Daniel Kahneman – Strangers on the Shore

Knocked non-conscious: Joanna Chrzanowska’s AQR webinar

This is a webinar Joanna Chrzanowska of Genesis Consulting did for the AQR (http://www.aqr.org.uk) last month. It piqued my interest for at least two reasons. Firstly, it’s an illuminating trot through the roots of qualitative research and its relationship with ideas of the sub-conscious, unconscious and non-conscious. Secondly, it maps out Joanna’s take on where qualContinue reading “Knocked non-conscious: Joanna Chrzanowska’s AQR webinar”

“To be thus is nothing; But to be safely thus …” Loss aversion and the human cost of economic cycles

Those with a passing familiarity with behavioural economics will have heard of “loss aversion”: as described by Tversky and Kahneman, it’s the idea that losses have twice as powerful an effect psychologically as gains. No surprise then to come across an article, Out Of The Loop, while leafing through the ESRC’s “Britain in 2015” magazine, with theContinue reading ““To be thus is nothing; But to be safely thus …” Loss aversion and the human cost of economic cycles”

Start The Week: on “big data”

Start The Week (Radio 4): Big Data Here’s a link to this morning’s Start The Week, discussing “big data” and mathematical modelling of data. Well worth a listen. Contributions are from James Owen Weatherall on physicists in finance, Marcus du Sautoy, Kenneth Cukier and sociologist Tiffany Jenkins. While there is an unstoppable logic to gatheringContinue reading “Start The Week: on “big data””

Kahneman in conversation with Evan Davies and Prof Paul Dolan

Kahneman discusses Thinking Fast And Slow at LSE with Evan Davies and Paul Dolan For those interested in psychology and behavioural economics, here is a quick link via Prof Paul Dolan’s site to an hour’s discussion between Evan Davies, Dolan and Kahneman about Thinking Fast and Slow, which took place a while back when theContinue reading “Kahneman in conversation with Evan Davies and Prof Paul Dolan”

Steering the elephant in the room, not just nudging it

In between helping my lad complete The Usborne Book Of Things To Spot out of the Flybe plane window back from Belfast at the weekend (or Fly Maybe as they are sometimes known) I caught up with Matt Grist’s paper, “Steer”, for the RSA from a couple of years back. The report was part ofContinue reading “Steering the elephant in the room, not just nudging it”

More Brooks – TED talk on reasons to be cheerful about the revolution

Brooks TED talk on The Social Animal This entertaining, brief talk gives a flavour of the book. Must read his book about our feted but ludicrous social elites, with a great title: Bobos in Paradise. I think he writes mainly about America so let’s pretend it isn’t the same here. For now, carrying on withContinue reading “More Brooks – TED talk on reasons to be cheerful about the revolution”

Everybody will be doing behavioural economics in qual

Do you see what I did there? The title’s speculative, but no more so than the communication to the American public by Barack Obama’s team two weeks before the 2008 Presidential Election, to get the vote out: “A Record Turnout Is Expected.” The Obama campaign realised that, at that stage in the campaign, detailed messagesContinue reading “Everybody will be doing behavioural economics in qual”

Kahneman and the real meaning of Man Utd’s 6-1 defeat

As a Man Utd fan since the days of George Best (I am just about that old – I precociously started supporting them aged 3 in 1973), I was of course pretty disappointed by the events at Old Trafford on Sunday: BBC match report on Man Utd 1-6 Man City. But more interesting to meContinue reading “Kahneman and the real meaning of Man Utd’s 6-1 defeat”