A Joosr Guide to Nudge by Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein

context, that context is best used to make people’

that context is best used to make people’s lives better and healthier.

Lastly, and perhaps most bizarrely, is the chooser’s right to be wrong. This is often used to point out the benefits in incorrect choices, which can help a person learn to make a better choice next time. But while this can be helpful in this case, it’s also extremely harmful in any situation where the lesson comes with serious consequences. Education, finance, and healthcare are all important, and come with painful disadvantages if bad choices are made. Choice architects in these fields have the unique chance to help people avoid a mistake that has the potential to ruin a person’s life!

Again, choice architecture is unavoidable, and it’s often not possible to have choice architecture without some kind of nudging, so it’s not possible to be entirely neutral either. In cases where neutrality is possible, good nudges will rely on a benevolent, competent architect with the best interests of the choosers in mind.

One obvious concern is the potential nudges have to be abused. After all, if a person can use these principles to help better people’s lives, it’s not farfetched to imagine they could be used to further selfish endeavors or to harm people. The answer to this is transparency wherever possible. In any issue, government or private, where nudges are used, people have the right to know about them.

Another way to improve healthcare through better context arises in the form of organ donation. Under the current US system, a dead person’s organs can’t be used for transplants unless that person gave consent while they were alive. This seems like a great plan in theory, but, in practice, many people who want to be donors don’t go through the steps to become one. Instead, why not just switch the defaults? Studies have shown that an overwhelming number of Americans are willing to be donors. If the default choice reflected that (with an allowance for anyone who wished to opt out), it would allow for many more active donors, which means greater distribution of useful organs for people who need them.

Defaults: People often tend to go for whatever choice offers the least effort to complete. This is why in situations where a default choice is available, it tends to be picked more often.

For libertarian paternalism to be effective, nudges must leave free will intact. The moment someone is forced to do something, by say limiting the options available, the influence ceases to be a nudge.
A nudge is instead an attempt to influence choice in a way that presents all options but steers the chooser toward the option that benfits them more. However, the key action is to make sure unfavorable choices are still perfectly accessible and no harder to reach than the better choices. The chooser must actually be able to reject the better choice if they so wish. This gives the chooser complete freedom to decide for themselves what they want, leaving their destiny in their own hands.

Libertarian paternalism does promote the idea that choice should ultimately lie with the individual, but also that choice architects have a responsibility to use their influence for good, since there’s really no way to stop influencing people. As there will always be a context, that context is best used to make people’s lives better and healthier.

meant to display Thaler and Sunstein’s ideas; it’s meant to show you how to be a responsible choice architect in your own right, creating great contexts that allow choosers to make decisions that can affect their lives for the better. As you read, you’ll learn how to challenge preexisting contexts and reform them, without takin