Richard Thaler AMA

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I am behavioral economist Richard Thaler. You might have read my previous book, NUDGE. My latest book, Misbehaving: The Making of Behavioral Economics, talks about how we all misbehave (as judged by economists) and my own career of misbehaving by pointing that out. AMA!

submitted 5 days ago * by rthaler

I’ve spent a career misbehaving in the economist profession. I’m now at the Booth School of Business at the University of Chicago. My recent book is my latest act of misbehaving, since its format (a substantive intellectual memoir that’s meant to be funny) I’ve been assured can’t possibly sell more than 10 copies. The successful books that share all those 3 qualities is the null set.

I’m here at reddit NYC with Victoria to answer your questions.

Ask away!

Edit: Thanks for all the great questions. And keep misbehaving!

i Dick,

I recently had to serve jury duty for the first time and as a behavioral scientist, I was shocked at how much lawyers can manipulate the way in which information is presented to jurors (i.e., likelihoods as frequencies vs. percentages, etc.). In your opinion: what nudges are allowed in courtrooms that shouldn’t be, and which ones should be instituted that haven’t yet been?

[–]rthaler[S] 207 points 5 days ago

When judges warn jurors to ignore something that is almost certainly useless, based on the research on the hindsight bias. But I’m not sure how to fix that.

[–]stevo1078 65 points 5 days ago

Would a soundproofed jurors box that has the audio streamed in on a 1 minute delay be against the jurors rights?

[–]vicar-me-baby 22 points 5 days ago

It would remove their ability to see how witnesses react to questions.

[–]neovngr 20 points 5 days ago

fine. video streaming, then. ;)

[–]blivet 5 points 5 days ago

The last time I served on a jury we watched a lot of videotaped depositions.

[–]baddox 3 points 5 days ago

Are blind jurors worse jurors?

[–]alficles 2 points 5 days ago

We’ll have to ask Lady Liberty.

[–]ademiix 4 points 4 days ago

Yeah ask her where Lady Justice is… ;)

[–]FlyingApple31 2 points 4 days ago

Well, blind jurors usually have had time to develop compensatory auditory skills from re-purposing parts of the brain otherwise used for visual processing for auditory processing. They may be able to hear emotional cues that most of us get from facial expressions or body language, or even get cues that are not visually betrayed. But it would be hard to make an argument that they can equally assess visual evidence (photos/videos).

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[–]DarkHarbourzz 23 points 5 days ago

Probably depends on the constitutional interpretation of the word “before”

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[–]billdietrich1 11 points 5 days ago

Some ideas about fixing the police/court systems:http://www.billdietrich.me/Reason/USPolicy.html#CourtsAndPrisons

Full article here

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