Burns are a particularly nasty and painful type of injury: the nerve endings are damaged, skin regrows tougher and tighter, and on top of this patients have to also deal with physical therapy.

A new game, called Snow World gets burn patients to play a 3D computer game in which move along a snowy path and fire snowballs at nonmoving target.  What are the effects of this game?  A recent report shows that patients playing the game report feeling less pain when playing, and more impressively also get a greater range of motion in their burnt limbs as their muscles relaxed. Finally, they also get less pain medication was also required, meaning patients were lucid for longer periods of time.

This is just great — and I wish I had this game when I was in hospital.  Maybe we can find games for other issues as well (eliminating the pain of social rejection, losing money in the stock market….).

As it turns out Predictably Irrational was selected by Amazon’s customers as their favorite book for 2008 in the category of Business & Investing. 

It was also selected as #23 in customer favorites across all categories.

I can’t tell you how happy this makes me.
Irrationally yours

Dan

Today was an interesting customer service day. First, our cable (phone, internet and TV) stopped working. I got on the neighbors network and requested a technician from Time Warner. I was told that someone would come the next day and that they would call 30 minutes before they arrived and if we did not answer the phone they would not show up and we would have to call to reschedule the service visit. I tried to point out that the reason I need someone is that I don’t have a working phone, but this was lost on them.

When I got to the office I called the mortgage company. Our mortgage was just sold from one bank to another, and I called to make sure that they applied the first payment correctly. Yes, they got the payment but they did apply it to the mortgage. Why? I have no idea and they did not know either – so they asked me to call back in a few days to see if something had changed. Reluctantly I agreed, and then the customer service person asked me if all my questions were answered. “Are you joking?” I asked. “I had one question and you told me to call back.” You are correct,” she said, “did I answer all your questions?” “What do you think” I asked. “I guess we didn’t.” she said.

I am sure looking forward to calling them again in a few days.

Some thoughts about Globalization

Why visual illusions are dangerous — at least code orange!

See reality

When do we consider and not consider hygiene?

For a long time it was difficult to make the argument that people might behave irrationally from time to time.  Sure we could demonstrate different irrationalities with experiments, but people would always tell me “clearly when it comes to important decisions like the stock market people will be perfectly rational!”

I didn’t think so, but it is hard to experiment with the stock market.

Sadly, the recent events have shown that the market is not as rational as we might hope, and making the case for irrationality is now rather trivial.  It is an expensive lesson, but when David Brooks from the NYT makes the case for behavioral economics, I think we have arrived. 

Maybe the most irrational tendency of them all is our belief that we are rational!

I just hope this would have been a cheaper lesson.
Sadly yours

Dan

Food might give us a good example of why we need to think more carefully about rationality now that we create products and markets….

Jake is about to chip onto the green at his local golf course when a long funeral procession passes by. He stops in mid swing, doffs his cap, closes his eyes and bows in prayer. His playing companion is deeply impressed. “That’s the most thoughtful and touching thing I’ve ever seen,” he says. Jake replies, “Yeah, well, we were married 35 years.”

Who do you think will find this joke more funny liberals or conservatives? (more…)