And to be blunt—that’s kind of why I don’t want anyone nudging me, thanks very much. You may mean well but you (and by extension the people who develop the nudge guidelines) don’t really know the difference between a fictional rational character (Star Trek's Mr. Spock from the 60s TV show) and a pediatrician (Dr. Benjamin Spock) who wrote some child care books and protested the Viet Nam war. Why are your paternalistic overtures somehow superior to my own inclinations (hint—they’re not).

Guess what—I don’t play the lottery or Black Jack with ‘house money’, I contribute to my 401-k even though I really, really can’t afford it with three kid three and under, I don’t really care which T-shirt I’m wearing and I’m a registered organ donor. I’ll keep my own counsel, thanks very much.

Yes, we live in a world with too many choices and insufficient time information and feedback but a significant portion of that is the shifting of the burden of customer service onto our shoulders to do EVERYTHING to maximize profits and cut costs.

I pump my own gas. I have to take care of my own medical claims and processing on line and reimbursement at the doctor’s office. I have to book and schedule things for my doctors on line. I have to ring up and bag my own groceries at the super market. I have to get my own airline tickets and print my own boarding and check myself in. I have to manage everything from car insurance quotes to banking and bill payment and mortgage quotes in ways that fit the businesses model and the way they do business instead of the way that suits me. (Which is why the next great business profit opportunity will be high touch customer service, but that’s a different issue entirely).

Dahlia—I get it. Some things are better choices. But the reality is a society with a greater diversity of opinion about what constitutes a person’s Millian ‘concept of the good’ is better than one where we’re eating our vegetables by default because that’s what was available and suggested by the cafeteria menu guide instead of because we know it’s better for us than Cinnabons.

Further, there’s something deeply disturbing about a kind of paternalism that blithely assumes it’s OK to form policies about what’s in our best interests because it assumes that some outside force knows what that is better than we ourselves do. The libertarian in me bristles at that.

Finally, though ‘optimism and over confidence’ may be something we’re subject to the reality is that the real world has a way of casting that as a self defense mechanism rather than policy setting; it comes in the forms of standardized test and performance reviews, raises and credit reports. I don’t think we need to tone down our faith in ourselves—that’s what we need to keep plugging away at it. In reality optimism is a defense against the surfeit of measures that that too narrowly attempt to define us.

That’s something that I think both Mr. Spock, the fictional logical character, and Dr. Spock the medical doctor and guide to raising children can probably agree on.

Otherwise we’re liable to wind up nudging people to follow their inner Doctor Spocks (ironically, the erroneous knock against whom was ‘permissiveness’) when we really mean following our inner logician.

Actually she does mean Doctor Spock. Did you fail to notice the repeated references to choices related to children and child-rearing?

Also, as much as you want to believe you make all your own choices and that this would be a new invasion of your own agency, the fact is virtually all of your (and my) choices are already manipulated (nudged perhaps) by a fare more insidious and disgusting force; advertising and marketing.

No—she explicitly references Star Trek

In the second paragraph and subsequent to this posting (and others I’m sure) Slate no has an asterisked correction in place. Her reference are to the rationalist character and she didn’t mean the pediatrician.

More to the point—advertising and marketing while influences—don’t mean I don’t make my own choices. It means a conscious effort to engage in reflection and sit on decisions and control impulses and engage pattern recognition skills. These are all skills that require development and choices but I don’t grant that the solution to one form of nudging—advertising—is another form of nudging, both designed to limit conscious reflection of choices.

Just my take.

As the author, and your other respondent, noted, the "nudges" are there, whether you like it or not. The question is which nudges to implement where, and who should make the decision.

By their nature, systematic nudges cannot be left to individuals to decide upon. The final decision can, and should, be left to the individual (i.e. how to invest 401k contributions), but the system must have a default for everyone. Why not set the default to the choice that is most correct for most people, rather than to the one that is least helpful? That's the current status quo - you're opted out unless you opt in. Why is that better?

Similarly, putting veggies in front of kids at school can only help. Sodas are currently put front and center, based on the desire of both schools and soda companies to make money. The larger problem with this arrangement is that it is not obvious and certainly not announced. Why not align the cafeteria layout with the school's mission of education and instillation of good life skills?

You list many things that you "have to" do, but I don't think you realize that these are actually choices to which you have been "nudged." Bag your own groceries? Only if you want to. It may not even save you time, but it does save the store money. Print your own boarding pass? If you like - it can save you a bunch of time. But you can still get a paper ticket in the mail if you want - and if you want to pay for it. Same goes for online transactions and even insurance quotes. Would you rather conform to an online form's constraints, or visit an agent at his office during the day? Obviously you pick the former. The fact that you think you're being forced, rather than encouraged, reveals a certain lack of transparency in these systems.

I understand the fear of a pervasive reliance on others, especially government, to make good choices for us. We need to be careful not to let our discretionary ability atrophy. I believe the best way to get the benefits of good nudges, while avoiding the risks, is to openly discuss the options and select the defaults in a rational manner.

Not really…

The constraints on corporate airline travel are such that doing other than the least costly options are non-reimbursable. The price we pay. Similarly, the grocery store in my area doesn’t have cashiers—only people who wander around to registers to help the machine glitches. It’s not a choice. Similarly, there is no other way to get an appointment at my doctor’s office unless you visit his web site—managed care payouts have forced such efficiencies upon them because solvency is now a real issue and the staff is a luxury that no longer can be afforded.

At any rate—it’s one thing to adjust the defaults but as I said—I would rather people (especially adults—paternalism towards children is one thing, towards adults quite another and the Homer Simpson analogy is specifically targeted at adults) take more reflective responsibility than there being any default—opt in or out.

401-ks should require you to accept or decline on your payroll paperwork forms, just like medical insurance. You have to elect something—actively. Neither opt in nor opt out is better—an active choice, preferably made upon reflection is.

And the real problem is the people setting the ‘opt in default’ frequently don’t know what they’re doing (hence my point about not knowing the difference between D. Spock and Mr. Spock, though Slate has corrected the error originally published). Sure, veggies instead of French fries sounds great ins the school cafeteria—until you realize that the ‘opt in veggie’ is slathered in peanut oil and you’re kid is allergic and you find yourself with an eppie pen warding off anaphylactic shock.

No thanks. My problem is that the defaults are usually set be people, well… like Daliah… who find themselves falling into all of the traps I studiously avoid.

@Demosthenes

I'm completely with you. Overbearing liberals and paranoid conservatives love the idea of a paternal government, making decisions for the proletariat/flock that we're clearly too doggone dumb to figure out on out own. You know what? A government shouldn't be paternal, because I will not trust a government to act as a father to the people. I, being fairly American, have an innate distrust for government, especially the variety that claims to go further than just defending our borders and keeping the peace.

I do believe that the government should look out for the welfare of its citizens, but it should do so by trying to correct economic inequalities, not by jostling use around like little kids to better look out for our health, etc. (and by the way, imagine where we'd be if governments of the past aggressively looked out for our health, what with the bizarre medical theories and practices of the past -- excuse me while I get my morphine dose and see my phrenologist).

You seem to have missed the point. You can't have a "null" default on a binary choice. It's either opt-in, or opt-out. Your proposal is the status quo: you must elect to contribute to a 401k, else you don't get one. That's opt-in. Remember Neil Peart from Rush? "If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice!"

I understand your paranoia about being presented the wrong choice and being told it's right - but the choice is not taken from you, only framed differently. If you have a realistic fear that all the choices are bad, you need to act on that. It's the fear that some choice might possibly be bad for some individual that puts us in the "paralysis by analysis" that is the status quo. No one can give anyone any advice, because they might get sued if it's wrong.

My proposal is that those who set the defaults do so openly, and with appropriate controls and feedback mechanisms. Thus, if your kid has a peanut allergy (as mine does), then you need to be able to address the school and have the potentially lethal products removed from the cafeteria. If that's not possible, then it's not because of the choice of a default - there's a larger problem of accountability and traceability of decisions.

It does not make sense to require all accountability and traceability problems to be solved before considering any adjustments in defaults. The defaults are there, and they cannot be eliminated, so they should be optimized.

Finally, Daliah et.al. are not going to be setting your default choices, and the review process for significant choices should surely be more rigorous than copyediting of an online article. Even if she were, though, you now have evidence that errors can be corrected quickly, as soon as they are pointed out.

I don't think anyone argued that we should shove Planters' in front of kids allergic to peanuts. Clearly, it's a matter of public safety to protect those with potentially lethal allergies.

And, yes, the default should be "null." Maybe a 401(k) is a great idea, but that's my money and my retirement fund. If I want to invest it in a fast-food franchise, or put it all into stock, or invest in some other way, than I should be able to without the inconvenience of having to opt out of something I never even agreed to. The point is, except for following laws, everything in society should be opt-in. And laws should be necessary, not "helpful for that guy who's bad at saving money."

No, you’re missing my point…

Informed consent rather than default. Medical insurance is a good example—you can’t simply refuse to opt in and thereby opt out (to cite your 401-k example). You must choose a plan or actively decline the plan and cite either another provision for care and detail that or the company will provide a minimal plan that you must consent to and sign for. There’s no possibility of ‘I didn’t sign up for it so I didn’t get it by default’; you must actively select something or demonstrate that you actively decline rather then declining as a default position.

Not making a choice wouldn’t be an option—make one negative or positive, but don’t make ‘not making a choice’ one or the other.

And I don’t believe in analysis paralysis—quite to the contrary, to little analysis occurs precisely because of the issues references in the first reply.

My problem with opt in (or for that matter) opt out is that there’s an inherently paternalistic assumption that one default is superior and ought to be positioned for people as a rule—that an outcome is preferable. The underlying assumption to that is an agent other than the actor understands what is in one person’s best interest, consistent with their concept of the good, knows what is helpful or harmful, better than the actor. There is no such thing as ‘paternalistic libertarianism’ (it’s absurd one might as well term something ‘individualistic fascism’).

It’s not that I fear ‘all the choices are bad’ or that I don’t think bad ones can be corrected—it’s that I resent any choice at all being positioned in such a way that it assumes to know better than me what’s in my best interest. It’s simply not the case.

I categorically reject paternalism on both pragmatic grounds and as an ethics violation; whatever else your sense of ethics (particularly in a neo-Kantian sense) it prohibits treating others as ‘part of one’s environment’ or subjugating another’s value scheme to our own. It fails the ends as means test.

It’s the very notion that faults can be optimized that I reject. That’s out of experience.

Just as an aside, if you can't afford to donate to your 401(k), you shouldn't donate to it. Presuming you work hard, make wise choices, and generally move up on the social ladder, not donating is equivalent to having your future, richer self donate your current, poorer self some money--not a bad choice at all.

I agree overall. It’s astonishing to me that I struggle with it at the income level I’m at (which would make it seem it should be workable) but that’s a reflection of the area I live in (New York) and the medical expenses that come with high risk twin pregnancies at the age my wife and I are at. It makes some sense to keep up with the 401-k because it provides an emergency buffer and the losses can be worked out around for the expenses I’d tap it for (medically necessary exemptions and such). May rethink it soon.