Holocaust

 Most people learn about this in their history class, but do you truly know what happened at the time of the holocaust. It was a time of true horrifying terror, hundreds of thousands of Jews were killed, in Germany. Why was this so? Adolf Hitler, a notable figure, wished for the extermination of the Jews. Not only were Jews killed, but many others were also killed. In total, around 15 million people were killed. There were secret camps in Germany where captured Jews were kept. These Jews were forced to work, even children. If the worker was weak or not fit to work anymore, they would be killed or sent to a gas chamber for genocide. A genocide is the mass killing of a group of people, ethnic or religious. In this case, Jews were killed. Germen gas chambers (or any other) are buildings big enough to fit groups of people. There were vents on top where the German soldiers put Zyklon B and gassed the Jewish people inside to death. In order to keep the Jews calm, the Germen soldiers told the Jews to take off their cloths because they were going to have a shower. This kept the Jews calm but when they entered the so called shower room, the lights were shut, doors closed, and gas emptied in the room. Everyone in there would die within minutes. It is a sad tragedy, but this was to meet the likes of Hitler. Many lives were lost and it is indeed tragic. In fact, I was inspired by the movie,"The boy in striped pajamas." You should watch it, it is rather sad and touching.

Nudge: When Do We Need a Nudge?

Chapter 4
When Do We Need a Nudge?

  This chapter is fairly short but brings a good meaning to how industries and businesses survive, in my opinion. Previously, my review of Chapter three, following the herd, we can see how nudges can make people do things. Also, we learn how nudges can be deceiving. Benefits now, costs later, is a description on how people choose things and thinking about the downsides in the near future. There are good habits that we can do in our lives, like taking a walk or designing our own film, these are good things that we should do. For a New Years Eve resolution, no one would say take less walks or design less movies. Benefits now, costs later is directly pointing to bad habits or choices like smoking (Number one example) or eating fatty foods. Again, for a New Years Eve resolution, you wouldn't say that you would want to smoke more or eat more fatty foods, that's just wrong. The benefit is, say for eating fatty foods, you can enjoy the taste and the cost is gaining weight.

  Degree of difficulty effects when we need a nudge. When turning on the television, we don't need help. But with picking the right mortgage, we do. There may be some words that we can't spell, but what is our solution? Use a spell checker or just google it.

  Imagine there are two worlds, one with just economists and the other mixed with plain humans with economists. The economist would strive and compete against each other but the mixed world would be interesting. Economists sell warranty plans to humans, though it may be a rip-off if looked carefully. We sometimes buy these rip-offs because the salesperson was good at explaining. It happens but that's how some businesses or companies survive.

  So, when do you think you'll need a nudge to help you the most, respectfully ?

  - When eating a tasty brownie.

  - When going for a mile run.

  - When playing too much games.

   Well, all of the above are okay, but mostly the going for a mile run is the best answer. Why is this so? Eating brownies and playing games are a habit that we tend to like. Running is a habit we want to do, so in order to do that you have to push that doer out, even though it takes hard work. In the end, you'll be sure to figure it out. So remember, not everyone is perfect or full-proof, our minds tend to lack to something right in our face due to our thinking. A friendly salesman could just take $100 off of you like that, we're not all economists, but we can sharpen up. Economists are human too, though harder to be 'nudged' upon.

  " Governments can, of course, outlaw some kinds of activities, but as libertarian paternalists we prefer to nudge -and we are keenly aware that the governments are populated by Humans." - First paragraph of page 88, Nudge.

Nudge: Following the Herd

Chapter 3
Follow the Herd

 

   Now on the third chapter of Nudge is Following the Herd. This chapter is mainly about how our minds tend to follow things that others do. This happens to most sociable people but as the book says not so many economists are sociable. They only talk when they gain something. In a basic way, we are nudged by each other. Do you know the history of ties? What are the uses of a tie? Ties were originally used as napkins, which may not even sound like much, but have a use. People see other people wearing ties and now ties are a symbol a formality. Legends are believed and thought of from other people, who else, we are the ones who can choose to believe them. There are many tales that if you live with someone for a long time, you'll look like them. Its not entirely true, but there is a sense to it. You share the same diet, shelter, and lifestyle which in result contributes to a minor physical change. The goal and sole aim of this chapter is to see why social influences work as they are. I will be using examples of my own to help with understanding:

1. Living in a neighborhood with wealthy people and rich children will influence your child to want to have the stuff the rich children have.

2. Most people are using a certain brand perfume and they ask you if you are using it, you will feel left out because you use a different perfume.

 Doing what others do is nothing bad at all. It can help you follow the trend and not feel left out. But there are many nudges to this. For example, a soda company wants to promote their beverage, so they say, "Drink this beverage because its good." Thats a fairly simple and lame sentence, most people would comeback by saying stuff like 'who said its good?' A better way to say it is, "Drink this beverage because everyone thinks its good!" That sentence is not bad, some people would be convinced even though the sodas are the exact same thing but with different descriptions. To promote it even more you can put a famous person in it without changing the rest, like, "Drink this because Tiger Woods and everyone else thinks its good." Along with that, add the picture of Tiger Woods. An example from the book is situated in Texas. Apparently, Texas had a litter problem back than and was trying to promote 'No littering.' Most of the litter bugs weren't too convinced by this, so they had to step up. They made a new slogan, "Don't mess with Texas!" What do you notice about this? In other words, the slogan says don't mess with the people of Texas. Adding people to the topic changes things because people like to follow a bigger group of people, why not follow the whole Texas state! The Texas government was smart, they got football players from the Dallas Cowboys saying the slogan, so inspirational.

The Spotlight Effect


 Would you feel like you were in a spotlight if you were the only one wearing a T-Shirt at a conference meeting. For many people, that would be a 'yes.' Research show that many people feel that someone is watching them or that they're being stared at. If you were at a meeting then that would be true. But if you had a stain on your shirt at a party, would you feel odd. Don't feel too special because most people won't even notice it. In fact, a study shows only 23% of people noticing a stain on a persons shirt in a party. Thats very little compared to a spotlight.

Smiles frowns and saving energy is a paragraph on a social nudge which saves energy. Houses are told on how much electricity they use and the government rates how much they use with smiles. Along with that, they tell you if you use a good amount, little, or a lot. A house gets rated with a sad face and another with a smiley face. The house with the sad face uses less electricity and the house with the smiley face stays the same with slightly higher electricity. They change the amount of electricity they use all because of this information. Smart way of conservation for electricity.

Nudge: Resisting Temptation

Resisting Temptation
Chapter 2

"At O'Hare Airport in Chicago, two food vendors compete. One sells fruit, yogurt, and healthy foods. The other sells Cinnabons, that have a whooping 730 calories and 24 grams of fat. Care to guess which of the two stores always has the longer line?"- Page 53 of 'Nudge.'



  Chapter 2 of Nudge starts out with an example of temptation. Thaler (one of the two authors of Nudge) was hosting a party. He put out a bowl of cashews and people ate some. Thinking about the main course, Thaler puts away the bowl of cashews so the people wouldn't be full. In the way of economics, it doesn't matter if you have extra or more options, because you could always turn them down. When Thaler put the bowl of cashews down, the people could choose to eat them (or not), eat more, or finish the bowl. If they finished the bowl, it would wreck their appetite. So firstly they ate some cashews, than it just kicks in that they eat more and more until the bowl is empty. What makes them want to eat more or do they want to eat more? This is called 'dynamically inconsistent.' A good example that you could think up yourself would be that you want to do something but you don't, it fails. Lets say its a nice Friday morning, you feel like taking a walk, go fishing, or do something productive. As time passes by you didn't do what you planned, in fact, you didn't even take a shower yet! That's our lazy side, but how does this relate to the bowl of cashew situation. Before the bowl of cashews were placed, no one asked for it or even thought about it. But when it was placed they ate a bit but planned to eat the main course of food. Without thinking they just kept eating and eating the cashews. This is dynamically inconsistent, you're not following your plan. This chapter covers another two main things:

- The 'planner' which is influenced by your reflective system of thinking (mentioned in the previous chapter).
- The 'doer' which is influenced by your much needed automatic system (also mentioned in the previous chapter).

 These two parts of your mind or brain are in a conflict. Which one is stronger for you?

 Mindless Choosing is the fact of auto-drive, functioning all by itself without your awareness. This happens to almost everyone. A good example would probably be at a movie theater or cinema. When you buy popcorn, you just keep eating and eating un-knowingly. The same thing goes with stale popcorn. A study that the chapter explains showed that a bunch of students at a theater ate a load of popcorn which was mistakingly stale. The students noticed and felt it, but for some reason they kept eating, thinking that it was just normal. Such is an example of mindless choosing.

 Self-Control Strategies are things that you are in total control of but just don't stop. The doer is telling you to continue. Most people use an alarm clock to wake themselves up, the planner would get up and turn the alarm off, ready for the day. Whilst the doer would hit the alarm clock on snooze and continue sleeping. Its hard to change doers (take Homer Simpson for example, could you change him?). Enterprise and business firms help us out in this, fortunately! There are many type of alarm clocks designed to help doers wake up, an example of this is 'clocky,' a smart alarm clock. Here is a short description of clocky from the label:

" Clocky is an alarm clock that runs away and hides if you don't get out of the bed in time."

 So basically, Clocky runs away after you click the snooze in order tog et your doer side to wake up. Pretty smart. Though I won't go through this in detail, smokers and smoking are an example of self-control strategies. The smoker knows its bad to smoke but continues, research in America show that most smokers know the harmful effect of smoking. Two thirds (2/3) of the smokers want to quit and have tried but can't, this puts a signal to your mind that you can't quit, even though you can.

  Mental Accounting is a funny thing to see in life. An example would come in money, economically in theory, money is freely exchangeable or fungible, it comes with no labels or tags. So why do some people act like it does? Most families keep savings in jars or bottles, labeling them. For example one could be electric bills, utilities, house appliances, or food. The house appliance jar could be empty and the family would be in misery, thinking that they have no money for house appliances when they could easily take money from the food jar. They think, mentally, that the money is specific for something when it is totally not. The chapter describes gamblers at a casino, one of the gamblers win a large sum of money. In the terms for gamblers, this is called 'House money.' The casino is referred to the 'House.' Being so, the lucky winning gambler thinks its okay to bet with the houses money because he won it, when actually its totally his and he could keep it for life. But he finds no loss in using the won house money. Well, too bad, he has been nudged.

The genius 'Clocky,' by Nanda Home Creators.

Nudge: Biases and Blunders

 I'm going to start reviewing the book 'Nudge' chapter by chapter. If you don't already know, 'Nudge' is a book by Thaler & Sunstein and it's about improving decisions, health, wealth, happiness, and personally for me, opinions. Biases and Blunders, the first chapter of Part I points out one main thing which you should know, the way you think or the way your brain acts to something. It's expressed in two ways, automatic and reflective. What can you tell from this? Automatic generally means, done by itself or independent, whilst reflective means the result of something or rather produced by. To make reflective thinking make more sense, its basically your un-confident gut idea being added on with a more well thought idea. The book itself describes automatic as uncontrolled, effortless, and fast. Reflective is more controlled,  effortful, and slow (obviously slower than automatic thinking). Take 1+1 for example, do you need to work out anything, no, it's obviously 2, no question about it. If you do need to work out something, think, or consider, it's reflective thinking.

 One part of the human thinking is the rule of thumb. In may own words the rule of thumb is solving something or getting something for what we generally know as it is faster, rather than research. This way of thinking can be good but it can lead to many false thoughts. Such as generalizing kids to be disruptive or a certain race to be rude. There are three parts to the rule of thumb, anchoring, availability and representatives.
 Anchoring is finding something out with information that you already know. They give a very well put example in the book but i'll give my own example, lets say that there are two children who are having a party. One child is popular and has a big house, the other child is less popular and has a smaller house. The unpopular child has ten people at his party, how can we estimate the amount at the popular kids house? We get an anchor, which is what we know, the unpopular child has ten people at his party. Then you adjust that number in what you feel is right and appropriate, so how about the popular kid has three times the amount of people in his party. So its thirty people at the popular kids party, this isn't accurate but studies show that this is a method of thinking that some people use. I must've thought like this at one point of my life and maybe even you did, it's natural, it's human.
 Availability is another rule of thumb. I'll explain the example in the book, do you worry about tornadoes, floods, or a tsunami? Maybe you do, maybe you don't, but it depends on what you've experienced. Would you get insurance for a flood in the desert, never! You may be more likely to get insurance for a hurricane after a hurricane just occurred but as time passess you will forget it and stop the insurance, so fear strikes more depending on your experience and it's a natural human instinct.  A biased version of this could come out. A person had a bad history with floods and later forgets about it. When prompted on insurance care, anyone can easily remind him of the flood, leading him to fear a flood more than a tsunami or hurricane.
 Representative is the last rule of thumb telling us how something can go to something else or relate to it. Most people would think a tall African American would be a good basketball player while a short person wouldn't. This is true in many ways but can be a bad way to perceive something. Another example is if a baseball player gets a home-run. The coach or fans may say that he's on fire and that he's likely to get another home-run. This is a myth or saying because it isn't true, you don't gain some power from scoring multiply and there is no 'hot-hand' or 'on fire.' If someone scored in soccer and he does it again, it may just be because, everyone thinks he's on fire and they are trying to defend him and bring him closer to the goal or that the person gets motivated and does better. Yet it all ends up as the way we take things or think.

 Losses are big, no one likes to lose. Gains and losses is a sub-title on page 36 of Nudge. This is another interesting study which proves many different things.  Lets say you were given a free ticket and another guy wasn't given a free ticket but he was given the option to buy the ticket from you. The other guy wouldn't care much, it's just a ticket after-all. But the guy asks you for the ticket, though he wants it for free. You got it for free but have a desire to keep it. It's inside you, you don't want to lose something. So here is a sum of it. I got a free ticket but i don't want to give it and I don't have a ticket but I don't feel the urge to buy it. If you don't understand than take it this way. You pass by a stall and see some wares, you're just looking around with no money, not wanting anything, just looking. The owner offers a free gift to you, you take it. Some random stranger wants it from you but you don't give it. Put it that way, it should make gains and losses easier.

 Status Quo Bias is a way of going which William Samuelson and Richard Zeckhauser have dubbed. It's the way of forgetting something or sticking to a current thing. In other words, not bothering to change or simply 'whatever.' A guy signs his inheritance to his mother and later gets married. He intends to leave his inheritance to his wife but never does, he just can't be bothered. So planning your best defaults and foundation is essential as you may later lose it in life or don't have time for it. Another way to call 'Status Quo Bias' is loss aversion and mindless choosing.

 Framing is an interesting way of thinking and you should consider this in your life. Framing is a success because people can be un-thoughtful decision makers and not look at something right. If you had a serious disease and went to a doctor and the doctor said that after the operation nine out of ten people survived, you'd most likely take it. But if the doctor said one of ten people died, it would be worrying and a thought may come of you being that one out of ten people who die. If you look at it both ways are the same but framing can change your decision. Altogether framing is a powerful as people make decisions from this through automatic thinking not reflective thinking. Decision, decisions, its all in your decision. Think carefully, frames are good nudges.

 In conclusion, decisions in life are changed and thought of in many different ways and humans are nudge-able. The chapter gives a very good last example of a 'Nudge' in real life. In Chicago's Lake Shore Drive, there are a series of 'S' curves. This means that drivers should be aware, I may not be able to drive but I know that you'de have to hold the brakes and drive slower in a situation like that. Anyways, many drivers just don't listen and don't follow the speed limit at the 'S' turn which is 25mph. In order to save lives, the city brought a new system to help the drivers. At the beginning of the curves there are lines painted on the road, evenly spaced and well put (not speed bumps). As the driver encounters the most dangerous corner of the road, the lines are painted closer to each other giving the driver the feeling or sensation of them speeding up, which in result makes them brake even more. This helps them slow down over-all. So when driving on the road people may find the lines as guidance and somewhat speaking to you to slow down and hit the brakes at times. Well as a good ending to the chapter, we have been 'Nudged!'

What specifically is a 'Nudge?'  At first glance, most people would consider a nudge to be a push but its also an urge to do something or decide. Specific from merriam-webster, this is the meaning:
 to prod lightly : urge into action


Check it yourself:  Definition of 'Nudge.'

Which table is a better coffee table? What are the dimensions? 

Shangri La

 Have you ever heard of Shangri La? Other than being a luxurious hotel and all, what is Shangri La? Where was it's origin and why is it this way? Hotels are meant to be a comfortable place and a sort of fun, resting, and relaxing area to stay in overnight or longer. Shangri La on the other-hand is actually Earthly Paradise. It is said to be a remote place without the touch of civilization or any human exploration. More specifically, it is like a beautiful jungle with waterfalls and a range of plants, prosperous trees and old temples. Who made this up or thought of this/believed it? In 1933, in the book 'Lost Horizon' by James Hilton, he mentioned a type of remote paradise on earth. Where is the location thought to be? Shangri La is believed to be around Tibet or China. It is said to be remote because Buddhist monks lived there in peace, un-touched by other cause of disturbance. Due to this some hotels are called Shangri La because they are referring to the earthly paradise, a myth or belief. The next time you go to a Shangri La hotel, ask the receptionist about Shangri La itself, see if you get an answer!

Wimbledon Finals

  Wimbledon, the world cup for tennis, is in its final stages. Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic are set to battle today (July 3rd 2011). Djokovic recently had a match with Tsonga and Djokovic was the winner. Nadal faced off against Andy Murray and Nadal won. Now It's the set, two amazing tennis players face off  for the mens tennis finals for Wimbledon. My personal opinion is that Nadal will win, though I'm biased on either of them. Djokovic is a great player, with quite a temper, but other than that, he's good! In fact, Djokovic reminds me of one of my friends. Im going to get ready to watch the match at 5:00 from the United Arab Emirates. I'm just hoping for a good game, an intense one, but i forgot to mention Nadal is injured. Still, even though he's injured, I still have high hopes for him.