Tuesday, December 27, 2011

Self imposed contraints back to the time of the ancient Greeks.

TEDtalksDirector's Channel - YouTube:


While a rational person would not need to impose constraints on ourselves, many of us need to.  In Behavioral finance we often talk about the seeming irrationality of them but all acknowledge both using them and them working.  In his TED talk, Dan Goldstein goes further into this topic and explains why we impose constraints on ourselves (100 calorie packs, Stickk.com, even budgets), how framing matters, and even how the discount rates we use affects our decision making.

While the entire talk is good, I especially enjoyed the discussion of Odysseus having himself tied to the mast to avoid the Sirens. (btw here are two pictures of that event: a PG version and a R version (nudity). )

Daniel Goldstein makes tools that help us imagine ourselves over time, so that we make smart choices for Future Us.



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