I recently finished listening to the audio version of Nudge by Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein. It was an enjoyable book, though it did have a majority of its background sections in common with other psychology books I've recently read having to do with natural biases and irrational decision-making. What I did like about this book was how it applied some basic principles to various areas of life, including managing money, saving for retirement, reaching health goals, and societal issues likes social security and organ donation. I think some of the suggestions in the book have a lot of weight, and I hope we implement them in the future.

I also liked their philosophy of libertarian paternalism, as it gels with some of my own personal thoughts on how choices and systems should be designed: giving people the right to choose but helping to "nudge" them in the right direction.

Intro: The cafeteria

• Location of foods influence kids' choices
  
• "Choice architect" organizes choices for others
  
• Examples: people writing forms, doctors explaining treatments, salespeople
  
• No such thing as neutral design
  
• Their philosophy: libertarian paternalism
  
• People should be free to do what they like
  
• Liberty-preserving
  
• Paternalistic to steer people to improve their lives
  
• Nudge doesn't forbid options
  
• People do not decide rationally
  

Part 1: Humans and Econs

Ch. 1: Biases

• 2 tabletops optical illusion
  
• How we think: 2 systems
  
• Automatic and rational systems (Systems 1 and 2)
  
• Anchoring, availability, representativeness biases
  
• Optimism
  
• Overconfidence
  
• Loss aversion
  
• Status quo bias
  
• Framing effects
  

Ch. 2: Resisting temptation

• Influence of arousal on choices underestimated
  
• Mindless choices: eating, driving, stale popcorn study
  
• Large plates and packages nudge us to eat more
  
• Ways to counteract: Clocky, informal bets against what you want
  
• Mental accounting of different non-fungible money accounts (even though all fungible)
  

Ch. 3: Social influence

• Social influences: information and peer pressure
  
• Music popularity in different simulated worlds based on initial conditions of what most downloaded (not inherent quality of music)
  
• Obesity contagious; eat more when eating with more people
  

Ch. 4: When we need a nudge

• Golden rule: when we can help and minimally hurt
  
• Market competition protects irrational consumers
  

Ch. 5: Choice architecture

• Stimulus response compatibility: pull bars on push doors incompatible
  
• Defaults: padding the path of least resistance
  
• Expect error and be forgiving
  
• Example: Netflix collaborative filtering
  

Part 2: Money

Ch. 6: Save more tomorrow

• Negative savings rates in US
  
• Ways to solve this: automatic enrollment in 401k plans
  
• Save More Tomorrow Plans: commit now to saving a certain % in the future (eases shock by not doing it yet but does commit)

Ch. 7: Naive investing

• Attitude towards risk affected by frequency of checking investment performance
  
• Market timing poor by people
  
• Problem: naive 1/n asset allocation
  
• Problem: not enough rebalancing
  
• Problem: concentration in single employer company stock
  
• Solutions: defaults should be well-diversified, passive portfolios

Ch. 8: Credit markets

• Mortgages
  
• Student loans
  
• Credit cards
  
• Not enough transparency; too much documentation; overcomplication
• Insuficient fee disclosures, comparisons across service providers
  
• Solution: standardized recap statements of fees in human- and machine-readable format; 3rd party sites can allow apples-for-apples comparison shopping
  
• Solution: reduce the types of loans and number of options to only the ones that are appropriate for people

Ch. 9: Privatizing social security

• Inspired by Sweden (but theirs is too laissez-faire)
  
• Sweden: too many choices, allowed mutual fund advertising
  
• More choices provided means need to give more help
  
• Provide one default great choice but allow those who want to customize to be able to do so

Part 3: Health

Ch. 10: Prescription drugs

• Medicare: way too many and too confusing plans
  
• Even official website impossible to use and gives non-reproducible results for plan choice algorithm
  
• Plan D Medicare impossible to understand (disagreement even among experts)
  
• Problem: random assignment of dual eligibles
• Solution: Simplify system, switch dual eligibles to intelligent assignment
  

Ch. 11: Increase organ donations

• Presumed consent in Austria
  
• Mandated choice in Iowa
  
• 80% of people just accept the default

Ch. 12: Saving the planet

• Externalities in pollution
  
• Fix incentives and provide feedback
  
• Cap and trade rights systems good
  
• More information disclosures on polluters
  
• Continuous feedback on energy use; Watson device to share energy use publicly; orb showing energy use to public; t-shirt you wear that projects your energy use to your friends (use peer pressure)
  

Part 4: Freedom

Ch. 13: Improving education

• Give more choices
  
• Introduce competition
  
• Simple recap fact sheets to help parents choose better schools
  

Ch. 14: Should patients be forced to buy lottery tickets?

• Problem: having right to sue for malpractice increases cost of healthcare and people not legally allowed to waive
  
• Better to allow freedom to contract for informed patients
  

Ch. 15: Privatizing marriage

• Solution: Marriage removed from all laws
  
• Separate religious organizations choose own rules for what to allow
  
• Civil unions give legal benefits to anyone who wants
• Tax benefits
  
• Entitlements
  
• Inheritance benefits
  
• Ownership benefits
  
• Surrogate decision making
  
• Evidentiary privileges
  
• Remove requirement for state licenses for marriages; up to private institutions, not government
  

Part 5: Extensions

Ch. 16: Ideas

• More ideas from authors and community
• Give More Tomorrow Plan (like Save More Tomorrow): for charity, commit to give small amount later
  
• Charity Debit Card: to quickly get itemized statements of contributions for tax purposes
  
• Automatic tax return: prefilled to reduce costs for default cases
  
• Stickk.com: financial commitments for goal-setting
  
• Quit smoking without a patch
  
• Motorcycle helmets: if want to ride without one, sign up showing proof of insurance, status as organ donor, and having passed special test
  
• Gambling self-bans: add yourself to list of people banned from casinos
  
• Destiny Health Plan: earn vitality bucks from living healthy
  
• Dollar a Day: pay teen girls $1/day to not be pregnant
  
• Changing filters in AC: little red light that tells you when
  
• No Bite Nail Polish: bitter taste if you bite it
  
• Civility Check: checks for mean emails and warns you before sending
  

Ch. 17: Objections to nudges

• Slippery slope (actual policies are beneficial)
  
• Evil nudgers and bad nudges (they'll always be there)
  
• Subliminal messaging (this is not; must have transparency)
  
• Nudging best when choice complex
  
• Asymmetric paternalism: help those most in need without harming others too much (example: mandatory cooling off periods after big purchase)
  

Bonus chapter: 20 more nudges

• iPed: jewelry changing color based on energy use/carbon footprint
  
• Smart meters: energy tracking
  
• Energy use and neighborhood comparison
  
• Affordable home energy meter (Watson); glows color based on use
  
• Fight global warming through driver feedback report and dashboard. Ecopedal to stop speeding.
  
• Power aware cord: intensity and age of electric current changes color
  
• Carbon labels: label carbon footprint
  
• Make believe speedbumps: painted triangles
  
• Eliminate dividing lines: lowers driving speeds, show vehicle speed
  
• Calorie count posting
  
• Eliminate cafeteria trays: less waste of food and napkins
  
• Japanese cultural norms/nudge against obesity
  
• Prescription drug nudges: to deal with patient noncompliance, give pill box with matrix of days, software updating doctor when taking or missing dose
  
• Procrastinators clock: up to 15 minutes fast but randomly
  
• Put a stop to people who blabber on: say, "please interrupt me if I speak longer than x minutes"
  
• Transparent airline seat pockets: helps people avoid forgetting belongings, also deters leaving trash
  
• Parking meters instead of panhandlers: homeless meters to raise money for city
  
• Limos for drunk drivers: road crew giving rides
  
• Social influences in recycling
  
• Urinals around the world: fly stickers
  

Postscript 11/08

• Obama
  
• Financial crisis
  
• Bounded rationality: hard to compare mortgages and understand subprime, especially for investors in MBS
  
• Limited self-control: easy to refinance and hard to resist, great returns on mortgage securities 
  
• Social influences: social contagion, unrealistic expectations
  
• Nudges: show mortgage terms in machine-readable format for comparison shopping, reduce complexity and types of mortgages available
  

I had the true pleasure of hearing Suzanne Nora Johnson address my leadership class taught by former Mayor Riordan. She spoke of leadership, courage, and what has allowed her to succeed in business and philanthropic initiatives. I especially enjoyed hearing about her personal philosophies and which thinkers she takes to heart.

Johnson started her career as a lawyer and has worked in a variety of fields, including finance in the private and public sectors. In 2006, Forbes named her in its list of the 100 Most Powerful Women in the world.

Most notably, Johnson worked as Vice Chairman of Goldman Sachs as Head of Global Marketing, from which she retired in 2007 to work on solving international problems. She now is Chairman of The Global Council on Financial Risk and on the boards of many large institutions including Pfizer, the Broad Foundation, and the Carnegie Institute.

Johnson grew up in Chicago and had a large family with many first cousins. She went to USC and from there applied to law school. She clerked for a judge in the South to broaden her perspective and went on to practice law in New York for a couple years. She knew her goal longer term was to eventually work at the World Bank, so she applied to three investment banks to gain experience. That's what brought her to Goldman Sachs, where she eventually led the team to restructure emerging market debt.


Compare and Contrast

Johnson structured her talk by contrasting similar and often confused concepts.

• Achievement vs. success: focus on long-term results
  
• Strategic vs. tactical: long- vs. short-term
  
• Drive vs. ambition: drive is about doing goals to advance self and others; ambition is mostly for self. The founder of Matsushita Electric was a factory worker who started by creating a bike light for factory workers in his garage. His employer didn't want to sell it, so he went off on his own and produced it himself. He cared deeply about helping other factory workers, and during the depression, he didn't lay anyone off.
  
• Courage vs. risk-taking: strength to venture and withstand danger vs. simply bearing danger. May Chidiac was a journalist in the Lebanese broadcasting company; after terrorists exploded half her body, she still went back on the air to continue providing independent reporting.
  
• Innovation vs. adaptation: something new vs. adjustment to environmental conditions. Marie Curie found new elements because she was looking for something new.
  
• Inclusiveness vs. tolerance: worldliness, involving actively other perspectives vs. simply allowing something different or sympathizing. Sir Ratan Tata, founder of the Tata Group, endowed chairs in English universities to study poor people; his company is innovating in emerging markets way before others -- that's inclusiveness.
  
• Generosity vs. charity: liberality in giving, freedom from pettiness vs. relief donations. When Walter Payton, a football player, didn't take the opportunity given to him to skip ahead on the liver transplant list, this was generosity and ethical conduct.
  
• Fairness vs. disinterest: active treatment of all equally vs. freedom from involvement. Martin Luther King as overt and sought affirmative behavior towards fairness.
  

Long-Term Philosophy

• Societal fundamentals: inter-generational equity, global growth and security, functional democracy
  
• Inter-generational equity: Chris Hitchens, secular atheist, says the future belongs to the next generation
  
• Live for the next generation
  
• Passion to achieve results
  
• Optimism and opportunity in face of challenge
  
• Engage in innovations that improve the world
  
• Work with others in common cause
  
• Absolute importance of integrity
  
• Commitment to give back
  
• Proverb: Work for your future as if you're going to live forever; work for your afterlife as if you're going to die tomorrow.
  

Teams and Decision-Making

• Sort naysayers and supporters when you're right and wrong
  
• Understand and trust teammates
  
• Evaluate the odds and be comfortable with ambiguity
  
• When all else fails, use Hail Mary pass; just do something uncomfortable and take risk
  
• Need to throw the ball; can't be frozen
  

When I heard the Dean of UCLA Anderson mention Moonwalking with Einstein, I was caught off guard. The title was definitely unusual, and I had no idea what it was about. I knew it was about memory and psychology, and I figured it was worth a shot.

I was definitely in for a treat. The book follows the story of the author, who was a journalist in his twenties and got randomly into the "memory training circuit" and decided to give the techniques a shot by trying to see how well he could improve his memory. He ended up doing quite well: winning the US Memory Championship and making a lot of deep friendships with Mental Athletes (MAs) around the world.

The book was a really fun read, and I definitely learned a lot about memory and the history of memory techniques. In addition, I loved the philosophical discussions about the role of memory and how important it is to develop and cherish it for our human nature. It's also inspired me to look into a lot of the primary sources mentioned within it and to perhaps try to train myself similar to how the author did. The only question is when I can find the time to do that....

Below are my main notes on the text. I definitely recommend this book to anyone interested in psychology, memory, and general displays of awesomeness and freakish nature.

Ch. 1: The smartest man is hard to find

• US memory championship
  
• Brains harder to quantify than braun
  
• Ben Pridmore was reining memory champion
  
• Experience is sum of one's memories
  
• Wisdom is sum of one's experience
  
• Better memory => better person
  
• Pridmore said it's just technique that anyone can learn
  
• Mental Athletes (MAs)
  
• Use the "Memory Palace" technique developed by the Romans
  
• Tony Buzan marketed mind techniques
  
• Simonides developed "method of loci"
  
• Food intake affects brain
  
• Memorizing as a mental workout
  
• "Brain gyms" software
  
• At first, memory was stored inside and considered important; now it's in books and computers and seen as less important
  

Ch. 2: The man who remembered too much

• The Mind of the Mnemonist book
  
• Study of people with abnormal memory skills
  
• Normal people: the "curve of forgetting"
  
• Picture recognition test: memory for images excellent among all
  
• Photographic memory is a myth
  
• Study Subject in study had automatic synesthesia
  
• Memory is pattern of connections between neurons
  
• Memory not searchable; just accessible by cues
  
• Study Subject's memories were stored and organized linearly
  
• Install memory images along a real street
  
• Study Subject was crippled by inability to forget
  
• London taxi drivers have intense memory and test requirements
  
• Cabbies' brains changed and reorganized to adapt to job; "neural plasticity"
  
• Superior Memory book
  
• Brains of MAs had same IQ and same structure as control subjects in fMRI; difference was that different parts of brain used when memorizing (using visual and spatial navigation parts of brain)
  
• Consciously converting data into images placed on mental roadmap
  
• "KL7" club: Knights of Learning
  
• Manufactured synesthesia
  
• Turn names into visual joke on name/sound
  

Ch. 3: The expert expert

• Got a coach named Ed
  
• Learned about chicken sexing industry: determining gender of chickens is a bit deal; technique requires intuition to quickly and accurately work
  
• K. Erickson developed "skilled memory theory"
  
• Tested experts
  
• Tested author for baseline memory skills and followed him as he trained to see if his memory could improve
  
• Erickson studied experts. Found it takes 10,000 hours of training to become expert that can process enormous information in sophisticated ways and get past "magic 7" number (short-term memory limit).
  
• Chunk in order to remember more
  
• Use associations in long-term memory to see world differently
  

Ch. 4: The most forgetful man in the world

• Story of severe documented case of amnesia
  
• Monotony compresses time; novelty expands it
  
• Creating new memories stretches psychological time
  
• That's why it's so important to travel, do interesting work
  
• Life speeds up when becomes less memorable as we grow up
  
• Hippocampus converts short-term to long-term memory
  
• Unconscious
  
• Declarative/explicit vs. non-declarative/implicit/unconscious memories
  
• Unconscious memories don't require hippocampus
  
• Semantic/concept memories vs. episodic memory in time and space
  
• Ribeau's Law: memories not static; they change as we age and with events
  
• Sleep consolidates memories
  
• Infantile amnesia: brains maturing quickly, neocortex developing in first 3 years, lacks language and schemas
  

Ch. 5: The memory palace

• Elaborative coding
  
• Brains aren't adapted to current information age
  
• Simonides invented art of memory
  
• Rhetorica ad Herenium book
  
• Natural memory: hardware
  
• Artificial memory: software
  
• Method of loci
  
• Memory palace
  
• Populate intimately familiar place with images
  
• Start with house you grew up in and arrange items along a path
  
• Add multiple senses to each image you put down
  
• Add inappropriate images so it's funny and lewd
  

Ch. 6: How to memorize a poem

• Walk around and rediscover old places and know them very thoroughly
  
• Need 12 memory palaces to begin; grow to hundreds
  
• Memory training about growing as a person; learning old texts gives us guidance
  
• Memory training was huge in old civilizations
  
• Americans greatly behind Europeans on memory training
  
• For memorizing poems, put image of each topic not each word (due to efficiency and stability)
  
• "Topic" comes from Greek word for "place"
  
• That's the root of the phrase "in the first place"
  
• Brains better at remembering meaning than verbatim text
  
• Homer's works were a collection of oral bards' memories
  
• Cliches are memorable, repeated, visualized phrases; critical for memorability
  
• Jingles hard to knock out of head
  
• Song is the ultimate structuring device for language
  
• For abstract words, imagine similar sounding word
  
• Break word into syllables and find images that start with same letter
  
• Men's technique for poem memorization: just images
  
• Women's technique for poem memorization: understand how poem feels, associate parts of poem with emotions
  
• Break lines into beats with different emotions (Method Acting technique)
  
• Quirky subculture of memory only in Oxford competition (small group)
  
• Golden age of memory died
  

Ch. 7: The end of remembering

• Before writing was invented, everything had to be preserved in memory
  
• Now, we remember very little because of calendar, GPS, photo albums, speed dial, etc.
  
• 1/3 of Brits can't remember their home phone number or more than 2 friends' birthdays
  
• History of writing: printing press, word spacing, table of contents, indexes in books
  
• Training memory classically was to build index of all we have read
  
• External memory: online and electronically
  
• Even more futuristic: Microsoft Lifelog
  

Ch. 8: The okay plateau

• Memorize random stuff around you
  
• "Major System" to remember numbers
  
• "Person Action Object" system (PAO) for longer numbers: converts numbers to images
  
• Online Brain Club forum
  
• 52 cards mapped to PAO images of 3 so it's just 18 groups of images to memorize
  
• Expertise improvement: speed-typing plateau
  
• Run on autopilot at some point: "okay plateau"
  
• Top achievers keep out of the okay plateau and do deliberate practice 
  
• Technique, goal oriented, constant feedback
• Have to practice failing
  
• Put yourself in mind of someone better and see difference between you and them
  
• Start going at pace quicker than can go by 10-20%, make mistakes, but improve
  
• Barriers and records constantly get broken because psychological, not physical
  
• Memory like a musical instrument; can learn and improve
  
• Set up spreadsheet to track practice sessions, metrics, progress, graph everything
  
• Enforces mindfulness and attention when trying to memorize names or details
  

Ch. 9: The talented ten

• Is all this a form of mental peacocking or useful?
  
• There's a private school in the Bronx that teaches based on memory techniques; it is much better performing than other schools
  
• In education, rote memorization got replaced with experiential learning
  
• Tony Buzan was Inspired by the Major System by a prof in his college
  
• Wanted an "operator's manual" for how to run his brain
  
• Realized education has the wrong definition of smart
  
• Invented "mindmapping" notetaking technique
  
• Said invention is a product of inventorying and indexing
  
• Use your head book
  

Ch. 10: The rainman in all of us

• People do 20% worse in memory competition than in practice
  
• Met Daniel, who was called the "Rain Man" (big memory and language capabilities)
  
• Rain Man film
  
• "Savantism" disease
  
• Single skill vs. general talent
• Savants often accompanied with disability
  
• Born on a blue day book
  
• Effortless memory of his; no technique
  
• Met with Daniel
  
• Found him to be actually ordinary
  
• Synesthesia disorder
  
• Asberger syndrome: high-functioning autism
  
• Resources: World Wide Brain Club, Memory Circuit Stat Server
• Kim Peek another savant
  
• Damage in left brain common
  
• When left brain damaged, right brain opens up hidden inner skills in all people
  
• TMS technology can zap left brain and turn on savant skills in people
  
• Author was skeptical Daniel might not be a savant, maybe just trained mnemonist
  
• In 19th century, savant was great term
  
• But now became freak condition
  

Ch. 11: US memory championship

• For practice, wore ear muffs and horse blinders/painted safety goggles to keep concentrated
  
• Relax one week before
  
• Got new record in speed cards by doing 3 cards at a time
  
• Won memory championship
  

Epilogue

• People later just wanted to see him do tricks
  
• Went to World Memory Championship; finished 13th place
• Offered KL7 membership; had to drink 2 beers, memorize 49 digits, kiss strange woman's knee 3 times to be inducted
• Got retested in Florida by expert researcher
  
• Improved memory skills but still kept misplacing car keys
  
• Working memory still was limited
  
• Software upgraded but hardware still the same
  
• Practice makes perfect, but must be deliberate practice
  
• Key is time and commitment
  
• Learned to be more mindful of world around him
  
• Hard to find occasion to use old techniques
  
• How we perceive world is based on how we remember
  
• Memories are the seeds of our values
  
• Memory training is about nurturing our humanity
  
• Experiment was over; says he's done competing