The wonderful people from Radio Lab organized an event Thursday evening at a beach in NYC.  This was part of the World Science Festival and it was called: “You and Your Irrational Brain: An Evening of Experimentation Under the Stars.”

It was tremendously fun to hang out on the beach, drink beer, and talk about behavioral economics and mistakes people make in decisions (for some pictures and a more detailed report see this link).  When it was over, I was deeply disappointed.  

Look at the picture below.  Isn’t this the ideal setting to have a chat about science?  Maybe I will try to move my class next term to that wonderful beach (or maybe it was the beer).

My kids, Amit (5) and Neta (2, yesterday) …

An interesting  analysis of the rationality of the stock market, from a British perspective

It is hard to know if the relatively changes we see in gas consumption are “sufficient” from an economic perspective. After all, we don’t know what it should be.

Here are some speculations on why we might not see much reaction to increased gas prices…

Over the past few weeks many people told me that they were experiencing difficulties viewing the videos (a quicktime issue), so after trying to solve it for a while I gave up and, instead, I am now using YouTube to show the videos.I hope this approach will work for everyone. There is one video per chapter (for the first 6 chapters), and we will add one more video every 2 weeks or so. The videos are under “demonstrations”, or you can follow this linkPlease let me know if this does not work for you.

Tim Harford has a very nice column called “Dear Economist” in which he responds to questions people email him about economics and daily life (and he writes very clever and interesting answers).  

Recently, I started getting lots of email from people with personal questions about kids, illness, jobs and romance — and I would like to propose that if anyone wants their questions about irrationality answered in a public forum (anonymously of course), send them to me (using the link on the right bar), and once a week I will pick a question and do my best to reflect on it on this blog.

Irrationally yours

Dan

The reactions I get directly from people and indirectly from bloggers to Predictably Irrational are really wonderful, and I am delighted that the book is creating so much interest and discussion. Of course some people have different points of disagreements and other points of view, but this is part of the learning process (and thanks to the discussions and feedback, I am learning a lot). The range of interest in Predictably Irrational is particularly exciting for me. For example this weekend Predictably Irrational was one of the New York Times Sunday Review of Books Editors’ Choice AND it was selected for a discussion in the Sunday service of the Greater Nashville Unitarian Universalist Congregation. What more can I ask for?

Irrationally yours,

Dan

Boston Globe

By David MeheganGlobe Staff / March 18, 2008CAMBRIDGE – We love to be told we’re smarter than we thought we were, but a surprise bestseller by an MIT professor has a less happy message: We’re consistently irrational much of the time. While there’s no cure, there’s hope – if we can learn to outsmart ourselves.more stories like thisThe writer is Dan Ariely, a behavioral economist at MIT and author of the new book “Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions.” It jumped onto The New York Times bestseller list at No. 5, where it remains this week. In worrisome times, we’re eager to understand what makes our economic selves tick. (more…)

By DAVID BERREBY
Published: March 16, 2008 

For years, the ideology of free markets bestrode the world, bending politics as well as economics to its core assumption: market forces produce the best solution to any problem. But these days, even Bill Gates says capitalism’s work is “unsatisfactory” for one-third of humanity, and not even Hillary Clinton supports Bill Clinton’s 1990s trade pacts. 

(more…)