The Reformer
Changing the system from inside it, principle turned into change.
Cass Sunstein embodies The Reformer through his insistence that regulators on both sides of the Atlantic have misdiagnosed the algorithmic economy's harms. His response is characteristically surgical. Rather than reaching for blunt prohibition, he presses for transparency mandates and corrections to behavioral bias, naming the precise mechanism institutions have failed to address.
“Completely, completely, and then the lion will eat that other person who is profoundly to be hoped is not a dear friend. So optimistic bias can create problems. So we might think that given unrealistic optimism with respect to medical decisions, we're just going to rely on the doctor. That's one thing you might do.”
“That's also a fantastic question. I'm doing surveys right now that is right now on whether people like algorithms. And so I'm asking people, would you choose an algorithm or a person with respect to an investment decision or an algorithm or a person with respect to a vacation? Where are you going to go?”
“You might hear something that fits with your belief, that is like you're really sick. But you don't want to believe that because you don't want to believe you're really sick. And so if something is disconfirming but desirable, the data we have suggests that the desirable will beat the confirmatory.”
“Completely. I love Derek Thompson's book, and I think that's a fantastic example. So one way to think about it is that the phenomenon of power laws is highly relevant to success and failure, where we tend to think of things as linear with respect to growth, but that's not true for video games. It's not true for films.”
Masters in Business: “At The Money: Fan Favorite - Algorithmic Harm”
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