Starting with the Clinton administration and then Bush following, the government pressured banks to lower their standards for granting mortgage loans and this led to the current economic crisis. Not the free market (which it was not!)

Dear Dr. Ariely:

As our November choice in what was once the Humanist Book Club but because of library restrictions, now call ourselves the Non-Fiction Book Club. I didn’t get to read the latest edition but the first and I have some comments on cheating.

Some years ago, when visiting a cousin of mine in England I asked if she could arrange to have me teach a chemistry class at her technical college which she did. I have always borne in mind what I consider to be the insanity of the Japanese (and I think also the Chinese) to provide high school graduates with one and only one chance to go to college based on a single exam. With that in mind I posed the question to the class: If you knew that your future rested on a single exam would you cheat? There was a long silence, but I waited them out and finally one student said he would. The class was coed but it was a young man who spoke. I agreed that the student had made the right choice.

When I was in high school taking a final in geometry I panicked and said to the student sitting to my right (and I quote what I said verbatim) “For God’s sake help me!” The proctor of the exam heard me and marked my paper “Cheating on Final exam.” I knew I was done for and toyed with the exam as returned to me. The kid I tried to cheat from failed the exam. I got a 65 – a barely passing, but still passing, grade.

When I was an undergraduate taking a course in classics I was stumped by one question: what was the name of the Greek equivalent of Noah. I tried to read the answer from my friend’s paper, but I couldn’t read his writing. The answer to that question is Epimetheus (the brother of Prometheus). In the meantime my friend needing an answer from me could read my handwriting and copied an answer from my paper. He got an A for the course. I got a B.

When I first started my teaching career I was teaching an Intermediate Algebra course and gave a test. A young girl, sitting in front, started to cry. I walked over to her and said, in my sternest voice, “If I ever catch you crying over a test I’ve made up I’m going to take your paper away from you and give you an A.” She stopped crying and I remember, to this day the grade she got: 85%.

When I began teaching chemistry at the college level I allowed my students to keep retaking exams until they received a grade that satisfied them. Then, no matter how many times they had taken the test or how many times they had failed, the only grade that counted was their highest grade. I figured that my role as teacher was to see that my students learned the material and once they had there was no point in punishing them for the time it took them to learn it. In fact since most of my students were adults returning to college I recognized that there was a learning curve – a fact that all teachers recognize but that the educational system can’t bother to cope with.

The point that I’m making is that cheating is more than an ethical/moral decision but has elements of what you might consider social forces with elements, occasionally of market forces but I believe, in the clutch of an examination, it is panic.

Don Gilbert
(Prof. of Chemistry – Ret.)

To your piece, I can only say “From your lips to G_d’s ears.” That’s about the only way it’ll happen.

I greatly enjoyed your book, by the way, especially the sections on what motivates people to cheat. An interesting corollary experiment might be to introduce taxation: how likely are you to cheat for profit if you know you won’t be able to keep most of what you’ve stolen?

Anyway, thanks for a great, thought-provoking read.

Check out a recent blog post about the forerunner in this policy revolution, Prof. Esther Duflo, recently awarded a MacArthur:

http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/010665.html

Now the government is attempting to “solve” the problem. How? By making money even cheaper. Anyone who was likely to buy property now has even cheaper money available to buy real estate that is even cheaper. This will wring out the last drop of buying interest from the market.

If you think the collapse is over, you are in for a nasty surprise. When it happens, please don’t blame it on irrationality (unless you mean governmental irrationality).

I’d like to add to your scenario if I may…

And risk-based decision making with local presentations of the data that was considered brought about an increased awareness that science and communication are necessary for democracy. Cooperation and compromise flowed from the new understanding that no-one is above suspicion of error. Government in the sunshine became the rule rather than the exception as journalists learned to critique study design and statistical power. And no politician wanted to be accused of bias because they took campaign donations.

Hopefully, 25 years from now, there will be mainstream awareness of the actual causes of the 2008-20xx crisis.
Maybe by then the FED will be eradicated, money will be sound and a healthy limited government restored.

So, to complete the exercise in perspective, it would be interesting to see what you would have written in 1984 Dan – we were all younger and stupider back then!