Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth and Happiness Paperback – August 25, 2022

This is a book I don’t regret buying at all. Very interesting read from start to finish. Bravo to the authors.

"Nudge or sludge? This question indeed becomes thought-provoking when grappling with real-world complexities. As I delved into the book, I found myself enlightened, as it offers explanations for many phenomena we encounter daily. For example, consider the amount of tip you would leave for your cab driver when paying with a credit card. Let's say the options are 15%, 20%, 25%, or any other amount you choose to write in. If you select the 20% option in the middle, you've been nudged! Conversely, if you're enticed by a "deal" with a rebate and make a purchase because of it, you might be sludged. This is because the seller intentionally makes the rebate claim process burdensome to ensure only 10-40% of rebates will be redeemed. Interestingly, the term 'nudge' wasn't coined by Thaler and Sunstein, but by a publisher who initially rejected their book manuscript. However, the term has gradually become a standard in the field since the book's first edition was released in 2009.I read this book after finishing Daniel Kahneman’s 'Thinking, Fast and Slow' and Richard Thaler’s 'Misbehaving'. This turned out to be the right sequence, as the foundation of Thaler’s two books is rooted in Kahneman's work. Specifically, 'Nudge' is based on 'Misbehaving'. With this reading sequence, you can better grasp the content.My criticisms of the book are mainly in the following two aspects:(1) While the first two sections are enjoyable to read, the third and fourth sections become tedious. For instance, the third section is about money. I was hoping for strategies that could be used to profit from moments when the financial markets are irrational. To my disappointment, a significant portion of the text was about nudging in scenarios of retirement plan choices. As Thaler himself pointed out, the median number of people who change their retirement plan is zero! Discussing such scenarios is not interesting at all.(2) Regarding the fourth section about society, there are many points I couldn't agree with. The authors' attempts to use nudge and sludge to solve societal issues seem to be an over-extrapolation of their applicable domains. Societal issues are more complicated than what can be explained by these two simple terms. For instance, Thaler tried to explain the China issue on Page 291. In short, how should we deal with China's argument that it would not be fair for it to face the same restrictions as wealthier nations that have been emitting more carbon for centuries – and getting rich as a result? A nudge-sludge solution overlooks the fact that China is a dictatorship. Their argument does not represent the views of its people. If we understand that all the Chinese Communist Party cares about is maintaining its regime, we won't bother dealing with their logical trap that they try to nudge us into. Another example of disagreement is on Page 322 when Thaler proposes replacing trigonometry education with finance for high schoolers. He believes a little finance knowledge on APR calculations is more important than trigonometry. Well, I couldn't agree. In my opinion, high school education in mathematics should only be strengthened, not weakened. Those APR calculations will become intuitive after students have developed a solid mathematical foundation. After all, not all knowledge can be taught in school. There is a lot, such as APR calculations, that can be learned in the University of Society.

You are standing in line at a coffee shop. You are exhausted, existentially and otherwise. You just spent nine minutes trying to choose a bagel. Plain, sesame, everything, gluten-free, gluten-maximal. You chose none. You panicked. You got a banana. You are a creature of choice, and also a victim of it. This book knows that. This book has been watching you.Nudge: The Final Edition is not so much a book as it is a manual for surviving the sheer volume of micro-decisions that buffet us daily—like informational hailstones the size of thumbtacks and minor regrets. Thaler and Sunstein are not just economists; they are behavioral cartographers, mapping out the strange geography of our decision-making with a kind of geeky benevolence. They love you, in the way a very precise robot might.And in this FINAL edition (the finality here is unclear—will there be a Nudge: The Resurrection Edition? Nudge: Endgame?), we are presented with the crown jewel of benevolent manipulation: the idea that you can design choice to help people make better decisions without removing their ability to choose. Libertarian paternalism, they call it. It’s like a friend who sets your alarm clock for you, but lets you think you set it. It’s the IKEA instruction manual of moral philosophy.Thaler says: people are predictably irrational.Sunstein says: let’s make that irrationality work for us.Together they are like the Batman and Robin of small behavioral tweaks that somehow lead to fewer people dying on roads, eating too much salt, or defaulting on retirement savings.Reading this book is like sitting in on a very lively dinner party with two uncles who are determined to save civilization via default settings and better font choices on government forms. And you know what? They kind of pull it off. They make you want to reformat the DMV and your own damn brain.It’s not sexy. It’s not Hemingway. It’s not even Gladwell. But it is true. And kind. And quietly revolutionary. Like a polite Canadian whispering “maybe eat less bacon?” in a way that actually changes your cholesterol.In the end, you realize the world isn’t made of big choices—it’s made of a million small nudges, each one a gust steering your wobbly boat toward or away from the rocks. Read this book. Then put your phone in grayscale. Set up a savings plan. Opt out of junk food. Opt into your future.And please. Choose the bagel. Don’t let the banana win.

I would not recommend this book.