Comments

Oh, now I get it...Tom Peters, sorry Tom Peters!, is in the the business world version of "the secret"- cross and self promotion of vapid, empty pseudo intellectual books like this and freakonomics. Feel good nonsense that's not too controversial but enough to fool people into thinking they are challenging themselves or conventions.

Posted by just laughing at July 11, 2008 3:41 PM

This book is now on my wish list. I genuinely appreciate the importance of looking at our decision making and the practical effects the way that something is presented to us has on how we respond. In the interview, the discussion of the 'no child left untested' initiative in the US fits very well into my own experiences as an educator and working with educators.

Being thoughtful of how our response to a situation is colored by who we are is important. Too often we are led astray by our own prejudices, which can be detrimental to our success whatever line of work we are in. Certainly, Ariely's work should get us to mistrust some of our snap judgments (especially where our expertise is exhausted).

I do have one caveat, however- and that is this: we have a tendency in the Western world to use the word "irrational" as a negative (as in, something to correct). However, we have to be very careful as to how "irrational" gets construed. "Against our own best interest" or "against our own principles" may work fine, but when we get to "against logic" or "against reason"; here be dragons. The normative element can then be taken out of context and used inappropriately. An example would be the difficulty for game theory economists to get beyond the prisoner's dilemma. How do you account for non-selfish behavior in people? (which is an artificial dilemma).

Posted by Martin Koning-Bastiaan at July 11, 2008 5:02 PM

The words "prejudice" and "irrational" need to be re-imagined.

What is "prejudice" is actually the individual flavor of a person. We are at a point in human history where we can put two & two together, and understand that living in diversity = becoming consciousness of the fundamental truth that all humans think and behave differently.

The search for the Holy Grail of a neutral, unprejudiced, colorless behavior that is absolute is futile. It is not possible in a world which is fundamentally based on relationships, and is dynamic.

Our existence is an inter-dependent ecology. "Price" & "quantity" are not the end-all of rationality. Any person who has loved or hated knows this through their own experience, and of the experience of others about them.

So only because academia is still, in parts, persisting in its search for the Holy Grail should we humans avoid accepting our fundamental truth?

I find this work liberating, and have put it on my reading list.

Posted by Ramla Akhtar at July 13, 2008 3:08 AM