YouSaid · the spoken record

Cass Sunstein

lines on the record: 98
first: 2023-08-18
most recent: 2023-08-18
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

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“Your belt, if everyone else is buckling their belt. There are other people who won't buckle their belt if no one's buckling their belt. I remember a time when if you buckled your belt, you were saying that the driver is extremely dangerous, or you were saying that you are yourself really cowardly and timid. And who wants to buckle their belt and accuse a friend of being an unsafe driver or disclose that you're a terrified, scared rabbit? And now buckling a seatbelt doesn't accuse the driver and doesn't confess timidity. And the social norm changed. Can I share?”
2023-08-18 · Masters in Business · Cass Sunstein on Behavioral Finance and Wealth · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The second thing that matters is that whether we want to participate or endorse a social change depends on what our threshold is for doing that. Now it might be a threshold for becoming active. It might be a threshold for just voting for someone. It might be a threshold for saying something. And we all have different thresholds and we probably don't know what they are. So if you think of some movement for something, a lot of people participated in it. Maybe the civil rights movement that Martin Luther King helped lead. And there are people who had a very low threshold. They were just going to go for it. And there are others who would join if a certain number of people joined. And the thresholds really matter and we don't know what their distribution is in advance. And it has to play itself out. So that happened with seat belt buckling. And the third thing, which is maybe most important is social influences. So you might buckle.”
2023-08-18 · Masters in Business · Cass Sunstein on Behavioral Finance and Wealth · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So it might be that a political candidate says Black Lives Matter, or it might be that a prominent female actor says I was sexually harassed. And if you were to, say, hashtag me too on Twitter, or it might be that someone says, I think people should be allowed to get married regardless of whether they want to marry a man or woman, regardless of their gender. And it's a free country. Go for it. And then people will feel licensed to say what they had shut up about. And for many social movements, the fall of communism is an example. The rise of the Federalist Saiya in the United States is another example. I saw that in real time. The success of President Trump, the success of President Obama, for all their differences, those all involved in significant part, people being given a permission. That they never had before.”
2023-08-18 · Masters in Business · Cass Sunstein on Behavioral Finance and Wealth · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, okay, so to understand this, we need to have some moving parts. One thing is that people have in their heads beliefs and desires that they don't tell anyone about. So you might think, I think that violence against people of color is pervasive and horrible. Or you might think, I think meat-eating is a really bad idea, or you might think, I think gun rights are very important, and it's terrible that there are people in the United States who are seeking to disarm the American public. People who think all of those three things at some point over the last 50 years have shut up thinking if they say any of those things, they will be ostracized or disliked or something. Think of political. Sometimes what happens, and this is the first moving part, is that people are given a permission slip.”
2023-08-18 · Masters in Business · Cass Sunstein on Behavioral Finance and Wealth · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Which are really high, so you can instantly put people in the role of plaintiff's lawyer or defense counsel and that their predictions about outcomes will fit with what they think is desirable given the role they assumed 30 seconds ago.”
2023-08-18 · Masters in Business · Cass Sunstein on Behavioral Finance and Wealth · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Now that was disconfirming information. It suggested what they believed would happen was false, but it was pleasing information. It suggested that the information they were receiving would make them smile rather than suffer, and it worked exactly the same for Trump voters who thought that Trump would lose, but then when they got information suggesting that Trump would win, they thought, I'll believe that. And it's because it was desirable. So we're just learning about desirability bias. It has an overlap with optimism bias. It has implications for law. So in law among real lawyers, you can create something pretty funny instantly, which is you tell them, imagine you're representing the plaintiff in a lawsuit. What are the chances the person will win? They say really high. If you ask the same kind of people you're representing the defendant, what's the chance the defendant will win? They say the chance.”
2023-08-18 · Masters in Business · Cass Sunstein on Behavioral Finance and Wealth · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Okay, and so that's about motivation. Desirability bias isn't about rational updating. It's only about motivation. Here's something that pulls them apart. I'm going to give a simplified version of the best data I'm aware of on this, where people in the 2016 election who favored Trump or Clinton also had predictions about whether Trump or Clinton would win before the election. Let's take Clinton voters. If they thought that Trump would win and then they were given information the suggested Clinton would win, they found it particularly credible.”
2023-08-18 · Masters in Business · Cass Sunstein on Behavioral Finance and Wealth · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Okay, so let's talk a little bit about confirmation bias. If I believe that the Holocaust happened, if I read something saying it didn't happen, I will dismiss that not because That the Holocaust happened, but because I am so clear that the Holocaust happened that the information that's inconsistent with my belief has no credibility. So it's Bayesian. It's not about motivation. So I believe that dropped objects fall. If a magician comes to me and says, you know, you're not quite right on that, I will think, magician, you're pretty good at your job, but I really believe dropped objects fall. It's not about my motivations. It's what I start with. So a lot of what we call confirmation bias is Bayesian updating given our priors. We dismiss what is just confirming on the ground that how can it be true that dropped objects don't fall? Or how can it be true that Bill Russell isn't the greatest winner in the history of organized sports?”
2023-08-18 · Masters in Business · Cass Sunstein on Behavioral Finance and Wealth · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“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. So if you think the economy is going to go sour, And then you learn that's not true, you might well be extremely credulous, meaning willing to believe the happy thing, even though it's disconfirming of your belief. So desirability bias means things that please us we will tend to believe, even if they are disconfirming of what we start believing.”
2023-08-18 · Masters in Business · Cass Sunstein on Behavioral Finance and Wealth · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, it does because it fits with my conception of human nature. Also, a little confirmation bonus there was. But let's pull them apart a bit. So desirability bias means that people believe things if they find it enjoyable to believe them, where enjoyable is a big concept. So it might mean it makes them smile, it might makes them feel secure, it might mean it makes them feel pleased. It could make people make them feel grateful. It can be any number of things. But desirability bias and confirmation bias are emphatically not the same thing.”
2023-08-18 · Masters in Business · Cass Sunstein on Behavioral Finance and Wealth · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Cooler than truth bias or confirmation bias. Its name is desirability bias. And it's like confirmation bias except it's different. And maybe I like it because of the phenomenon it draws attention to because I find it desirable in a way that indicates it's fun.”
2023-08-18 · Masters in Business · Cass Sunstein on Behavioral Finance and Wealth · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Telling you something completely, but truth bias can lead us in really terrible directions, and that's independent of motive. So I don't need to want to think it's raining, to think if someone tells me it's raining, it's umbrella time. That's one truth bias. The other thing is confirmation bias, where if we're told things that fit with what we think, we tend to like that and we tend to believe it because it fits with what we think. And that can aggravate the problem of echo chambers, where people's confirmation bias is being catered to. So if you think the thing is your investment in X is really going great, even though all the indication is that it's risky, the confirmation, the confirmatory material will have credibility. We have recent data suggesting there's a third thing, which is, I think,”
2023-08-18 · Masters in Business · Cass Sunstein on Behavioral Finance and Wealth · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Okay, so here let's talk about three things, might we? The first is If I tell you that it's raining outside right now, you aren't going to think he's fooling me. It's sunny and beautiful outside. You're probably going to think maybe I should get an umbrella. So when people hear something, and there's probably a good evolutionary explanation for this, under ordinary circumstances, they think it's true. And that truth bias is sometimes called is essential if we've tried to live in a world in which we thought everything people said was false, we couldn't get through a day. Cooperative process.”
2023-08-18 · Masters in Business · Cass Sunstein on Behavioral Finance and Wealth · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Very extreme cases taking things down, not through government, because then there's a First Amendment issue, but through voluntary action. And one size doesn't fit all. But I agree this is a very serious challenge.”
2023-08-18 · Masters in Business · Cass Sunstein on Behavioral Finance and Wealth · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Devoted democracy in the age of social media, that one? That's the very recent one. And it's exactly on your point. So what should be done by various actors, I think, is a really hard question, but the existence of the problem is palpable. If you're thinking about yourself, just as an individual, to try to be exposed to diverse ideas is a really good idea. There are apps. There's one, I don't know if it still is working. I hope so. It's called Read Across the Aisle, where you can tell whether you're just reading one kind of thing or another kind of thing. So there's self-monitoring. I know that some social media platforms have thought hard about how to handle the echo chamber phenomenon and hard also about how to think about the misinformation problem. And there are various things that behavioral scientists”
2023-08-18 · Masters in Business · Cass Sunstein on Behavioral Finance and Wealth · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But then I thought, okay, the real problem is echo chambers and the absence of shared exposure to things. And then when I thought echo chambers, shared exposures, I sketched out nine chapters and I wrote a chapter a day and I had a book after nine days. I've never had anything like that. It was like a frenzy, a happy frenzy of book writing. And that book has now gone through three editions. It was first called Republic.com.”
2023-08-18 · Masters in Business · Cass Sunstein on Behavioral Finance and Wealth · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So back in 2000, I agreed to write a book for Princeton University Press called Republic. com, and I had a title but I didn't have a book and I had six months of failure, like unbelievable failure, like either nothing or it was terrible. You sound like Denny Comedy? I was worse than Condomen because what he didn't like in his own work, his work is actually good. What I produced in those six months was, in fact, horrible. I still have it somewhere.”
2023-08-18 · Masters in Business · Cass Sunstein on Behavioral Finance and Wealth · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“At the end of the discussion, the prediction is the group is going to go soap, soap, soap, soap, soap, and it's going to do that with considerable confidence as well as unanimity. That will be the statistical regularity. And I've done work on political issues, climate change, affirmative action, same-sex stuff, where if you've got a group that has a conservative disposition, they go whoosh to the right after they talk with one another. If they have a left-of-center disposition, they go whoosh to the left after they talk with one another. And Kahneman and I did a study with this on punitive damages, jury awards, where for juries mad at a company, they're going to be super mad at a company after they talk with one another, which helps explain why punitive damages are both unpredictable and often really, really high. So that's the...”
2023-08-18 · Masters in Business · Cass Sunstein on Behavioral Finance and Wealth · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And here's the really cool thing. There was a book called Groupthink a few decades ago. It's a fantastic term. It's not clear what groupthink is. And if we clarify what's not clear whether it exists. So, the rigorous efforts to test groupthink have a bunch of question marks. But there's something like groupthink, which does exist, which is a testable hypothesis, which is if you get a group of people, it will end up after deliberation in a more extreme point in line with its pre-deliberation tendencies. So that's a mouthful. But let's suppose you have a group of six people deciding whether to invest in soap or instead electric cars. Those are the options. Let's say four of them think soap and two of them think electric cars, and they think the same thing, they think what they do with equal intensity.”
2023-08-18 · Masters in Business · Cass Sunstein on Behavioral Finance and Wealth · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Crazy finding because if you have two Democratic appointees on a three judge panel, they have the votes. They don't need that Republican appointee, but they are much more moderate and it's symmetrical. Three Republican appointees are much more right-wing in their voting patterns than two Republican appointees on a panel with one Democratic appointee.”
2023-08-18 · Masters in Business · Cass Sunstein on Behavioral Finance and Wealth · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Take your pick. Soap. There's new kind of soap. We ought to invest in X. That's the average view. Soap. Everyone needs to be clean. And with climate change, soap is going to be crazy. Soap companies. If that's the average view, but I'm starting to convince myself, by the way, to invest in soap companies, which is probably not necessarily right. Let's put it that way. If people talk with one another and they start with an initial disposition, they tend to think an extreme version of what they thought. They become more confident, more unified, and more extreme. This is a real problem for companies. It's a real problem for law. We have data suggesting if you get three judges who are, let's say, Democratic appointees on a court of appeals not to Democratic appointees in one Republican. Three Democratic appointees, the likelihood of a left of center opinion shoots up really dramatically.”
2023-08-18 · Masters in Business · Cass Sunstein on Behavioral Finance and Wealth · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Okay, well let's talk a little bit about groups, shall we? If you get a group of like-minded people together. They typically end up thinking a more extreme version of what they thought before they started to talk. So if you get a group of people who tend to think, you know, we ought to invest in X.”
2023-08-18 · Masters in Business · Cass Sunstein on Behavioral Finance and Wealth · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And it might steal your thunder. It won't be as good as yours, but it'll be earlier. And Dick said, you know, this was a fantastic moment for me. He said, why don't you join us? And we wrote it together. So I was intrigued by the behavioral stuff before I met Thaler, after I met Thaler, I had the world's best partner on this stuff. And then when I went to Harvard, our program that followed, and some of it involves nudges, some of it has nothing to do with nudges, but all of it has to do with behavioral science.”
2023-08-18 · Masters in Business · Cass Sunstein on Behavioral Finance and Wealth · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I'll tell you a story before I met Thaylor. I was overwhelmed in the best way by the work of Conom and Tiversky Thailer. So I thought this is the thing. And I started to work on some papers, one of which was called Behavioral Analysis of Law. And then Thaler came to the University of Chicago, and we started having lunch together. And I started working with him when he was working on a paper with a law professor named Christine Joels that I thought was going too slowly. And I said, if you don't write that paper, I'm going to write my paper.”
2023-08-18 · Masters in Business · Cass Sunstein on Behavioral Finance and Wealth · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Us something about how people get confused or fooled if we're talking about property law or tort law or contract law, there has to be a sense of how people are going to react to what the law is doing. So if the law has a default term, let's say, that you have to perform in a reasonable time, and let's say the company that's doing the performance thinks a reasonable time means maybe next year, what does the law do about that? And so there are a zillion questions, algorithms and AI are kind of top of mind now for the law to try to figure out that have a behavioral feature, and that's kind of what we're doing with our program.”
2023-08-18 · Masters in Business · Cass Sunstein on Behavioral Finance and Wealth · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Completely. So there has been, as I think everyone's aware, Behavior, so we know how people depart from perfect rationality, so people are often focused on the short term, not the long term. They're often unrealistically optimistic. Their attention is limited. They can be manipulated because they'll focus on one or two features of, let's say, a product rather than seven. And that means they'll get two features they like and five that they in the long run will despise. So we know a lot about that. This has major implications for law. So with respect to fiduciary obligations, let's say of a fiduciary, what do they have to tell people and what do they have to make clear to people and not just tell people? And behavioral science tells us a lot about that. If we're thinking about free speech law and we're thinking about the marketplace of ideas, behavioral science, behavioral economics might tell us.”
2023-08-18 · Masters in Business · Cass Sunstein on Behavioral Finance and Wealth · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Marshall, which I'm very grateful for. He's still a great friend. And in many ways, he's different from me in the last years particularly. He's more politically engaged in a way that is not my typical style, but I'm full of admiration for him.”
2023-08-18 · Masters in Business · Cass Sunstein on Behavioral Finance and Wealth · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think it's a little like basketball, and some people like Michael Jordan, and some people like LeBron James. You can't go wrong with either. And Bill Russell, of course, was the greatest winner of all time. Tribe was my teacher. Oh, really? And he was maybe of the three the most like Michael Jordan. His intellectual athleticism was and is next level. Next level. And when he was my teacher, he was charismatic. He was clear. He was bursting with ideas. He was writing his great treatise at the time. And it was a bonfire of thinking, a constructive bonfire is destroyed. Tribe didn't destroy anything. And I thought he was dazzling. And he wrote a letter for me, actually, for my Supreme Court clerkship with Justice.”
2023-08-18 · Masters in Business · Cass Sunstein on Behavioral Finance and Wealth · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You know, he was at Yale, and I know him very well, and I love him dearly, and he's 90 something now. And he was a great influence on me. And Harvard Nale often have intellectual interactions that are breeding a friendship. And Chicago and Yale also and Calabrazi was a founder of economic analysis of law and a little more, let's say, focused on poor people and people who are struggling than Chicago economics. So there's a Yale school in Chicago school and Calabrazi, I can't quite say was a mentor, but he feels like that to me.”
2023-08-18 · Masters in Business · Cass Sunstein on Behavioral Finance and Wealth · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“In terms of intellectual interests and intellectual background and politics and everything, Chicago has intellectual diversity too, but it's just smaller. So I felt that Harvard was a little like New York City and Chicago was a little like Boston, smaller, more tightly connected everyone to everyone else. And I love them both.”
2023-08-18 · Masters in Business · Cass Sunstein on Behavioral Finance and Wealth · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“A great question. So, Chicago, when I was there was the center of right of center legal thought. It had a very large percentage of the most influential right of center people. And they were fantastic and they continue to be great friends. Harvard was the place where critical legal studies was born. It's kind of not a thing anymore, but that was the left of center to law and economics, which was the right of center. I thought even when I was at Chicago, though, I wasn't right of center. I thought law and economics was extremely important. And kind of on the right track, and I thought critical legal studies was a bunch of adjectives and nouns and not really adding up to much. But I admired at Harvard the constitutional law people who were fantastic. Clear headed about the law for sure, and I admired the students at Harvard who were so”
2023-08-18 · Masters in Business · Cass Sunstein on Behavioral Finance and Wealth · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, we probably Yeah, we probably need a progressive income tax or something. And jobs programs and educational opportunity.”
2023-08-18 · Masters in Business · Cass Sunstein on Behavioral Finance and Wealth · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So he saw I was in trouble because Stigler was so amazingly smart and quick. And Posner, who agreed with Stigler, came to my defense. And that was the start of a great friendship.”
2023-08-18 · Masters in Business · Cass Sunstein on Behavioral Finance and Wealth · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“In front of everybody? Well, a little like that. So I was in my 20s, mind you, and I remember a dinner that Dick Posner had for me as a newcomer to the University of Chicago, and George Stigler, who was also a Nobel Prize guy, was there. And he asked me what I taught. And I was teaching welfare law. And that was one of my courses. In Chicago. In Chicago. And it was about social security law and anti-poverty law. George Stigler said, why would you teach that? There aren't any poor people in America. And he had written a paper showing that if you earn $6 a week or something, purporting to show, I should say. If you have $6 a week, you're going to be fine. And my reaction to that was your name may be Stigler and you may have a Nobel, but I don't believe a second that that paper is correct. And he was much smarter and more learned.”
2023-08-18 · Masters in Business · Cass Sunstein on Behavioral Finance and Wealth · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I wouldn't say that. I think that everyone is themselves rather than a Chicago person or New Yorker, forgive me, for those who consider themselves New Yorkers, you're yourself. But I was certainly inspired by and influenced by the fact that at Chicago there was and is intense curiosity and a sense that trying to figure out what's true is thrilling. Noble. So I saw Gary Becker, who won the Nobel, a great Chicago economist, who was almost a law professor who was around all the time. Man, did he think I was full of nonsense? And when he would ask me questions in his workshop, the feeling of you are wrong was combined with a feeling of respect that I'll never forget. He was a giant and I was a nothing. Wait, wait, wait.”
2023-08-18 · Masters in Business · Cass Sunstein on Behavioral Finance and Wealth · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's what I was fearful of. So I thought I was in the Justice Department. I had clerked for the Supreme Court. I had a career plans and the idea of just sitting in an office and thinking what ideas do I have that didn't feel really like living. It felt more like stultifying. But at the University of Chicago, the faculty was full of dynamism and energy and whether they were producing new ideas about the economic analysis of law or new ideas about what freedom means or new ideas about the securities law, it was like electric. It was like Paris. And the University of Chicago Law School at that time was as lively an intellectual community as they say Vienna at one point was like that and Berlin at one point was like that. Cambridge and Oxford at some points have been like that. Chicago is like that.”
2023-08-18 · Masters in Business · Cass Sunstein on Behavioral Finance and Wealth · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No ties to the legal community. You need to be a touch more circumspect than I. I think it is correct to say that the legal independence of the Office of Legal Counsel varies over time. Okay, that's true. But by tradition, it is not just a lackey. And then, as you say, I went to the University of Chicago. I went there because I was fearful that being a professor would be like retiring in your 20s. And I thought, that's not what I want to do.”
2023-08-18 · Masters in Business · Cass Sunstein on Behavioral Finance and Wealth · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, that still happens. So under recent presidents, all of them, the Office of Legal Counsel has occasionally said no. Now in some times the Office of Legal Counsel is more politically, let's say, what's the right word? Compromised. I want to use a softer word, but that's not. I don't have to.”
2023-08-18 · Masters in Business · Cass Sunstein on Behavioral Finance and Wealth · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Resolving a controversy, and it's kind of in between being a judge, you write opinions kind of like a judge, and you are part of a political operation that is the executive branch. And if the president wants to do something, you're not indifferent to the fact that the president wants to do that. But saying no is a very honorable tradition in that office. And we said no plenty. And one reason you say no is the president has an obligation to take care that the laws be faithfully executed. And that's solemn.”
2023-08-18 · Masters in Business · Cass Sunstein on Behavioral Finance and Wealth · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And his staff. Well, when you say directly, that's true, except the number of meetings I had with President Reagan was zero. The number of mediated interactions I had with President Reagan was about five. And the amount of work that I did for the president was basically every day. So the Solicitor General's office argues the cases in front of the Supreme Court, the Office of Legal Counsel, resolves conflicts, e.g. between the State Department and the Defense Department, or if the President says, can I make a treaty or can I fire the air traffic controllers or can I do something about civil rights? The Office of Legal Counsel is the one that answers that question. And I think it's at least as interesting as the Solicitor General's office because you're not pleading to a court, please agree with us.”
2023-08-18 · Masters in Business · Cass Sunstein on Behavioral Finance and Wealth · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I did have something in between, I should say, which wasn't like a vacation in Paris or a time being a shoplifter. I had time at the Department of Justice where I worked for a year in an office called the Office of Legal Counsel under both Carter and Reagan, which advises the president on the legality of what he proposes to do.”
2023-08-18 · Masters in Business · Cass Sunstein on Behavioral Finance and Wealth · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“He had been a Harvard professor, maybe the best Harvard professor of his generation, and he was an extraordinary judge. Marshall was a historic person and larger than life and full of humor and wit and moral commitment that was never drawing attention to itself. It was more about the people.”
2023-08-18 · Masters in Business · Cass Sunstein on Behavioral Finance and Wealth · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, Justice Kaplan on the Massachusetts Supreme Court is not in the history books, but he could be. He was a person who was fair and rigorous. And it's almost like there's one word for Kaplan, fair and rigorous. And he was a little like Daddy Kahneman in the sense that he'd obsessed over every word. He also was very critical of himself, and he could be very critical of his clerks. At one point, I was told before I started he's going to take you in the equivalent of woodshed and kind of threatened to fire you. And sure enough, that happened. And I reacted with fire. I said to him, this is unfair. And it was quite an encounter. And the next day said, are you still mad at me? Which was a recognition of my humanity. And I said, I still think you were unfair. And we became great friends. And I learned so much from him.”
2023-08-18 · Masters in Business · Cass Sunstein on Behavioral Finance and Wealth · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Critical race theory was kind of about to be born, and you could see the origins of it there as well as you could see the Federalist society, which is the conservative movement that's had amazing influence that the theoretical foundations were kind of being laid by 20-somethings in the 70s.”
2023-08-18 · Masters in Business · Cass Sunstein on Behavioral Finance and Wealth · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It was the aftermath of the 1960s. So it was later than all the civil rights and Vietnam stuff, but it was like a wave that was starting to recede, but extremely visible. So there were people who wanted to have great careers in whatever they could find. There were people who thought I want to make the world better. There are people who thought I'm kind of sick of people who want to make the world better. I don't want to be like that. And there were different categories of types. There was a lot of intensity. There was a sense that our country had been through something very traumatic and thrilling. And the question is in what direction are we going to go? It was pre-regen era. And you could kind of see the dawn of the Reagan era in some of my classmates. And you could see even the dawn of some of the woke stuff today in some of my classmates.”
2023-08-18 · Masters in Business · Cass Sunstein on Behavioral Finance and Wealth · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That understates it. So you got an email maybe at four in the morning saying this chapter is horrible. I don't know how we could have written it. In fact, the whole book is horrible. I don't know why we decided to write it. And then two hours later, he'd say, I see the fundamental flaw and we have to give up. And then an hour later, maybe 4.45 in the morning, he'd say, I might have a way to correct the fundamental flaw, but I don't think so. And then at 5.15 in the morning, send you a note saying, I have a glimmer of an insight. It's probably going to fail, but I'm going to try it. And then at 5.45 in the morning, he says, I have a new draft of the entire chapter, which was a catastrophe. And I'm sure this is very bad too, but it's less catastrophic.”
2023-08-18 · Masters in Business · Cass Sunstein on Behavioral Finance and Wealth · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Agreed. He's unique in writing with him was a joy and a laugh a minute. Writing with Danny Kahneman was astonishing. He's the most creative person I've ever met. He's also immensely self-critical. He's almost as critical of his co-authors as he is of himself. And it was a roller coaster and an incredible learning experience and his integrity and sense of we can do better kept me up most nights.”
2023-08-18 · Masters in Business · Cass Sunstein on Behavioral Finance and Wealth · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I'd say it was amazing writing on Star Wars was crazy fun and also a very unlikely thing for a law professor to do. Writing a book with Dick Thaler was not crazy fun, but was really fun because he's fun.”
2023-08-18 · Masters in Business · Cass Sunstein on Behavioral Finance and Wealth · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source