Sublime

We are not omniscient, rational optimizers, says Simon. Rather, we are blundering “satisficers,” attempting to meet (satisfy) our needs well enough (sufficiently) before moving on to the next decision.

The scheme worked because the pain of having Thaler cash the check and have a party at David’s expense was more salient than the rather abstract and pallid forgone contribution to his retirement savings plan.

The improvement from 95% to 100% is another qualitative change that has a large impact, the certainty effect. Outcomes that are almost certain are given less weight than their probability justifies.

If people were perfectly rational—if they made decisions solely by crunching the numbers—then subjects would always choose to invest, since the expected overall value on each round is higher if one invests ($1.25, or $2.50 multiplied by the 50 percent chance of getting tails on the coin toss) than if one does not ($1). In fact, if a person invests

People adopt sensible rules of thumb that usually work well but sometimes lead them astray,

d’économie Daniel Kahneman (1934-), qui a donné ses lettres de noblesse à l’étude des comportements irrationnels. En reprenant la dichotomie intuitif-rationnel, il décrit deux modes cognitifs qui façonnent nos comportements. Le « système 1 », expérientiel, intuitif, préconscient, rapide, automatique, holistique, principalement non-verbal et lié aux

The example also shows that it is costly to be risk averse for gains and risk seeking for losses.

Examples include economic and political forecasts. The evidence shows that collectives outperform experts in solving these problems. For instance, economists are extremely poor forecasters of interest rates, often failing to accurately guess the direction of rate moves, much less their correct level.