April 25, 2024 • 51 mins
Daniel Kahneman, credited as a grandfather of behavioral economics, passed away in March, and we devote this episode to an unfiltered discussion of his legacy through a product lens.
KAHNEMAN’S LEGACY: THE BULL CASE – 01:55
NY Times obituary of Daniel Kahneman
KAHNEMAN’S LEGACY: THE BEAR CASE – 03:40
The “Nudge” of the Obama Era Was Always Neoliberal Nonsense
Nudge economics: has push come to shove for a fashionable theory?
JOACHIM’S PERSPECTIVE – 05:27
A Quick Excursion into Behavioral Economics
ERNEST’S PERSPECTIVE – 10:56
Netflix to stop reporting subscriber numbers
Pronation in runners. Implications for injuries
There’s a New Way to Choose the Right Running Shoe
Nobel Prize winner admits mistakes
RELEVANCE FOR PRODUCT CREATION – 19:43
Decision Support System
GAMING AS A MODEL – 21:57
INDIE CONTENT CREATORS AS A MODEL – 23:15
Beyond the Trailer
On the Success of Xiaomi
DON’T PATRONIZE YOUR CUSTOMER – 27:11
Edward Tufte
Pop Culture Pulsar
1010music Blackbox
Elektron Octatrack
8-bit processor built in Minecraft
KAHNEMAN ON CHANGING HIS MIND – 39:16
Remembering Daniel Kahneman
WEEKLY RECS – 42:27
If Books Could Kill
Masuda Kiribako Rice Bin
Kiyosi Seike: The Art of Japanese Joinery
The Joinery on X
CLOSING & PREVIEW – 50:43
****
Rant, rave or otherwise via email at LearnMakeLearn@gmail.com or on Threads @LearnMakeLearnShow.
CREDITS
Theme: Vendla / Today Is a Good Day / courtesy of www.epidemicsound.com
Drum hit: PREL / Musical Element 85 / courtesy of www.epidemicsound.com
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Ernest (00:04):
Hello and welcome to Learn Make Learn, where we share
qualitative and quantitativeperspectives on products to help
you make better.
My name is Ernest Kim and I'mjoined by my friend and co host
Joachim Groeger.
Hey Joachim, how's it going?
Joachim (00:18):
Very good.
It's, sunny in Seattle, so I'mnot going to complain.
It's good times and good weatherup here.
Is it the same, in Portlandright now?
Ernest (00:26):
Oh yeah, same, it's been fantastic and uh,, looks like it
is gonna be like this for atleast a couple more days, so
uh,, we're really lookingforward to making the most of
it.
Joachim (00:37):
I think because the weather is so changeable, I just
try and not look at the forecastand I live in the moment and
enjoy the sun while it's thereand not worry about what comes
next.
So I don't know what's going tohappen in the next few days in
Seattle.
Fingers crossed.
Ernest (00:51):
I like that approach, I think that's a good idea.
Joachim (00:54):
Yeah.
Ernest (00:55):
Okay.
Well, this is episode 15.
And today our topic is DanielKahneman, who passed away this
past March at the age of 90.
Kahneman was a psychologist bytraining, but along with his
longtime collaborator, AmosTversky, Kahneman would make
significant contributions to thefield of economics.
(01:15):
In fact, Tversky and Kahnemancame to be known as the
grandfathers of behavioraleconomics and Kahneman was
awarded the Nobel Prize forEconomics in 2002.
We'll dive into the influencesthat Kahneman's ideas have had
on product design and productthinking in just a minute, but
let's start with some contextfor folks who might not be
familiar with Kahneman or hiswork.
(01:38):
As I mentioned a minute ago,Daniel Kahneman, who recently
passed away at the age of 90,was a psychologist who became a
hugely important figure ineconomics.
And, along with his longtimecollaborator, Amos Tversky,
established the foundations forwhat would become the field of
behavioral economics.
To very quickly summarizeKahneman's impact, I'll quote
(01:58):
from the New York Times obituaryfor Kahneman, written by Robert
D.
Hershey, Jr.
Hershey wrote, quote, As opposedto traditional economics, which
assumes that human beingsgenerally act in fully rational
ways, and that any exceptionstend to disappear as the stakes
are raised, the behavioraleconomics school is based on
exposing hard wired mentalbiases that can warp judgment,
(02:22):
often with counterintuitiveresults.
Before Kahneman and Tversky,People who thought about social
problems and human behaviortended to assume that we are
mostly rational agents.
The New York Times columnistDavid Brooks wrote in 2011, they
assume that people have controlover the most important parts of
their own thinking.
They assume that people arebasically sensible utility
(02:44):
maximizers and that when theydepart from reason, it's because
some passion like fear or lovehas distorted their judgment.
But professors Kahneman andTversky, he went on yielded a
different version, a differentvision As Mr.
Brooks described it, we areplayers in a game that we don't
understand.
(03:06):
Most of our own thinking isbelow awareness.
He added our biases frequentlycause us to want the wrong
things.
Our perceptions and memories areslippery, especially about our
own mental states.
Our free will is bounded.
We have much less control overourselves than we thought.
work of Professor Kahneman andProfessor Fiske, he concluded
(03:27):
will be, remember rememberedhundreds of years from now.
So I guess you could say this isthe bull case for the legacy of
Kahneman's work, but the praiseis by no means universal.
In the show notes to last week'sepisode on design thinking, I
included a link to a piece fromJacobin magazine, which
describes itself as a leadingvoice of the American left.
(03:51):
That piece by Lisa Featherstoneabsolutely skewered one of the
most visible applications ofKahneman's work.
Featherstone wrote, Quote,behavioral economics major
insight was that people oftendon't act rationally, contrary
to the assumptions ofneoclassical economics.
For upper middle classaudiences, and more importantly,
(04:11):
elite policymakers, that was acompelling revelation.
You see, the main problem ineconomic life wasn't
exploitation or plutocracy.
No, the real issue was thatpeople are idiots.
The piece continues, behavioraleconomics was one of the
intellectual foundations of theObama administration, and the
administration was enamored bythe power of the nudge, the
(04:35):
field's term for the policytweaks that can adjust behavior
for the better, whether savingfor retirement or stopping
smoking.
The nudge was beloved by theObama administration because of
the nudge.
While its bright young nerdswere committed to a message of
progress, they were so fullyowned by the rich donor class
and big capital that realprogress on most problems would
(04:56):
have been impossible.
Enter behavioral economics.
Skipping ahead to Featherston'sconclusion now, she wrote, The
behavioral science moment seemsquaint now, partly because of
the widespread acknowledgementthat so much more is at stake in
policy arguments than ourindividual muddled decision
making.
And partly because we know thatthe nation's most important
(05:17):
problems, from inflation and theclimate crisis to low wages and
the threat of the far right, aretoo big for petty TED talk
trickery.
If you listened to our lastepisode, you'll recognize this
as being of a piece withJoachim's critiques of design
thinking and its emphasis on thepersonal over the systemic.
(05:38):
All right, so was David Brooksright in saying that Kahneman's
work will be remembered hundredsof years from now?
Or echoing Lisa Featherstone'spiece, was Tim Adams at the
Guardian on the right track whenhe observed that Though nudge
economics remains seductive,what once seemed like a panacea
has become, uh, has come to looka bit more like a series of
(05:59):
sticking plasters.
All right, so with all that setup out of the way, Yochim, I'm
dying to hear what you think andwhat your perspective is on
this.
Joachim (06:09):
So I, I think the, the short version of this is if you
want to be really, reallycritical about this whole thing,
you could just say, okay, theessence of what Kahneman and
Tversky figured out is peoplemake mistakes and they are error
prone.
So what?
Right?
Big deal.
(06:29):
People make mistakes.
And children make mistakes.
And when they make arithmeticmistakes, we just tell them, you
made a mistake.
You need to learn arithmeticproperly.
Right?
So that's our approach there.
We don't say to children, Oh,you made a mistake.
I'm going to rewrite the rulesof arithmetic so that what it is
that you got wrong will becorrect under these new rules of
(06:51):
arithmetic.
The notion that humans are errorprone is by itself not such a
powerful idea.
The appeal from these ideas isthat they're very
straightforward to understand.
You can summarize them As theJacobin piece pointed out, in
this type of TED talky way,right, Little tiny fixes will
(07:11):
add up to make a huge differenceand everything is okay.
And you need not go into yourpolitical camps and your
ideologies, right, as there'strying to be ideology free,
maybe it was the goal.
So if everything is ideologyfree.
Everything is just about scienceand figuring things out.
You would hope that the sciencethat Kahneman and Tversky were
(07:31):
engaged in was solid.
But when you look at that paperfrom the early 70s.
The whole foundations of this isfrom an experiment that involves
about 72 people.
That's not scientific enough,right?
Skip 20 years into the future.
There are two papers that comeout in Econometrica, which is
(07:54):
the premier journal ineconomics.
And these two papers basicallytest the theory again.
from Kahneman and Tversky, theybasically show that all theories
are terrible, including theKahneman and Tversky framework.
None of these things performwell.
The theory that performs theleast worst is the traditional
(08:14):
rational decision framework thatwe had before.
So from a pure scientificperspective, small sample size,
small studies, anecdata asopposed to data, and then proper
data, proper analysis,highlighting that really the
traditional theory doesn't do sobadly.
(08:34):
Everything's terrible becausehuman beings are very
complicated objects, but,, it'sthe least worst theory.
That's a paper from 1994.
Kahneman's mainstream successcomes in 2010, uh, with his book
and the nudge theory and allthese things are coming a little
bit around 2000s.
No one mentions that we'vebasically put to rest the
question of whether thesetheories are good.
(08:56):
So there's a bit of a dis alittle bit of intellectual
dishonesty as well that we'renot representing accurately what
this theory is actually doing.
But as I was thinking throughthis and thinking about all
these intellectual details, Irealized that that stuff doesn't
matter.
What matters is kind of the TEDtalk that survived, right?
The essence of the TED Talk ideapermeates people's minds.
(09:16):
They don't even read the bookanymore.
They just need the one Like wetalked about last time with
design thinking, all thatremains are the sticky post it
notes, but none of the otherbits that matter.
So I think maybe we should belooking at the legacy of this
work really through the lens ofWhat's left over and what do
people remember and how doesthat influence decision making
(09:39):
and again, back to our favoritetopic?
How does that influence how weview our customers when we are
thinking about product?
What is it that a product personwill then decide for their
customer?
They will say to them, you don'tget choice.
You shouldn't have agencybecause you're so bad.
So let me just decide for you.
And I think that's a really badand slippery slope But I really
(10:02):
think When it comes time todesign a product, you're going
to try your best to take awaycontrol from those people,
because they are, in yourperception, not very clever.
And we, again, it's alludingback to our discussion about
design thinking, the humancentric design thinking.
I think this behavioral stuffalso fed into that because it
was saying, you know, simplifythe journey, make it slick,
(10:24):
don't complicate stuff, removethe frictions, get rid of the
complexity, blah, blah.
Yeah.
But what you're actually doingis removing agency from the
customer, and they won't be ableto interact with the product in
a meaningful way.
I think like Netflix is a greatexample of that, right?
We don't trust you.
We'll do it for you.
In fact, You don't have to evensee a screen, just shuffle, just
hit that shuffle button.
I don't remember if you wereexposed to that feature on
(10:46):
Netflix, but it was just pickfor me as a shuffle button that
you could click before you evenwent into your profile.
They would just grab a piece ofcontent for you.
And then that was it.
Anyway, I would like to openthis up because it's very much,
I'm just right now stuck in myperspective and I've, I know how
I feel about behavioral.
So I'm interested really.
(11:07):
Where were you coming from withthis whole topic?
Because actually, I didn't pickthis topic.
I bet someone thought, Oh,economists are on the podcast,
so they'll pick something.
You can't think.
didn't pick it.
Ernest, you picked this.
So I'm happy to also follow youon the journey that you wanted
to take us on.
Ernest (11:21):
Oh, no, no, I appreciate it.
But I love having yourperspective on this.
Um, on my end, I would say thatI was very seduced by these
ideas.
Um, not having had, uh, I tookecon in high school and I was
about it.
I enjoyed it, but, you know,definitely my exposure to it has
(11:42):
not been, uh, in any, to anydepth.
And.
I think as someone who was veryengaged in experience design,
um, in the early stages of mycareer, These sorts of ideas
were very enticing to me.
And so, with those early days ofTed and Malcolm Gladwell, and
(12:03):
then getting exposed tobehavioral economics, it was
very exciting to see that, oh,there was this field that, um,
had this veneer of rigor aroundit, uh, that seemed to be, um,
reinforcing some of these ideasthat, um, I was seeing in my day
to day Life in experiencedesign.
(12:25):
So.
You know, I'd say that was mybackground and that was my
introduction to this world, wasas a very, um, willing,
participant, someone who, youknow, really just kind of lapped
this stuff up.
And it's only recently that,I've started to think about it
more critically, I guess.
And And part of it was based onthe lack of results, you know,
(12:47):
the sorts of things that youhighlighted last week in the
context of design thinking, andthen that the Jacobin piece
talked about in the context of,you know, this nudge approach,
which was applied in not just inthe Obama administration and,
uh, governments around the worldto, you know, I think now we
could say very little effect.
so, it's something that I thinkKahneman's passing created this
(13:10):
opportunity to just kind ofinvestigate that a little bit
more and, uh, dig into that andmaybe help people who are making
products, to avoid some of thepitfalls, that they might, fall
into, if they weren't to thinkmore critically about this, I
think the example, you cited wasreally interesting.
And I think And so, you know, Ithink that was also part of this
(13:33):
period we've been in of justseeking hypergrowth.
Um, and, uh, you know, thatbeing the thing that you're
rewarded for and is interestingin that Netflix in their most
recent quarterly earnings call,which happened, I think just a
week or two ago, uh, noted thatthey're no longer going to share
subscriber numbers.
(13:54):
And instead they're going toreport hours watched.
And it's because they've saidthat, you know, that's a better
metric.
And that is tied to the shift intheir business strategy to now
incorporate a free ad supportedtier.
So it's actually true that, inthe context of an ad supported
platform, hours watched is moreimportant.
(14:15):
so I, I, I'm going to be reallyinterested to see that with this
shift, if they do start to adopta more systemic approach that
does give you the viewer moreagency so that they're able to
keep you on the platform longerversus just, Punching out new
stuff constantly andhighlighting just that new thing
(14:36):
just to get the subscribernumbers up.
So I think that is one greatexample of how these ideas can
play out in a very concrete wayand product and the way product
comes to life.
Another example that comes tomind for me is in the running
shoe world.
there's a very similar sort of,phenomenon in that world in that
(14:58):
a very, charismatic scientist, aguy named Benno Nigg, who was,
I'd say, to my, experience, themost influential biomechanist of
his age.
I think he was out of,University of Calgary, but he
was the first to reallyintroduce the idea that,
something called overpronationwas the cause of the majority of
(15:22):
running related injuries and itwas all based on analogy like
looking at physical models andthen Using those to reason that
okay If you if the body were tooverpronate then it could cause
all these other running relatedinjuries we're seeing and so The
industry really latched ontothis idea.
(15:44):
So, you know,, very similar tothe idea that we're all stupid
and, we have to be told what todo.
So the assumption here was thatwe're all essentially broken.
We all have this over, almostall of us have this
overpronation issue.
And so we need footwear productsto, to fix that basically to
address this inherent flaw thatwe all have.
(16:04):
And.
And for decades, that was theaccepted wisdom in the running
shoe industry that pretty mucheveryone needed a shoe that
offered some amount of pronationcontrol.
And it led to shoes that hadthis very blocky sort of harder
material on the arch side of theshoe.
And, um, the experience ofrunning in those shoes was not
(16:27):
great.
And yet, because we were alltold that we needed them, many
of us did actually run in thosetypes of shoes.
But people started to notice acouple of decades in that, Hey,
actually, the, incidents ofrunning related injuries hasn't
decreased at all.
So, um,, what's going on here?
I thought these shoes weresupposed to help reduce this
risk of running related injury.
(16:49):
And to his credit, Benno Nigg,really came around and
completely flipped hisperspective and His last, um,
speech as a biomechanist atthis, uh, big event, which was
not that long ago, uh, it waskind of his valedictory speech.
He acknowledged that he waswrong and he instead, put all of
(17:13):
his weight behind this newconcept that he called the
preferred motion path, butessentially that the body knows
what it wants to do.
And so the role of products,including footwear should be to
just enable the body to do whatit wants to do.
So completely the opposite: from, we're all inherently (17:27):
undefined
broken to, we actually, all ourbodies know exactly what we
need.
So we need to just get out ofthe way and, give that agency
back to our bodies.
So, I think the, the sort ofthing might seem esoteric, but.
You can see that it absolutely,these sorts of ideas do
(17:49):
influence products and productcreation.
So, I love that we're havingthis opportunity to talk about
it, but I guess that's my, my,my way into it is just,
recognizing my own, um,gullibility, I guess, of just
accepting this without reallylooking at the evidence and
whether there was any validevidence, just because it
(18:10):
happened to align with my ownunderstanding.
Kind of assumptions, much likethe Jacobin piece talked about,
um, and then coming to realizethat this sort of approach, this
sort of kind of blanket approachcan be really dangerous and lead
to negative outcomes.
but it's pretty remarkable tosee how seductive these kinds of
(18:30):
ideas can be.
this nudge idea was adopted bygovernments around the world.
Um, the whole overpronation,concept was embraced by the
whole of the running footwearindustry for decades.
So, um, I think maybe thewarning and the cautionary tale
here is to, to just be willingto push back against accepted
(18:53):
wisdom, uh, even if it comesfrom a Nobel prize winning
academic.
And that Kahneman, hiswillingness to question himself.
Um, I think you had highlightedthis in one of our early
episodes, um, of reference to anarticle about Kahneman, citing
(19:17):
some of the, the problems withhis earlier research and being
very open about that.
So I think, that's reallylaudable.
And.
He's talked about that a lot,the importance of being willing
to change your mind.
So I think there's to a degree,the, the broader world has kind
of run amok a little bit withthese ideas that he introduced
(19:38):
to a degree beyond what, I thinkmaybe he himself would have
advocated for.
But, uh, I was just curious ifyou have any other takeaways
that you see that might berelevant to people who are
making products.
Joachim (19:52):
Yeah I think People are limited in their cognitive
abilities, obviously, we can'tcompute everything, if there is,
data that we can use andinformation and models and more
disciplined thinking andconnecting ourselves to an
mathematically, internallyconsistent framework, let's
build that framework and thenlet's use it.
So it just means that you haveto think about ways to help them
get it.
(20:12):
you have to build a tooling thatlets them do that stuff.
and I think in the productinnovation arena, since we've
been talking about running Applefitness, it's retrospective,
right?
I've burnt this many calories.
My time was this much.
I stood that long.
That doesn't really help me.
Navigate the complex decision ofgood diet, movement, if I skip a
(20:35):
workout today, what happens tome, what are the consequences of
my choices?
It's very backward looking.
Like all metrics are.
It's just, you did that.
Well done.
Not you did these things andthat sets you up for this future
path.
Ernest (20:49):
Right.
Joachim (20:50):
and that's, decision support, right?
It's telling you where we'reheading as opposed to where
we've been.
I know I've just done a 5k run.
Great.
I know I did a weight training.
Brilliant.
I know this.
What happens if I don't do whatif I'm tired today?
And when should I If I want totake a break, or if I got a
cold, when can I realisticallyget back on and be, not lose
(21:11):
fitness or something, we justget these numbers and, no
offense to whoop whoop did asimilar thing with the sleep
cycle and stuff.
It's just these numbers thatpeople give you as a score.
You're not giving the agencyback to the user.
You're just saying we've got allthese cool signals.
We've got stuff happening in thebackground and we'll give you a
single number that is supposedto capture everything like
that's really dishonest anddisrespectful to the customer at
(21:35):
the end of the day.
Same thing with Netflix, right?
The recommendations are justlike washing out my voice.
As a customer, all I can do as acustomer right in the
subscription paradigm issubscribe or not subscribe.
That's my voice.
That's the only time you get toreally hear me.
I have no voice and it's verysad.
(21:56):
Right, I think, sorry, I'm goingto do a quick tangent.
I think video games have alwayshad this the right way around.
They use the game to teach younew things as you go through the
game.
Obviously, typical first personshooter is pretty
straightforward, but anything alittle bit more complex that
involves some knowledge and someforethought, they design the
(22:16):
levels to, increase thedifficulty and allow you to try
new things and learn new tricks.
That's respectful of the userjourney, right?
Right?
They are putting just the rightamount of difficulty, but
they're also going to explain itto you.
They're not going to expect youto understand from the get go
that you can do these crazythings.
No, they build you up to thatpoint because they understand.
(22:38):
There is cognitive load, but westill want to get you to that
level to finish the game, andwe're going to make it difficult
and a little bit frustrating.
I mean, you do have to teachyour customers sometimes.
I don't know why we're so scaredof that, but that's what
behavioral economics teachesyou, right?
I think.
If like my arithmetic example atthe beginning is kids have to be
taught how to do arithmetic.
You have to be told how to savemoney.
(23:00):
You know, you have to be taughthow to do lots of things and
that's wonderful.
We should be finding morecreative ways to get that into
the product journey so thatpeople can actually get up to a
higher level and enjoy somethingon a deeper level.
Right?
Ernest (23:13):
Yeah, it's interesting you mentioned, games to me, the
one example that comes to mind,where I see this happening today
is in independent contentcreators and particularly video
content creators.
where they very much engage withtheir audiences.
So they're getting lots of richsignal back and actually acting
on it.
And they, I think, a lot of themdo such a great job of teaching,
(23:37):
teaching how this system worksand creating a culture around,
this environment where it'shighly dynamic, um, and
constantly evolving.
One example that comes to mind.
I think her name is GraceRandolph.
She runs a YouTube channelcalled beyond the trailer.
I believe, uh, we'll include alink in the show notes, but,
(24:00):
she, focuses on content relatedto the entertainment industry.
And she does every week.
I think she does this, livestream and, You can, uh,
participate, not only watch, butyou can submit questions and she
does polls.
And I'm amazed at her ability tomanage this, incredibly dynamic
(24:21):
environment because you know,she's talking about a topic, but
then if somebody comes into thechat, she'll say hello to them
and then go, go right back intowhat she was talking about.
And then there's a system thatnow, YouTube supports where you
can, um, subscribe to herstream, you could, send money to
the creator, but you could also,uh, in the case of her stream,
(24:42):
provide free subscriptions or,forget what the actual verbiage
is, but so if somebody gifts asubscription, she'll shout them
out in the midst of, whatevershe's talking about.
And it's really remarkable herability to manage this, you
know, what would be theseemingly incredible cognitive
load, but I think it's becauseshe.
(25:02):
grew into it.
Um, and I think it shows youthat this sort of environment
is, is achievable, this sort ofinteraction and relationship
between creator and not justconsumer, but participant is
possible.
I will say, I haven't.
(25:24):
I can't think off the top of myhead of any good examples of
companies that have managed todo this in the physical product
space.
The closest that comes to mindis the Chinese company Xiaomi,
and I don't believe they do thisanymore, but for a time they,
um, had this program in Chinawhere You could essentially buy
(25:45):
in to be a beta tester ofphysical products.
And that would give you, um, theability to provide feedback.
And I, I think they might'veeven said, you know, like within
X period, we're going to rollout a new version of this
product.
And they would show how theyactually did incorporate
feedback from there.
audience, their buyers, uh, intothat next version of the
(26:08):
product.
So it was a clear, um, pathbetween, your interaction, your
experiences, and the nextversion, the next incarnation of
this thing.
Um, I don't think they had any.
innovative business modelsaround that, that made that more
sustainable than you just haveto buy a new product every X
months.
But, at least it was the startof something.
(26:30):
And at least from what I hadheard, the engagement from the
customers was very, very high.
And that was one of the thingsthat really differentiated
Xiaomi in a very highlycompetitive market segment.
They were in consumerelectronics, so, you know, no
great examples yet.
But I think we're in these sortof adjacent spaces like gaming
and content creation, startingto see some blueprints of what
(26:54):
might be possible in, um, kindof Treating this relationship
with your audience differently,not just thinking they're all
idiots and oversimplifying youroffering to actually engaging
with them in a
Joachim (27:11):
Yeah, maybe that's the theme that's coming out of all
of this conversation is that youdon't have to patronize your
customer.
And in fact, if you do that,you're going to miss out on
deeper connection with them andlearning more from them and
meeting them where they are.
And if you want to meet yourcustomers and respect them,
that's going to take a lot moreeffort.
(27:34):
And so one of the areas I wasthinking about that has been, in
my opinion, stalling a bit isdata visualization.
Data visualization is one ofthose areas that is a really,
really important, um, way ofcommunicating.
Complex information using visuallanguage, and human eyes are
(27:55):
really good at processing a lotof that information.
So, uh, might've referenced himbefore everyone likes to
reference him for datavisualization.
it's Edward Tufte.
He wrote various books on visualdisplay of quantitative
information, envisioninginformation, and so on.
Uh, in one of his latter books,we'll try and find.
The link that we can share, buthe shows, a Shinkansen set
(28:18):
schedule.
So the Japanese bullet trainschedule that has time and
geography on the same map.
It is incredibly dense, but itcontains so much information
that is easily consumable at an,at a glimpse.
And human beings are incrediblygood at that.
Now we know people fall foroptical illusions and so on.
(28:40):
So you have to really designthese things from the ground up
to be usable with the biasesthat we have in our mind, right?
Our inability to measure thingswith our eyes, right?
It's not exactly accurate.
So we have to think about that.
And I think that's probably thebiggest barrier in this whole
thing is that it takes a lot ofcognitive effort to design
something so that you cantransmit.
(29:02):
So much information quickly,succinctly, and in a way that is
immediately legible to a humanbeing, uh, and so that my bad
example is Tableau.
I think Tableau is, they are asoftware as a service.
platform.
I'm sure some of our listenershave encountered it, but it's
basically ways of plottingpictures of the underlying data
(29:26):
very, very easily.
Um, and that graphs are just solame, bar charts, pie charts,
line charts.
I mean, it's Excel, but, runningon the cloud using your big
data.
I haven't seen any creativegraphical representations of
high dimensional data.
I mean, bar charts by definitioncan only show two dimensions at
(29:48):
a time.
Show me three, show me four.
How would you do that?
It's so difficult., I'm surethere's someone working at
Tableau.
There has to be at least oneperson, please let there be one
person who's worrying about howto do more high dimensional data
and visualize it for people.
And they're probably strugglingcause it's really difficult.
And I'm sure someone will say onthe product side or whatever and
(30:09):
say, Oh, what are you doing?
People don't want that.
They just want the 2D and it'stoo much load.
And haven't you read Kahnemanand the optical illusions and
people are dumb.
Um, because I have not seen anyevidence that Tableau is really
trying to push the envelope onwhat can be displayed on, on a
flat screen that gives us enoughinformation.
(30:30):
So anyway, I think that was justa side example of another
product that I think had thepotential to be something that
enables us to augment ourintelligences and allow us to
consume things given ourcognitive constraints, but is.
stumbling a little bit becauseit's really, it's a lot of work
to come up with these ways.
But, um, Tufte's examples showthat it can be done in pretty
(30:54):
complicated spaces.
And, uh, actually the JoyDivision album cover for is an
example of a beautifulvisualization pulsars that shows
you time frequency in manylayers in one go, it's
immediately legible.
Ernest (31:10):
Well, actually, two things.
One is that is one of the thingsthat has me excited about the
potential for augmented reality.
You know, we haven't really seenit yet, but the potential to uh,
present data in a much notdumbed down, but it's much more
understandable, um, actionableway for people.
(31:33):
So, uh, I hope that we'll startto see that, that potential
realized, but, um, an examplethat comes to mind is actually
one that you've cited in thepast, which is Google maps.
I think that is an incrediblyelegant system that.
is built around the needs of theuser and adapts to the needs of
(31:57):
the user, invisibly.
If you are following directionsand take a wrong turn, it
doesn't scold you.
You know, it just recalculatesand, you know, finds the best
route based on your currentcontext.
So, I think that's an example ofshowing that, yeah, you can do
this.
It's possible.
It does lead to huge affinityfor your product if you do, uh,
(32:19):
put the
Joachim (32:22):
yeah, I think that's a really good one because the maps
are, they're super dense withinformation and, and the
seamless movement from readingmode where you're just plotting
your path as opposed to you haveto navigate the path the way the
map goes from high resolution tolower resolution with just
essential information, perfectlyunderstanding cognitive load and
(32:43):
the shifts of your mental modesthat you're in.
And, Kahneman does mention thisidea that there are these fast
systems, there are these slowsystems, the more there's time
to think through stuff.
And there's sometimes, he alwaysstill has that message that it's
hard to overcome these biases.
And I don't know, I think again,there's a way to overcome it if
you give people the tooling andyeah, split the Google maps is
(33:06):
yeah, you're right.
That is, I'm not going to addanything else.
That's a really good example ofa great navigation tool that
just, um, gives you just theright amount of information and
when needed can give you moreand help you navigate the
environment
Ernest (33:19):
Yeah, I, I cribbed that
Joachim (33:22):
trying I don't know if talked about it in an episode.
No.
So this could have been, thiscould have been like the day.
Um,
Ernest (33:30):
ha.
Joachim (33:32):
it's.
It's one that we've allexperienced the value of and
like you said, it's veryadaptable
Ernest (33:38):
yes, I agree.
I think Google Maps is a,mapping in general and Google
being kind of the standardbearer for this is a great
example.
And it might seem like, oh,well, that's maps, right?
How's that relevant to me if Imake a physical widget?
But, uh, Just like you weretalking about earlier, Joachim,
I think there is an opportunitywhether you're making a digital
(34:01):
experience or physical productto spend more time thinking
about the context in which yourcustomer is using your products.
I think we tend as productmakers to think that there's one
right way to use a product orrun one right way into a
product.
And.
You know, I think the GoogleMaps example shows us that
(34:23):
that's not the case, you know.
There are all kinds of differentthings that can happen.
Maybe you get distracted, so youmiss a turn, and you need to be
rerouted.
Um, so, Try to kind of getoutside of that dogma that, I
think a lot of us develop aroundthe products that we, we spend
so much time thinking about and,um, consider that there may be
(34:46):
different ways in that, to youat first glance might seem
irrational, but, um, in the lifeof your customers, makes
complete sense.
So, being willing to have thatempathy.
I think is really important andcould be really powerful for,
for anyone making products.
So, kind of just put yourselfin, in that frame of mind.
(35:09):
Imagine you had a maps app thatyou took a wrong turn, scolded
you, know, and said you're doingit wrong.
Um, you know, that's kind ofwhat happens with a lot of
different domains of products.
so I think just trying to bearthat in mind is,
Joachim (35:27):
I would say this though music equipment makers have
really been pushing theboundaries on user interaction
design especially devices thatinvolve generating sound.
manipulating sound Um there'stwo things that are really
interesting.
So my favorite examples are twocompanies.
One is, um, 10, 10 music whomake various, uh, modules.
(35:50):
One of them is a sampler, the10, 10 music black box.
Which has an incredibly, simplesetup.
Uh, I was up and running withina couple of minutes.
I've worked with samplers in thepast, so it's probably helps
that I've done that.
But it has a single touchscreen, four knobs, a couple of
(36:10):
other buttons that handlethings.
And it's pretty straightforward.
It's unique.
The operating system is its own.
unique operating system.
It uses its own way ofdescribing things.
but you can do all kinds ofcrazy stuff, grab a sample,
change the pitch, slice it up.
It's really complicated thingsthat you want to do to make
interesting music and it can doit all with a unique user
(36:32):
interface that doesn't patronizeyou high details.
It's honest and it's honestabout there's a learning curve.
And I think that's also part ofthe thing that musical
instrument makers haveunderstood is there's always a
learning curve.
I would like.
more products to be willing toengage with the idea.
The other company that does agreat job is Electron.
They have a number ofinstruments, including the
(36:52):
Octatrack.
That's also a sampler hastotally different workflow,
unique to them again.
Uh, and again, usable after thatlearning curve, not too steep.
You can start doing things offthe bat and then.
If you want to go deeper, youcan go as deep as you want to
go.
There's these different depthsthat allow the user to just go,
(37:14):
I just want to do this verystraightforward thing, or I need
to do something more complex.
And it's all there, but only ifyou want to go to that depth.
And both of these products havethat feature, you can just kind
of do the thing you want to do,or you can go deep.
And that is unique in instrumentmakers.
I don't think I've seen otherproducts that, uh, allow you to
(37:36):
kind of pick your level and thenexplore down, and get into the
weeds on stuff like that.
So that's definitely, I thinkmaybe if you're a product
innovator and you don't engagewith musical instruments or
anything like that, I thinkThere's a lot of stuff to be
learned there and maybe just popinto a local synth shop and have
someone walk you through howthese things work because
there's a lot of interesting,there's a lot of interesting
(37:58):
language that they've developedaround how to interface with
music and stuff inside of a box.
so we'll put links to all ofthose products in there as well
because they're pretty cool.
But, you know, again, I thinkthat that could be a really
useful place to start where yousee how complex it can be.
Dialed up and dialed down, butnot by the maker, but by the
(38:19):
user who then says, I want to godeep.
Ernest (38:22):
Oh, that's a great example.
It kind of makes me think ofMinecraft as well as being
another platform uh I thinkgaming space, but allows for
quite a bit of extensibility bythe users, um, in a way that
might seem pretty complicated atfirst glance, but, um, Um, you
(38:42):
know, can also be
Joachim (38:46):
Yeah.
one that Minecraft is greatbecause it's again, that whole,
you want to just play it.
You can just play it.
You want to build a computerinside of Minecraft?
Go ahead.
You can build a computer, youknow, and people have built
rudimentary CPUs inside ofMinecraft, you know, and it's
just absolutely insane, buttotally doable.
(39:06):
But you don't have to do that.
You can just play the game.
Again, it never obscured any ofthe stuff.
You can just go deep.
Ernest (39:16):
I thought I might share one last quote.
You know, we've been maybesomewhat negative when it comes
to Kahneman's key, things thathe's been known for.
But, um, yeah, I mentionedearlier one of the things that I
really admire about him is, is,his willingness to change his
mind.
And, um, there's a quote thatI'd love to share that comes
(39:37):
from an interview he did with,um, Stephen D.
Levitt, who is, famous forFreakonomics.
And I, I think you could say islike a disciple of, Kahneman in
that he's focused on behavioraleconomics, but he had Kahneman
on his Other podcasts calledpeople.
I mostly admire.
Uh, this was back in 2021.
(39:57):
He recently rebroadcast thisinterview after Kahneman's
passing.
And there was this one exchangethat I really,, really enjoyed.
So Levitt starts, uh, the host,Steven D Levitt starts.
He asks to Kahneman, why do youthink you'd like to change your
mind when virtually everyoneelse fights desperately to cling
to what they believed yesterday?
(40:18):
Kahneman replies, For me, when Ichange my mind is the pure
experience of having learnedsomething.
That's when I'm sure I'velearned something.
Yesterday I was stupid, and nowI've seen the light.
And so that's the experience ofchanging one's mind, and if you
view it that way, it's quitepleasant.
Leavitt retorts, So what, ifanything, would you tell a young
(40:39):
person that might help them tomake choices that would lead to
a life worth living?
And Kahneman replies, You haveto be willing, if you're a
scientist or if you're aresearcher, You have to be
willing to discard ideas thatdon't work.
And if you find yourself veryobstinately sticking to ideas
that don't work, You're in thewrong profession.
That's one piece of advice thatI would give, but otherwise I
(41:01):
don't believe in giving advice.
but I think it's very goodadvice, and I think it kind of
gets to the heart of what we'vebeen talking about, that
ultimately you have to bewilling to uh, investigate these
things for yourself, and,acknowledge when you're wrong
and learn, use that as anopportunity to learn.
And I love that someone, youknow, who at the time of this
(41:23):
interview was, I think in hismid to late eighties, was still
willing to do that, even thoughhe had, achieved all this, all
these accolades in his life uptill then.
So, um, you know, as, as down asmaybe we've been on Kahneman, I
think there's a lot we can learnfrom him as well.
All
Joachim (41:41):
Yeah I like that That's a a positive note It's funny
that he says that because that'sexactly kind of the theme that's
come out of what we're sayingright Is that people have that
ability to update to learn tolet go of something that they
didn't like They can get betterand they can not fall into those
traps again And so that's useful
Ernest (41:59):
Well, now that you've heard our perspectives, we want
to hear from you.
Have you found value in DanielKahneman's work or more broadly
in the field of behavioraleconomics that was built atop
his and Amos Tversky's research?
Or as we referred to earlier, asTim Adams wrote, do you see it
as more like a series ofsticking plasters that lack any
real power when it comes to realworld challenges?
(42:22):
We want to hear what you think.
Please share your thoughts withus at learnmakelearn at gmail.
com.
Now, let's move on to ourrecommendations of the week.
Joachim, you have arecommendation
Joachim (42:36):
Uh easy one this week.
Um, it's a podcast that I'vebeen enjoying quite a bit.
It's called if books could kill.
The two hosts have giventhemselves the challenge of,
they call it reviewing, butreally they're just destroying
that are airport bestsellers Sothey're the books that you find
(42:56):
when you come to the airport,Hudson news or whatever, the
front table, there's always anonfiction book that's there and
they just go through the list.
And so actually they coverFreakonomics.
scathing reviews.
they cover nudge also scathing.
There are unashamedly full blownleftists.
(43:18):
Of course, a lot of thatperspective is colored by that,
but, they do really try and diginto, first of all, the legacy
of these works.
and, do their best to actuallydetermine the truth value of
what these books were selling.
And sometimes they find thateverything is just a mix of
exaggeration and truth.
(43:38):
So it's really good practice asyou were hinting before that
it's a good practice to justtake a step back and ask some
basic questions.
even if the people that arewriting these things or saying
these things, proclaiming thesethings are highly fated, very
famous, celebrities, it's stillworth just assessing, is this
(43:58):
sensible and is this useful?
And is this right?
So these guys are doing thatwith a lot of humor.
And I've really been thoroughlyenjoying it.
Um, And they're so biased, it'sfine.
You know where they stand.
So it's not like they'repretending be neutral.
These guys do not want to beneutral.
They want to be opinionated andthey know where they stand.
And so it's very nice toactually, not be in that, uh,
(44:22):
the, the little middle spotwhere on the one hand, this, on
the other hand, that they golike, absolutely not.
Everything is wrong.
And this is why it's wrong, sothat's my recommendation for
this week.
Ernest (44:31):
that's a great one.
I can't wait to check them out.
Um, on my end, I have a, uh, Iwanted to get back to a physical
product recommendation.
I don't think I've done one in alittle while, um, to give you
some context here.
If you've grown up in an Asianhousehold, you know, that rice
is very important, a staplethat, you know, pretty much
every meal.
And so, you will often have,rice in the house.
(44:55):
And you need some way to storeit.
So, growing up, I recall we hadthis very large storage bin for
rice.
And, um, it was functional inthat it let you kind of, uh,
dose out rice in the pot.
predetermined quantities sothat, you could cook it up, but,
um, it was pretty ugly and Ifound that to be the case in
(45:16):
many of these, uh, rice storagesolutions that I've seen.
Most of them tend to be prettyutilitarian looking, but I
recently came across this, um,rice bin from a Japanese company
called Masuda Kiribako.
We'll provide a link to it.
I purchased it from an onlineretailer called Jinen and I I
(45:39):
love it because it's incrediblyfunctional.
It does what it's meant to dovery well, you know, which is to
hold rice, but it's alsobeautiful.
And it's this great example of aclass of products which I love,
which is products that take thesorts of things that you usually
try to hide because they're uglyand makes them beautiful so that
(46:00):
you're not only willing buthappy to give them pride of
place out in the open.
So, you know, rice bin,typically something you'd want
to hide away somewhere in apantry or in a drawer.
But this, uh, Masuda Kiribakorice bin is so beautiful that
you just want to put it out inthe open.
Uh, so we have it, right out inthe open in our kitchen.
(46:21):
So there's a few things thatmake it so great.
One, it's made of thisparticular kind of wood called
paulownia that's meant to havehumidity controlling and also
insect repelling properties justinherently.
Um, but besides those things,it's also a very beautiful wood
and, the wood is left, uh,appears to be left raw.
It's not, um, varnished in anyway.
(46:42):
So it's just got a beautifulappearance.
What's also very clever is thatthe boxes, they, the bins, they
come in three different sizes.
But if you look at them fromabove, the X, Y dimensions are
all the same.
The only difference is in theirheight.
So the VOD, the increase involume, the difference in volume
between the three sizes theyoffer.
is all driven by the height ofthe bin and that's great because
(47:05):
it means that you can stackthem.
So maybe you have one that's forbrown rice and one that's for
jasmine or, short grain, etcetera.
So you can have those and stackthem and, really, uh, take up
very little space.
another really beautiful touchand you kind of have to see
this, but the, bin has thiscover that has a really nice to
(47:27):
touch wooden handle.
and then the top of the cover isglass.
So you can see through into thebin and see how much rice is
left.
But the thing that's so cleveris that each bin comes with a
wooden measuring cup and it'sexactly, one serving of rice.
But the thing that I just can'tget over how wonderful it is, is
(47:51):
the wooden.
Measuring cup has a magnetembedded into the wood.
So it's not visible, as far asyou can see, this measuring cup
is just purely made of wood, butit has a magnet inlaid into the
wood and the lid of the bin hasa magnet inlaid into it as well.
So that measuring cup just.
(48:11):
attaches to the top of the lidlike magic, cause there's no
visible magnets.
It's just that they attach toeach other.
So you don't have to think aboutwhere you put that measuring
cup.
you don't lose it.
It's just always going to be onthe lid of the bin.
So it's just this beautifulobject that also is incredibly
(48:32):
functional, um, and verythoughtfully designed.
You know, it's just clear thatthese people use these products.
And so they thought about allthese challenges that you have
associated with them and, um,designed their product around
those things.
So the Masuda Kiribako rice bin,um, is the thing that I want to
highlight today.
(48:52):
Or do you have any
Joachim (48:56):
we use, uh, just OXO, large OXO containers that have a
little vacuum thingy on them.
and that's fine.
It does the job, but.
Now I have an excuse maybe anexcuse to try something nicer
but I also wanted to, add, Iwanted to um, on the
description, they point out thatthe box is made without the use
of nails or screws, so it's justusing Japanese joinery, and then
(49:20):
I actually just, I'm going to,I'm going to have a second
recommendation.
You've done this.
I'm just, I'm going to book I,um, recently got this um, called
The Art of Japanese Joinery,which is by Seike Kiyoshi.
Um, it is a skinny paperbackbook, pretty old from the 70s,
but it just has high resolutionpictures of all these books.
(49:43):
really traditional joints that,uh, Japanese carpenters had been
using for hundreds of years.
and the book really talks aboutthe beauty of using wood and the
benefits also from a practicalperspective of earthquake prone
countries like Japan, things canmove and shift.
And it's just reallyfascinating, um, to look at
these joints and how they workbecause there's no nails
(50:06):
involved.
You know, it's all wood.
the rice box just reminded me ofthat fine Japanese joinery
stuff.
If you don't want to look at thebook, there is a very unique
Twitter account called thejoinery underscore JP that has
animations for various, Japanesejoints.
And it's very mesmerizing.
So we'll add that in the shownotes as well.
(50:27):
But the fact that this box hasno nails just reminded me of the
fine art of Japanese joinerywork.
It's, it is absolutelyfascinating.
Ernest (50:35):
Oh, about a rabbit
Joachim (50:38):
Yeah, seriously.
You can
Ernest (50:40):
This is
Joachim (50:41):
You can go deep.
go deep.
Ernest (50:44):
All right.
Well, I think that does it forus.
Thank you so much for joining ushere at Learn Make Learn.
As we mentioned, we want to hearfrom you.
So please send any questions orfeedback to learnmakelearn at
gmail.
com and tell your friends aboutus.
In our next episode, we're goingto discuss the idea that When it
comes to products and productinnovation, in our new, much
(51:06):
more typical era of relativelyhigh interest rates, enough is
enough.
We'll explain more and dive intothis topic in detail on the next
Learn Make Learn.
Hello and welcome to Learn Make Learn, where we share
qualitative and quantitativeperspectives on products to help
you make better.
My name is Ernest Kim and I'mjoined by my friend and co host
Joachim Groeger.
Hey Joachim, how's it going?
Joachim (00:18):
Very good.
It's, sunny in Seattle, so I'mnot going to complain.
It's good times and good weatherup here.
Is it the same, in Portlandright now?
Ernest (00:26):
Oh yeah, same, it's been fantastic and uh,, looks like it
is gonna be like this for atleast a couple more days, so
uh,, we're really lookingforward to making the most of
it.
Joachim (00:37):
I think because the weather is so changeable, I just
try and not look at the forecastand I live in the moment and
enjoy the sun while it's thereand not worry about what comes
next.
So I don't know what's going tohappen in the next few days in
Seattle.
Fingers crossed.
Ernest (00:51):
I like that approach, I think that's a good idea.
Joachim (00:54):
Yeah.
Ernest (00:55):
Okay.
Well, this is episode 15.
And today our topic is DanielKahneman, who passed away this
past March at the age of 90.
Kahneman was a psychologist bytraining, but along with his
longtime collaborator, AmosTversky, Kahneman would make
significant contributions to thefield of economics.
(01:15):
In fact, Tversky and Kahnemancame to be known as the
grandfathers of behavioraleconomics and Kahneman was
awarded the Nobel Prize forEconomics in 2002.
We'll dive into the influencesthat Kahneman's ideas have had
on product design and productthinking in just a minute, but
let's start with some contextfor folks who might not be
familiar with Kahneman or hiswork.
(01:38):
As I mentioned a minute ago,Daniel Kahneman, who recently
passed away at the age of 90,was a psychologist who became a
hugely important figure ineconomics.
And, along with his longtimecollaborator, Amos Tversky,
established the foundations forwhat would become the field of
behavioral economics.
To very quickly summarizeKahneman's impact, I'll quote
(01:58):
from the New York Times obituaryfor Kahneman, written by Robert
D.
Hershey, Jr.
Hershey wrote, quote, As opposedto traditional economics, which
assumes that human beingsgenerally act in fully rational
ways, and that any exceptionstend to disappear as the stakes
are raised, the behavioraleconomics school is based on
exposing hard wired mentalbiases that can warp judgment,
(02:22):
often with counterintuitiveresults.
Before Kahneman and Tversky,People who thought about social
problems and human behaviortended to assume that we are
mostly rational agents.
The New York Times columnistDavid Brooks wrote in 2011, they
assume that people have controlover the most important parts of
their own thinking.
They assume that people arebasically sensible utility
(02:44):
maximizers and that when theydepart from reason, it's because
some passion like fear or lovehas distorted their judgment.
But professors Kahneman andTversky, he went on yielded a
different version, a differentvision As Mr.
Brooks described it, we areplayers in a game that we don't
understand.
(03:06):
Most of our own thinking isbelow awareness.
He added our biases frequentlycause us to want the wrong
things.
Our perceptions and memories areslippery, especially about our
own mental states.
Our free will is bounded.
We have much less control overourselves than we thought.
work of Professor Kahneman andProfessor Fiske, he concluded
(03:27):
will be, remember rememberedhundreds of years from now.
So I guess you could say this isthe bull case for the legacy of
Kahneman's work, but the praiseis by no means universal.
In the show notes to last week'sepisode on design thinking, I
included a link to a piece fromJacobin magazine, which
describes itself as a leadingvoice of the American left.
(03:51):
That piece by Lisa Featherstoneabsolutely skewered one of the
most visible applications ofKahneman's work.
Featherstone wrote, Quote,behavioral economics major
insight was that people oftendon't act rationally, contrary
to the assumptions ofneoclassical economics.
For upper middle classaudiences, and more importantly,
(04:11):
elite policymakers, that was acompelling revelation.
You see, the main problem ineconomic life wasn't
exploitation or plutocracy.
No, the real issue was thatpeople are idiots.
The piece continues, behavioraleconomics was one of the
intellectual foundations of theObama administration, and the
administration was enamored bythe power of the nudge, the
(04:35):
field's term for the policytweaks that can adjust behavior
for the better, whether savingfor retirement or stopping
smoking.
The nudge was beloved by theObama administration because of
the nudge.
While its bright young nerdswere committed to a message of
progress, they were so fullyowned by the rich donor class
and big capital that realprogress on most problems would
(04:56):
have been impossible.
Enter behavioral economics.
Skipping ahead to Featherston'sconclusion now, she wrote, The
behavioral science moment seemsquaint now, partly because of
the widespread acknowledgementthat so much more is at stake in
policy arguments than ourindividual muddled decision
making.
And partly because we know thatthe nation's most important
(05:17):
problems, from inflation and theclimate crisis to low wages and
the threat of the far right, aretoo big for petty TED talk
trickery.
If you listened to our lastepisode, you'll recognize this
as being of a piece withJoachim's critiques of design
thinking and its emphasis on thepersonal over the systemic.
(05:38):
All right, so was David Brooksright in saying that Kahneman's
work will be remembered hundredsof years from now?
Or echoing Lisa Featherstone'spiece, was Tim Adams at the
Guardian on the right track whenhe observed that Though nudge
economics remains seductive,what once seemed like a panacea
has become, uh, has come to looka bit more like a series of
(05:59):
sticking plasters.
All right, so with all that setup out of the way, Yochim, I'm
dying to hear what you think andwhat your perspective is on
this.
Joachim (06:09):
So I, I think the, the short version of this is if you
want to be really, reallycritical about this whole thing,
you could just say, okay, theessence of what Kahneman and
Tversky figured out is peoplemake mistakes and they are error
prone.
So what?
Right?
Big deal.
(06:29):
People make mistakes.
And children make mistakes.
And when they make arithmeticmistakes, we just tell them, you
made a mistake.
You need to learn arithmeticproperly.
Right?
So that's our approach there.
We don't say to children, Oh,you made a mistake.
I'm going to rewrite the rulesof arithmetic so that what it is
that you got wrong will becorrect under these new rules of
(06:51):
arithmetic.
The notion that humans are errorprone is by itself not such a
powerful idea.
The appeal from these ideas isthat they're very
straightforward to understand.
You can summarize them As theJacobin piece pointed out, in
this type of TED talky way,right, Little tiny fixes will
(07:11):
add up to make a huge differenceand everything is okay.
And you need not go into yourpolitical camps and your
ideologies, right, as there'strying to be ideology free,
maybe it was the goal.
So if everything is ideologyfree.
Everything is just about scienceand figuring things out.
You would hope that the sciencethat Kahneman and Tversky were
(07:31):
engaged in was solid.
But when you look at that paperfrom the early 70s.
The whole foundations of this isfrom an experiment that involves
about 72 people.
That's not scientific enough,right?
Skip 20 years into the future.
There are two papers that comeout in Econometrica, which is
(07:54):
the premier journal ineconomics.
And these two papers basicallytest the theory again.
from Kahneman and Tversky, theybasically show that all theories
are terrible, including theKahneman and Tversky framework.
None of these things performwell.
The theory that performs theleast worst is the traditional
(08:14):
rational decision framework thatwe had before.
So from a pure scientificperspective, small sample size,
small studies, anecdata asopposed to data, and then proper
data, proper analysis,highlighting that really the
traditional theory doesn't do sobadly.
(08:34):
Everything's terrible becausehuman beings are very
complicated objects, but,, it'sthe least worst theory.
That's a paper from 1994.
Kahneman's mainstream successcomes in 2010, uh, with his book
and the nudge theory and allthese things are coming a little
bit around 2000s.
No one mentions that we'vebasically put to rest the
question of whether thesetheories are good.
(08:56):
So there's a bit of a dis alittle bit of intellectual
dishonesty as well that we'renot representing accurately what
this theory is actually doing.
But as I was thinking throughthis and thinking about all
these intellectual details, Irealized that that stuff doesn't
matter.
What matters is kind of the TEDtalk that survived, right?
The essence of the TED Talk ideapermeates people's minds.
(09:16):
They don't even read the bookanymore.
They just need the one Like wetalked about last time with
design thinking, all thatremains are the sticky post it
notes, but none of the otherbits that matter.
So I think maybe we should belooking at the legacy of this
work really through the lens ofWhat's left over and what do
people remember and how doesthat influence decision making
(09:39):
and again, back to our favoritetopic?
How does that influence how weview our customers when we are
thinking about product?
What is it that a product personwill then decide for their
customer?
They will say to them, you don'tget choice.
You shouldn't have agencybecause you're so bad.
So let me just decide for you.
And I think that's a really badand slippery slope But I really
(10:02):
think When it comes time todesign a product, you're going
to try your best to take awaycontrol from those people,
because they are, in yourperception, not very clever.
And we, again, it's alludingback to our discussion about
design thinking, the humancentric design thinking.
I think this behavioral stuffalso fed into that because it
was saying, you know, simplifythe journey, make it slick,
(10:24):
don't complicate stuff, removethe frictions, get rid of the
complexity, blah, blah.
Yeah.
But what you're actually doingis removing agency from the
customer, and they won't be ableto interact with the product in
a meaningful way.
I think like Netflix is a greatexample of that, right?
We don't trust you.
We'll do it for you.
In fact, You don't have to evensee a screen, just shuffle, just
hit that shuffle button.
I don't remember if you wereexposed to that feature on
(10:46):
Netflix, but it was just pickfor me as a shuffle button that
you could click before you evenwent into your profile.
They would just grab a piece ofcontent for you.
And then that was it.
Anyway, I would like to openthis up because it's very much,
I'm just right now stuck in myperspective and I've, I know how
I feel about behavioral.
So I'm interested really.
(11:07):
Where were you coming from withthis whole topic?
Because actually, I didn't pickthis topic.
I bet someone thought, Oh,economists are on the podcast,
so they'll pick something.
You can't think.
didn't pick it.
Ernest, you picked this.
So I'm happy to also follow youon the journey that you wanted
to take us on.
Ernest (11:21):
Oh, no, no, I appreciate it.
But I love having yourperspective on this.
Um, on my end, I would say thatI was very seduced by these
ideas.
Um, not having had, uh, I tookecon in high school and I was
about it.
I enjoyed it, but, you know,definitely my exposure to it has
(11:42):
not been, uh, in any, to anydepth.
And.
I think as someone who was veryengaged in experience design,
um, in the early stages of mycareer, These sorts of ideas
were very enticing to me.
And so, with those early days ofTed and Malcolm Gladwell, and
(12:03):
then getting exposed tobehavioral economics, it was
very exciting to see that, oh,there was this field that, um,
had this veneer of rigor aroundit, uh, that seemed to be, um,
reinforcing some of these ideasthat, um, I was seeing in my day
to day Life in experiencedesign.
(12:25):
So.
You know, I'd say that was mybackground and that was my
introduction to this world, wasas a very, um, willing,
participant, someone who, youknow, really just kind of lapped
this stuff up.
And it's only recently that,I've started to think about it
more critically, I guess.
And And part of it was based onthe lack of results, you know,
(12:47):
the sorts of things that youhighlighted last week in the
context of design thinking, andthen that the Jacobin piece
talked about in the context of,you know, this nudge approach,
which was applied in not just inthe Obama administration and,
uh, governments around the worldto, you know, I think now we
could say very little effect.
so, it's something that I thinkKahneman's passing created this
(13:10):
opportunity to just kind ofinvestigate that a little bit
more and, uh, dig into that andmaybe help people who are making
products, to avoid some of thepitfalls, that they might, fall
into, if they weren't to thinkmore critically about this, I
think the example, you cited wasreally interesting.
And I think And so, you know, Ithink that was also part of this
(13:33):
period we've been in of justseeking hypergrowth.
Um, and, uh, you know, thatbeing the thing that you're
rewarded for and is interestingin that Netflix in their most
recent quarterly earnings call,which happened, I think just a
week or two ago, uh, noted thatthey're no longer going to share
subscriber numbers.
(13:54):
And instead they're going toreport hours watched.
And it's because they've saidthat, you know, that's a better
metric.
And that is tied to the shift intheir business strategy to now
incorporate a free ad supportedtier.
So it's actually true that, inthe context of an ad supported
platform, hours watched is moreimportant.
(14:15):
so I, I, I'm going to be reallyinterested to see that with this
shift, if they do start to adopta more systemic approach that
does give you the viewer moreagency so that they're able to
keep you on the platform longerversus just, Punching out new
stuff constantly andhighlighting just that new thing
(14:36):
just to get the subscribernumbers up.
So I think that is one greatexample of how these ideas can
play out in a very concrete wayand product and the way product
comes to life.
Another example that comes tomind for me is in the running
shoe world.
there's a very similar sort of,phenomenon in that world in that
(14:58):
a very, charismatic scientist, aguy named Benno Nigg, who was,
I'd say, to my, experience, themost influential biomechanist of
his age.
I think he was out of,University of Calgary, but he
was the first to reallyintroduce the idea that,
something called overpronationwas the cause of the majority of
(15:22):
running related injuries and itwas all based on analogy like
looking at physical models andthen Using those to reason that
okay If you if the body were tooverpronate then it could cause
all these other running relatedinjuries we're seeing and so The
industry really latched ontothis idea.
(15:44):
So, you know,, very similar tothe idea that we're all stupid
and, we have to be told what todo.
So the assumption here was thatwe're all essentially broken.
We all have this over, almostall of us have this
overpronation issue.
And so we need footwear productsto, to fix that basically to
address this inherent flaw thatwe all have.
(16:04):
And.
And for decades, that was theaccepted wisdom in the running
shoe industry that pretty mucheveryone needed a shoe that
offered some amount of pronationcontrol.
And it led to shoes that hadthis very blocky sort of harder
material on the arch side of theshoe.
And, um, the experience ofrunning in those shoes was not
(16:27):
great.
And yet, because we were alltold that we needed them, many
of us did actually run in thosetypes of shoes.
But people started to notice acouple of decades in that, Hey,
actually, the, incidents ofrunning related injuries hasn't
decreased at all.
So, um,, what's going on here?
I thought these shoes weresupposed to help reduce this
risk of running related injury.
(16:49):
And to his credit, Benno Nigg,really came around and
completely flipped hisperspective and His last, um,
speech as a biomechanist atthis, uh, big event, which was
not that long ago, uh, it waskind of his valedictory speech.
He acknowledged that he waswrong and he instead, put all of
(17:13):
his weight behind this newconcept that he called the
preferred motion path, butessentially that the body knows
what it wants to do.
And so the role of products,including footwear should be to
just enable the body to do whatit wants to do.
So completely the opposite: from, we're all inherently (17:27):
undefined
broken to, we actually, all ourbodies know exactly what we
need.
So we need to just get out ofthe way and, give that agency
back to our bodies.
So, I think the, the sort ofthing might seem esoteric, but.
You can see that it absolutely,these sorts of ideas do
(17:49):
influence products and productcreation.
So, I love that we're havingthis opportunity to talk about
it, but I guess that's my, my,my way into it is just,
recognizing my own, um,gullibility, I guess, of just
accepting this without reallylooking at the evidence and
whether there was any validevidence, just because it
(18:10):
happened to align with my ownunderstanding.
Kind of assumptions, much likethe Jacobin piece talked about,
um, and then coming to realizethat this sort of approach, this
sort of kind of blanket approachcan be really dangerous and lead
to negative outcomes.
but it's pretty remarkable tosee how seductive these kinds of
(18:30):
ideas can be.
this nudge idea was adopted bygovernments around the world.
Um, the whole overpronation,concept was embraced by the
whole of the running footwearindustry for decades.
So, um, I think maybe thewarning and the cautionary tale
here is to, to just be willingto push back against accepted
(18:53):
wisdom, uh, even if it comesfrom a Nobel prize winning
academic.
And that Kahneman, hiswillingness to question himself.
Um, I think you had highlightedthis in one of our early
episodes, um, of reference to anarticle about Kahneman, citing
(19:17):
some of the, the problems withhis earlier research and being
very open about that.
So I think, that's reallylaudable.
And.
He's talked about that a lot,the importance of being willing
to change your mind.
So I think there's to a degree,the, the broader world has kind
of run amok a little bit withthese ideas that he introduced
(19:38):
to a degree beyond what, I thinkmaybe he himself would have
advocated for.
But, uh, I was just curious ifyou have any other takeaways
that you see that might berelevant to people who are
making products.
Joachim (19:52):
Yeah I think People are limited in their cognitive
abilities, obviously, we can'tcompute everything, if there is,
data that we can use andinformation and models and more
disciplined thinking andconnecting ourselves to an
mathematically, internallyconsistent framework, let's
build that framework and thenlet's use it.
So it just means that you haveto think about ways to help them
get it.
(20:12):
you have to build a tooling thatlets them do that stuff.
and I think in the productinnovation arena, since we've
been talking about running Applefitness, it's retrospective,
right?
I've burnt this many calories.
My time was this much.
I stood that long.
That doesn't really help me.
Navigate the complex decision ofgood diet, movement, if I skip a
(20:35):
workout today, what happens tome, what are the consequences of
my choices?
It's very backward looking.
Like all metrics are.
It's just, you did that.
Well done.
Not you did these things andthat sets you up for this future
path.
Ernest (20:49):
Right.
Joachim (20:50):
and that's, decision support, right?
It's telling you where we'reheading as opposed to where
we've been.
I know I've just done a 5k run.
Great.
I know I did a weight training.
Brilliant.
I know this.
What happens if I don't do whatif I'm tired today?
And when should I If I want totake a break, or if I got a
cold, when can I realisticallyget back on and be, not lose
(21:11):
fitness or something, we justget these numbers and, no
offense to whoop whoop did asimilar thing with the sleep
cycle and stuff.
It's just these numbers thatpeople give you as a score.
You're not giving the agencyback to the user.
You're just saying we've got allthese cool signals.
We've got stuff happening in thebackground and we'll give you a
single number that is supposedto capture everything like
that's really dishonest anddisrespectful to the customer at
(21:35):
the end of the day.
Same thing with Netflix, right?
The recommendations are justlike washing out my voice.
As a customer, all I can do as acustomer right in the
subscription paradigm issubscribe or not subscribe.
That's my voice.
That's the only time you get toreally hear me.
I have no voice and it's verysad.
(21:56):
Right, I think, sorry, I'm goingto do a quick tangent.
I think video games have alwayshad this the right way around.
They use the game to teach younew things as you go through the
game.
Obviously, typical first personshooter is pretty
straightforward, but anything alittle bit more complex that
involves some knowledge and someforethought, they design the
(22:16):
levels to, increase thedifficulty and allow you to try
new things and learn new tricks.
That's respectful of the userjourney, right?
Right?
They are putting just the rightamount of difficulty, but
they're also going to explain itto you.
They're not going to expect youto understand from the get go
that you can do these crazythings.
No, they build you up to thatpoint because they understand.
(22:38):
There is cognitive load, but westill want to get you to that
level to finish the game, andwe're going to make it difficult
and a little bit frustrating.
I mean, you do have to teachyour customers sometimes.
I don't know why we're so scaredof that, but that's what
behavioral economics teachesyou, right?
I think.
If like my arithmetic example atthe beginning is kids have to be
taught how to do arithmetic.
You have to be told how to savemoney.
(23:00):
You know, you have to be taughthow to do lots of things and
that's wonderful.
We should be finding morecreative ways to get that into
the product journey so thatpeople can actually get up to a
higher level and enjoy somethingon a deeper level.
Right?
Ernest (23:13):
Yeah, it's interesting you mentioned, games to me, the
one example that comes to mind,where I see this happening today
is in independent contentcreators and particularly video
content creators.
where they very much engage withtheir audiences.
So they're getting lots of richsignal back and actually acting
on it.
And they, I think, a lot of themdo such a great job of teaching,
(23:37):
teaching how this system worksand creating a culture around,
this environment where it'shighly dynamic, um, and
constantly evolving.
One example that comes to mind.
I think her name is GraceRandolph.
She runs a YouTube channelcalled beyond the trailer.
I believe, uh, we'll include alink in the show notes, but,
(24:00):
she, focuses on content relatedto the entertainment industry.
And she does every week.
I think she does this, livestream and, You can, uh,
participate, not only watch, butyou can submit questions and she
does polls.
And I'm amazed at her ability tomanage this, incredibly dynamic
(24:21):
environment because you know,she's talking about a topic, but
then if somebody comes into thechat, she'll say hello to them
and then go, go right back intowhat she was talking about.
And then there's a system thatnow, YouTube supports where you
can, um, subscribe to herstream, you could, send money to
the creator, but you could also,uh, in the case of her stream,
(24:42):
provide free subscriptions or,forget what the actual verbiage
is, but so if somebody gifts asubscription, she'll shout them
out in the midst of, whatevershe's talking about.
And it's really remarkable herability to manage this, you
know, what would be theseemingly incredible cognitive
load, but I think it's becauseshe.
(25:02):
grew into it.
Um, and I think it shows youthat this sort of environment
is, is achievable, this sort ofinteraction and relationship
between creator and not justconsumer, but participant is
possible.
I will say, I haven't.
(25:24):
I can't think off the top of myhead of any good examples of
companies that have managed todo this in the physical product
space.
The closest that comes to mindis the Chinese company Xiaomi,
and I don't believe they do thisanymore, but for a time they,
um, had this program in Chinawhere You could essentially buy
(25:45):
in to be a beta tester ofphysical products.
And that would give you, um, theability to provide feedback.
And I, I think they might'veeven said, you know, like within
X period, we're going to rollout a new version of this
product.
And they would show how theyactually did incorporate
feedback from there.
audience, their buyers, uh, intothat next version of the
(26:08):
product.
So it was a clear, um, pathbetween, your interaction, your
experiences, and the nextversion, the next incarnation of
this thing.
Um, I don't think they had any.
innovative business modelsaround that, that made that more
sustainable than you just haveto buy a new product every X
months.
But, at least it was the startof something.
(26:30):
And at least from what I hadheard, the engagement from the
customers was very, very high.
And that was one of the thingsthat really differentiated
Xiaomi in a very highlycompetitive market segment.
They were in consumerelectronics, so, you know, no
great examples yet.
But I think we're in these sortof adjacent spaces like gaming
and content creation, startingto see some blueprints of what
(26:54):
might be possible in, um, kindof Treating this relationship
with your audience differently,not just thinking they're all
idiots and oversimplifying youroffering to actually engaging
with them in a
Joachim (27:11):
Yeah, maybe that's the theme that's coming out of all
of this conversation is that youdon't have to patronize your
customer.
And in fact, if you do that,you're going to miss out on
deeper connection with them andlearning more from them and
meeting them where they are.
And if you want to meet yourcustomers and respect them,
that's going to take a lot moreeffort.
(27:34):
And so one of the areas I wasthinking about that has been, in
my opinion, stalling a bit isdata visualization.
Data visualization is one ofthose areas that is a really,
really important, um, way ofcommunicating.
Complex information using visuallanguage, and human eyes are
(27:55):
really good at processing a lotof that information.
So, uh, might've referenced himbefore everyone likes to
reference him for datavisualization.
it's Edward Tufte.
He wrote various books on visualdisplay of quantitative
information, envisioninginformation, and so on.
Uh, in one of his latter books,we'll try and find.
The link that we can share, buthe shows, a Shinkansen set
(28:18):
schedule.
So the Japanese bullet trainschedule that has time and
geography on the same map.
It is incredibly dense, but itcontains so much information
that is easily consumable at an,at a glimpse.
And human beings are incrediblygood at that.
Now we know people fall foroptical illusions and so on.
(28:40):
So you have to really designthese things from the ground up
to be usable with the biasesthat we have in our mind, right?
Our inability to measure thingswith our eyes, right?
It's not exactly accurate.
So we have to think about that.
And I think that's probably thebiggest barrier in this whole
thing is that it takes a lot ofcognitive effort to design
something so that you cantransmit.
(29:02):
So much information quickly,succinctly, and in a way that is
immediately legible to a humanbeing, uh, and so that my bad
example is Tableau.
I think Tableau is, they are asoftware as a service.
platform.
I'm sure some of our listenershave encountered it, but it's
basically ways of plottingpictures of the underlying data
(29:26):
very, very easily.
Um, and that graphs are just solame, bar charts, pie charts,
line charts.
I mean, it's Excel, but, runningon the cloud using your big
data.
I haven't seen any creativegraphical representations of
high dimensional data.
I mean, bar charts by definitioncan only show two dimensions at
(29:48):
a time.
Show me three, show me four.
How would you do that?
It's so difficult., I'm surethere's someone working at
Tableau.
There has to be at least oneperson, please let there be one
person who's worrying about howto do more high dimensional data
and visualize it for people.
And they're probably strugglingcause it's really difficult.
And I'm sure someone will say onthe product side or whatever and
(30:09):
say, Oh, what are you doing?
People don't want that.
They just want the 2D and it'stoo much load.
And haven't you read Kahnemanand the optical illusions and
people are dumb.
Um, because I have not seen anyevidence that Tableau is really
trying to push the envelope onwhat can be displayed on, on a
flat screen that gives us enoughinformation.
(30:30):
So anyway, I think that was justa side example of another
product that I think had thepotential to be something that
enables us to augment ourintelligences and allow us to
consume things given ourcognitive constraints, but is.
stumbling a little bit becauseit's really, it's a lot of work
to come up with these ways.
But, um, Tufte's examples showthat it can be done in pretty
(30:54):
complicated spaces.
And, uh, actually the JoyDivision album cover for is an
example of a beautifulvisualization pulsars that shows
you time frequency in manylayers in one go, it's
immediately legible.
Ernest (31:10):
Well, actually, two things.
One is that is one of the thingsthat has me excited about the
potential for augmented reality.
You know, we haven't really seenit yet, but the potential to uh,
present data in a much notdumbed down, but it's much more
understandable, um, actionableway for people.
(31:33):
So, uh, I hope that we'll startto see that, that potential
realized, but, um, an examplethat comes to mind is actually
one that you've cited in thepast, which is Google maps.
I think that is an incrediblyelegant system that.
is built around the needs of theuser and adapts to the needs of
(31:57):
the user, invisibly.
If you are following directionsand take a wrong turn, it
doesn't scold you.
You know, it just recalculatesand, you know, finds the best
route based on your currentcontext.
So, I think that's an example ofshowing that, yeah, you can do
this.
It's possible.
It does lead to huge affinityfor your product if you do, uh,
(32:19):
put the
Joachim (32:22):
yeah, I think that's a really good one because the maps
are, they're super dense withinformation and, and the
seamless movement from readingmode where you're just plotting
your path as opposed to you haveto navigate the path the way the
map goes from high resolution tolower resolution with just
essential information, perfectlyunderstanding cognitive load and
(32:43):
the shifts of your mental modesthat you're in.
And, Kahneman does mention thisidea that there are these fast
systems, there are these slowsystems, the more there's time
to think through stuff.
And there's sometimes, he alwaysstill has that message that it's
hard to overcome these biases.
And I don't know, I think again,there's a way to overcome it if
you give people the tooling andyeah, split the Google maps is
(33:06):
yeah, you're right.
That is, I'm not going to addanything else.
That's a really good example ofa great navigation tool that
just, um, gives you just theright amount of information and
when needed can give you moreand help you navigate the
environment
Ernest (33:19):
Yeah, I, I cribbed that
Joachim (33:22):
trying I don't know if talked about it in an episode.
No.
So this could have been, thiscould have been like the day.
Um,
Ernest (33:30):
ha.
Joachim (33:32):
it's.
It's one that we've allexperienced the value of and
like you said, it's veryadaptable
Ernest (33:38):
yes, I agree.
I think Google Maps is a,mapping in general and Google
being kind of the standardbearer for this is a great
example.
And it might seem like, oh,well, that's maps, right?
How's that relevant to me if Imake a physical widget?
But, uh, Just like you weretalking about earlier, Joachim,
I think there is an opportunitywhether you're making a digital
(34:01):
experience or physical productto spend more time thinking
about the context in which yourcustomer is using your products.
I think we tend as productmakers to think that there's one
right way to use a product orrun one right way into a
product.
And.
You know, I think the GoogleMaps example shows us that
(34:23):
that's not the case, you know.
There are all kinds of differentthings that can happen.
Maybe you get distracted, so youmiss a turn, and you need to be
rerouted.
Um, so, Try to kind of getoutside of that dogma that, I
think a lot of us develop aroundthe products that we, we spend
so much time thinking about and,um, consider that there may be
(34:46):
different ways in that, to youat first glance might seem
irrational, but, um, in the lifeof your customers, makes
complete sense.
So, being willing to have thatempathy.
I think is really important andcould be really powerful for,
for anyone making products.
So, kind of just put yourselfin, in that frame of mind.
(35:09):
Imagine you had a maps app thatyou took a wrong turn, scolded
you, know, and said you're doingit wrong.
Um, you know, that's kind ofwhat happens with a lot of
different domains of products.
so I think just trying to bearthat in mind is,
Joachim (35:27):
I would say this though music equipment makers have
really been pushing theboundaries on user interaction
design especially devices thatinvolve generating sound.
manipulating sound Um there'stwo things that are really
interesting.
So my favorite examples are twocompanies.
One is, um, 10, 10 music whomake various, uh, modules.
(35:50):
One of them is a sampler, the10, 10 music black box.
Which has an incredibly, simplesetup.
Uh, I was up and running withina couple of minutes.
I've worked with samplers in thepast, so it's probably helps
that I've done that.
But it has a single touchscreen, four knobs, a couple of
(36:10):
other buttons that handlethings.
And it's pretty straightforward.
It's unique.
The operating system is its own.
unique operating system.
It uses its own way ofdescribing things.
but you can do all kinds ofcrazy stuff, grab a sample,
change the pitch, slice it up.
It's really complicated thingsthat you want to do to make
interesting music and it can doit all with a unique user
(36:32):
interface that doesn't patronizeyou high details.
It's honest and it's honestabout there's a learning curve.
And I think that's also part ofthe thing that musical
instrument makers haveunderstood is there's always a
learning curve.
I would like.
more products to be willing toengage with the idea.
The other company that does agreat job is Electron.
They have a number ofinstruments, including the
(36:52):
Octatrack.
That's also a sampler hastotally different workflow,
unique to them again.
Uh, and again, usable after thatlearning curve, not too steep.
You can start doing things offthe bat and then.
If you want to go deeper, youcan go as deep as you want to
go.
There's these different depthsthat allow the user to just go,
(37:14):
I just want to do this verystraightforward thing, or I need
to do something more complex.
And it's all there, but only ifyou want to go to that depth.
And both of these products havethat feature, you can just kind
of do the thing you want to do,or you can go deep.
And that is unique in instrumentmakers.
I don't think I've seen otherproducts that, uh, allow you to
(37:36):
kind of pick your level and thenexplore down, and get into the
weeds on stuff like that.
So that's definitely, I thinkmaybe if you're a product
innovator and you don't engagewith musical instruments or
anything like that, I thinkThere's a lot of stuff to be
learned there and maybe just popinto a local synth shop and have
someone walk you through howthese things work because
there's a lot of interesting,there's a lot of interesting
(37:58):
language that they've developedaround how to interface with
music and stuff inside of a box.
so we'll put links to all ofthose products in there as well
because they're pretty cool.
But, you know, again, I thinkthat that could be a really
useful place to start where yousee how complex it can be.
Dialed up and dialed down, butnot by the maker, but by the
(38:19):
user who then says, I want to godeep.
Ernest (38:22):
Oh, that's a great example.
It kind of makes me think ofMinecraft as well as being
another platform uh I thinkgaming space, but allows for
quite a bit of extensibility bythe users, um, in a way that
might seem pretty complicated atfirst glance, but, um, Um, you
(38:42):
know, can also be
Joachim (38:46):
Yeah.
one that Minecraft is greatbecause it's again, that whole,
you want to just play it.
You can just play it.
You want to build a computerinside of Minecraft?
Go ahead.
You can build a computer, youknow, and people have built
rudimentary CPUs inside ofMinecraft, you know, and it's
just absolutely insane, buttotally doable.
(39:06):
But you don't have to do that.
You can just play the game.
Again, it never obscured any ofthe stuff.
You can just go deep.
Ernest (39:16):
I thought I might share one last quote.
You know, we've been maybesomewhat negative when it comes
to Kahneman's key, things thathe's been known for.
But, um, yeah, I mentionedearlier one of the things that I
really admire about him is, is,his willingness to change his
mind.
And, um, there's a quote thatI'd love to share that comes
(39:37):
from an interview he did with,um, Stephen D.
Levitt, who is, famous forFreakonomics.
And I, I think you could say islike a disciple of, Kahneman in
that he's focused on behavioraleconomics, but he had Kahneman
on his Other podcasts calledpeople.
I mostly admire.
Uh, this was back in 2021.
(39:57):
He recently rebroadcast thisinterview after Kahneman's
passing.
And there was this one exchangethat I really,, really enjoyed.
So Levitt starts, uh, the host,Steven D Levitt starts.
He asks to Kahneman, why do youthink you'd like to change your
mind when virtually everyoneelse fights desperately to cling
to what they believed yesterday?
(40:18):
Kahneman replies, For me, when Ichange my mind is the pure
experience of having learnedsomething.
That's when I'm sure I'velearned something.
Yesterday I was stupid, and nowI've seen the light.
And so that's the experience ofchanging one's mind, and if you
view it that way, it's quitepleasant.
Leavitt retorts, So what, ifanything, would you tell a young
(40:39):
person that might help them tomake choices that would lead to
a life worth living?
And Kahneman replies, You haveto be willing, if you're a
scientist or if you're aresearcher, You have to be
willing to discard ideas thatdon't work.
And if you find yourself veryobstinately sticking to ideas
that don't work, You're in thewrong profession.
That's one piece of advice thatI would give, but otherwise I
(41:01):
don't believe in giving advice.
but I think it's very goodadvice, and I think it kind of
gets to the heart of what we'vebeen talking about, that
ultimately you have to bewilling to uh, investigate these
things for yourself, and,acknowledge when you're wrong
and learn, use that as anopportunity to learn.
And I love that someone, youknow, who at the time of this
(41:23):
interview was, I think in hismid to late eighties, was still
willing to do that, even thoughhe had, achieved all this, all
these accolades in his life uptill then.
So, um, you know, as, as down asmaybe we've been on Kahneman, I
think there's a lot we can learnfrom him as well.
All
Joachim (41:41):
Yeah I like that That's a a positive note It's funny
that he says that because that'sexactly kind of the theme that's
come out of what we're sayingright Is that people have that
ability to update to learn tolet go of something that they
didn't like They can get betterand they can not fall into those
traps again And so that's useful
Ernest (41:59):
Well, now that you've heard our perspectives, we want
to hear from you.
Have you found value in DanielKahneman's work or more broadly
in the field of behavioraleconomics that was built atop
his and Amos Tversky's research?
Or as we referred to earlier, asTim Adams wrote, do you see it
as more like a series ofsticking plasters that lack any
real power when it comes to realworld challenges?
(42:22):
We want to hear what you think.
Please share your thoughts withus at learnmakelearn at gmail.
com.
Now, let's move on to ourrecommendations of the week.
Joachim, you have arecommendation
Joachim (42:36):
Uh easy one this week.
Um, it's a podcast that I'vebeen enjoying quite a bit.
It's called if books could kill.
The two hosts have giventhemselves the challenge of,
they call it reviewing, butreally they're just destroying
that are airport bestsellers Sothey're the books that you find
(42:56):
when you come to the airport,Hudson news or whatever, the
front table, there's always anonfiction book that's there and
they just go through the list.
And so actually they coverFreakonomics.
scathing reviews.
they cover nudge also scathing.
There are unashamedly full blownleftists.
(43:18):
Of course, a lot of thatperspective is colored by that,
but, they do really try and diginto, first of all, the legacy
of these works.
and, do their best to actuallydetermine the truth value of
what these books were selling.
And sometimes they find thateverything is just a mix of
exaggeration and truth.
(43:38):
So it's really good practice asyou were hinting before that
it's a good practice to justtake a step back and ask some
basic questions.
even if the people that arewriting these things or saying
these things, proclaiming thesethings are highly fated, very
famous, celebrities, it's stillworth just assessing, is this
(43:58):
sensible and is this useful?
And is this right?
So these guys are doing thatwith a lot of humor.
And I've really been thoroughlyenjoying it.
Um, And they're so biased, it'sfine.
You know where they stand.
So it's not like they'repretending be neutral.
These guys do not want to beneutral.
They want to be opinionated andthey know where they stand.
And so it's very nice toactually, not be in that, uh,
(44:22):
the, the little middle spotwhere on the one hand, this, on
the other hand, that they golike, absolutely not.
Everything is wrong.
And this is why it's wrong, sothat's my recommendation for
this week.
Ernest (44:31):
that's a great one.
I can't wait to check them out.
Um, on my end, I have a, uh, Iwanted to get back to a physical
product recommendation.
I don't think I've done one in alittle while, um, to give you
some context here.
If you've grown up in an Asianhousehold, you know, that rice
is very important, a staplethat, you know, pretty much
every meal.
And so, you will often have,rice in the house.
(44:55):
And you need some way to storeit.
So, growing up, I recall we hadthis very large storage bin for
rice.
And, um, it was functional inthat it let you kind of, uh,
dose out rice in the pot.
predetermined quantities sothat, you could cook it up, but,
um, it was pretty ugly and Ifound that to be the case in
(45:16):
many of these, uh, rice storagesolutions that I've seen.
Most of them tend to be prettyutilitarian looking, but I
recently came across this, um,rice bin from a Japanese company
called Masuda Kiribako.
We'll provide a link to it.
I purchased it from an onlineretailer called Jinen and I I
(45:39):
love it because it's incrediblyfunctional.
It does what it's meant to dovery well, you know, which is to
hold rice, but it's alsobeautiful.
And it's this great example of aclass of products which I love,
which is products that take thesorts of things that you usually
try to hide because they're uglyand makes them beautiful so that
(46:00):
you're not only willing buthappy to give them pride of
place out in the open.
So, you know, rice bin,typically something you'd want
to hide away somewhere in apantry or in a drawer.
But this, uh, Masuda Kiribakorice bin is so beautiful that
you just want to put it out inthe open.
Uh, so we have it, right out inthe open in our kitchen.
(46:21):
So there's a few things thatmake it so great.
One, it's made of thisparticular kind of wood called
paulownia that's meant to havehumidity controlling and also
insect repelling properties justinherently.
Um, but besides those things,it's also a very beautiful wood
and, the wood is left, uh,appears to be left raw.
It's not, um, varnished in anyway.
(46:42):
So it's just got a beautifulappearance.
What's also very clever is thatthe boxes, they, the bins, they
come in three different sizes.
But if you look at them fromabove, the X, Y dimensions are
all the same.
The only difference is in theirheight.
So the VOD, the increase involume, the difference in volume
between the three sizes theyoffer.
is all driven by the height ofthe bin and that's great because
(47:05):
it means that you can stackthem.
So maybe you have one that's forbrown rice and one that's for
jasmine or, short grain, etcetera.
So you can have those and stackthem and, really, uh, take up
very little space.
another really beautiful touchand you kind of have to see
this, but the, bin has thiscover that has a really nice to
(47:27):
touch wooden handle.
and then the top of the cover isglass.
So you can see through into thebin and see how much rice is
left.
But the thing that's so cleveris that each bin comes with a
wooden measuring cup and it'sexactly, one serving of rice.
But the thing that I just can'tget over how wonderful it is, is
(47:51):
the wooden.
Measuring cup has a magnetembedded into the wood.
So it's not visible, as far asyou can see, this measuring cup
is just purely made of wood, butit has a magnet inlaid into the
wood and the lid of the bin hasa magnet inlaid into it as well.
So that measuring cup just.
(48:11):
attaches to the top of the lidlike magic, cause there's no
visible magnets.
It's just that they attach toeach other.
So you don't have to think aboutwhere you put that measuring
cup.
you don't lose it.
It's just always going to be onthe lid of the bin.
So it's just this beautifulobject that also is incredibly
(48:32):
functional, um, and verythoughtfully designed.
You know, it's just clear thatthese people use these products.
And so they thought about allthese challenges that you have
associated with them and, um,designed their product around
those things.
So the Masuda Kiribako rice bin,um, is the thing that I want to
highlight today.
(48:52):
Or do you have any
Joachim (48:56):
we use, uh, just OXO, large OXO containers that have a
little vacuum thingy on them.
and that's fine.
It does the job, but.
Now I have an excuse maybe anexcuse to try something nicer
but I also wanted to, add, Iwanted to um, on the
description, they point out thatthe box is made without the use
of nails or screws, so it's justusing Japanese joinery, and then
(49:20):
I actually just, I'm going to,I'm going to have a second
recommendation.
You've done this.
I'm just, I'm going to book I,um, recently got this um, called
The Art of Japanese Joinery,which is by Seike Kiyoshi.
Um, it is a skinny paperbackbook, pretty old from the 70s,
but it just has high resolutionpictures of all these books.
(49:43):
really traditional joints that,uh, Japanese carpenters had been
using for hundreds of years.
and the book really talks aboutthe beauty of using wood and the
benefits also from a practicalperspective of earthquake prone
countries like Japan, things canmove and shift.
And it's just reallyfascinating, um, to look at
these joints and how they workbecause there's no nails
(50:06):
involved.
You know, it's all wood.
the rice box just reminded me ofthat fine Japanese joinery
stuff.
If you don't want to look at thebook, there is a very unique
Twitter account called thejoinery underscore JP that has
animations for various, Japanesejoints.
And it's very mesmerizing.
So we'll add that in the shownotes as well.
(50:27):
But the fact that this box hasno nails just reminded me of the
fine art of Japanese joinerywork.
It's, it is absolutelyfascinating.
Ernest (50:35):
Oh, about a rabbit
Joachim (50:38):
Yeah, seriously.
You can
Ernest (50:40):
This is
Joachim (50:41):
You can go deep.
go deep.
Ernest (50:44):
All right.
Well, I think that does it forus.
Thank you so much for joining ushere at Learn Make Learn.
As we mentioned, we want to hearfrom you.
So please send any questions orfeedback to learnmakelearn at
gmail.
com and tell your friends aboutus.
In our next episode, we're goingto discuss the idea that When it
comes to products and productinnovation, in our new, much
(51:06):
more typical era of relativelyhigh interest rates, enough is
enough.
We'll explain more and dive intothis topic in detail on the next
Learn Make Learn.
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