8 ms·
Fantastic book - I certainly had to read it slowly, not fast. Two things bothered me about it though - firstly, it landed shortly before the reproducibility is
by fastandslow 2y ago
Fantastic book - I certainly had to read it slowly, not fast.
Two things bothered me about it though - firstly, it landed shortly before the reproducibility issues of such research became more widely known.
Secondly - towards the end of the book, it espouses the idea that using some methods of psychlogical and behavoural manipulation is at worst a net neutral, especially if there was nothing to see of the manipluation in question. After all, who can argue against organ donation being opt-out by default, or similar?
To me, this is like a magician claiming that there was no sleight of hand, as we were free to look wherever we liked during their performance. Denying the presence and capabailities of tools of manipulation is, in my opinion, incredibly dangerous, and the worst of its outcomes has been very publicly played out in recent years.
- roguecoder 2y agoI think the argument is whether or not we admit we are having these effects and take responsibility for them, we are doing them. I personally find that telling people exactly what I intend to do makes it more effective rather than less. But in a field where we can change people's behavior by making a button orange instead of blue or presenting a form in one page vs three, I find it impossible to pretend that one of those is a neutral choice. Instead, I focus on what it is we are maximizing for, and how people feel about the experience. I push my companies to choose patterns that help people feel secure & in control, leading to predictable outcomes that align with what they actually expressed wanting. It means we are collaborating with our users, even though we could have used those same techniques to make them feel more anxious, spend more money than they intended, or buy things they didn't actually need.