of one

I have issues with nudging, but am unsure of whether I fit in one of your categories. My issues are:

a) When a few people make de-facto decisions for everyone else, those decisions are prone to causing black swans because of a lack of (real) diversification of risk. One example of this would be if 20 countries used the default retirement portfolio scheme (that is often used to support nudges), and in one country, the portfolio was not diversified against a type of risk (i.e. interest rate or mortgage default), that could cause severe malinvestment and economic calamity in one country. It would have been much better for 1 in 20 people to make the mistake than 1 in 20 countries.

b) People's decision making abilities are like any other skill (i.e. language, writing, arithmetic), in that they atrophy over time if they are not used. If the people have no reason to look out for themselves, they may not realize when the nudgers are abdicating their responsibilities. In addition to that, financial decisions give clear feedback and have good incentives for the individual, which allows and requires people to exercise their decision making abilities, that will be useful in other areas of life.

Perhaps I fit in to your 'group 3', but either way, I'd be interested to hear your thoughts (if you would be interested in giving any) on these two objections.

Good points all.

Point (a) is a potentially a huge problem, I agree. An entire country suffering from poor pension investments all at once could have disasterous consequences.

My understanding of the typical pension opt-in change is that it opts you in to your company's default pension rather than a state default pension, so the nation as a whole would have diversification even if customers of some pension providers are at risk (unless that nation didn't have diverse pension providers, in which case they already have a problem). Could be wrong, not my area.

Issue (b) is interesting too. I'd say it fell into my third group because it seems to rest on people being lulled into a false sense of security and then taken advantage of. There are a couple of reasons why I don't think it'd be a problem... one applies to "good" nudge units and the other is more general.

Firstly, at a 'good' nudge unit they operate transparently, both at the point of intervention and when publishing findings after the fact. If you look at Richard Thaler's work, he uses 3 'laws' to define 'good' nudges that make it hard for abuse to seem possible:

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/01/upshot/the-power-of-nudges...

Secondly, a more general point. Nudge units on the whole use a tiny subset of the psychological arsenal that companies use daily. They only use the stuff there's clear scientific evidence for ploughing on layers of gamification, incentives, information assymetry, etc. Yet companies do not feel bound by Richard Thalers "3 laws of nudging", they rarely follow more than 1. That's fair enough, as it's harder to switch to a different government and governments have more power over us, but it does raise the question... if our decision making skills atrophy over time then that would have already happened with companies, and I'm not sure I've seen evidence to support that view. Again, could be wrong.

The author seems to have fallen into the 2nd camp. His criticism seems to be based on nudges that haven't resolved an underlying problem. Which should not be a surprise. Nudge (the book) did not argue that structuring default choices with an awareness of behaviour and psychology would immediately resolve the core issue. Only that it would be better starting point than not thinking intelligently about defaults and the decision making process.

Author hardly demonstrates how nudges "hardly help". In fact, my guess is that nudges are extremely effective. Just the trivial 10c grocery bag fees (a "nudge", imo) can reduce bag use by 80% (whether or not bag reduction is good/bad is a different discussion).

Indeed they are, because they a) pick extreme lower hanging fruit, and b) completely trivialize the costs thereof.

Imagine that they start nudging in cases where the benefit of that option isn't nearly as clear, and you have to go through that for virtually every transaction:

You reach for an item on the shelf: "Wait! Did you know you can pick this other item with slightly less fat?" Repeat x100 for every shopping trip.

Your paycheck is now 80% deductions: "We found that the optimal budget buys these necessities in bulk under these programs. Don't worry! You can opt out of this first one by going to this office, the second by going to this office, the third..."

"We found we could increase employment and reduce dependence on public assistance by randomly changing the procedure for applying for benefits!"

As my other post in this thread gets into, this example of a "nudge" doesn't compare to the junk food case, since junk food is effectively designed to hack our brains' "food reward" mechanisms. Bag use is effectively neurologically "neutral", but junk food (and most other highly processed food) is very much not. "Pringles, can't eat just one!" turns out to be a lot more than a marketing slogan.

That slogan is for Lay's potato chips. Pringles' slogan is "you don't just eat them".

Source: I love Pringles. http://i.imgur.com/oibfGJA.png

Thanks for the correction!

The bag reduction I would argue is a "good" thing, that being said, there have been reports about reusable bags causing nasty food poisoning.

The problem is a lot of reusable bags aren't easy to clean (e.g. cannot be placed in a washing machine) and people reuse bags for both uncooked meats and fresh vegetables then just leave them for long periods with food bacteria on them.

Most of the general public doesn't realise the risk, and unfortunately even if you do realise it, most re-usable bags aren't cleanable anyway. All you can do is spray them with disinfecting spray every so often and hope for the best.

> Thanks to problems like these, the economist (and frequent Atlantic contributor) Teresa Ghilarducci has called the 401(k)

Is this true? Is your money better off in an IRA, even with an employer match?

If you just let your employer put your retirement savings in their default mutual fund, what you're going to get is some product sold to the company by a money manager who is taking 2-3% of your money off the top.

Given how rare it is for a mutual fund to consistently return even 4% for any amount of time (seriously, if you know of one that does let me know and I'll sign up at once - 1-2% is more typical), you end up with something that's worth less than a basic savings account, but with a bunch of rules attached to it that prevent you from using your money when you want. Depending on the circumstances, that could be a pretty poor deal.

Forgive me if this is ignorant, but does that basically mean the "employer match" (common at orgs I've worked for) is basically doing nothing as it's a similar percentage?

Employers only match what you put in, whereas mutual funds take fees off of the returns. That suggests to me to contribute only enough to get your match, and roll it into an individual account after you leave the company for more control over where it goes.

Agreed. Not as set-it-and-forget-it as it's advertised to be, but never turn down free money. Just do the math so you know what you're getting.

We're currently in beta with a DNA-based health advice service (http://withinhealth.com) and here are a few observations (this will be written about more in detail at a future date on my personal website)

- People remember health information that is specific (personalized) to them.

88% of our beta users are able to remember their genetic insights/advice 3 or more days after receiving them.

- A compelling, personalized reason can help users get over the hump of taking an action.

No one wakes up in the morning and decides they want to get some blood work done for the heck of it. We identified interesting genetic predispositions for beta testers which were enough to motivate 7% of them to get blood work done. 21% of beta testers took an some type of action based on the personalized and advice we presented.

It hardly goes against common sense to believe that personalization would facilitate retention and action but it has been fulfilling to witness firsthand.

Tried to sign up, but got:

"403 Forbidden

qXTJJBys/ed4Gx1wX @ Tue, 08 Dec 2015 18:00:18 GMT

BRICK-6"

Thanks - should be fixed!

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