{"id":1506,"date":"2021-04-14T19:01:30","date_gmt":"2021-04-14T16:01:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/metacpc.org\/?p=1506"},"modified":"2021-04-23T19:25:44","modified_gmt":"2021-04-23T16:25:44","slug":"intrinsic-goodness-why-we-might-behave-better-than-we-think","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/metacpc.org\/en\/intrinsic-goodness-why-we-might-behave-better-than-we-think\/","title":{"rendered":"Intrinsic goodness: Why we might behave better than we think"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>By Antara Haldar on the <a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/www.the-tls.co.uk\/\" target=\"_blank\">TLS<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The plot of mainstream economics has been monopolized for generations now by the fictional character known as&nbsp;<em>homo economicus. Homo economicus<\/em>&nbsp;has the cognitive capacities of a superhero: his ability to churn unlimited information and unflinching self-knowledge into instant and accurate decisions is infallible. But he differs from your everyday superhero in one key respect: he is in no way committed to using his powers to do good. His calculation of cost and benefit to relentlessly maximize utility is entirely clinical, and he is laser-focused on his own material self-interest rather than fluffy considerations such as social moorings. Of course, we almost never encounter such people in the real world. Yet the dominant strain of what is known as \u201crational choice theory\u201d \u2013 the model that lies at the heart of mainstream economics \u2013 has placed this unsympathetic antihero squarely at the centre of economic thinking, making rationality in effect synonymous with selfishness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Happily, in recent years, we have started to glimpse what the arc of character development of the agent at the centre of economic analysis might look like \u2013 and how it might eventually evolve beyond&nbsp;<em>ho<\/em><em>mo economicus<\/em>. Beginning with the collaboration \u2013 now chronicled by Michael Lewis in&nbsp;<em>The Undoing Project<\/em>&nbsp;\u2013 of the psychologists Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky, the stick figure that had for so long populated economics has started to be filled out. Their work helped spawn a whole new field \u2013 behavioural economics \u2013 that identifies a plethora of instances where the standard assumptions of economic theory are shown not to operate. In particular, human beings appear to be both computationally inferior (lacking both complete information and self-control) and morally superior (motivated by things other than material self interest) to the robotic&nbsp;<em>homo economicus<\/em>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Antara Haldar on the TLS<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1934,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"template-parts\/content-blog.php","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_eb_attr":"","_EventAllDay":false,"_EventTimezone":"","_EventStartDate":"","_EventEndDate":"","_EventStartDateUTC":"","_EventEndDateUTC":"","_EventShowMap":false,"_EventShowMapLink":false,"_EventURL":"","_EventCost":"","_EventCostDescription":"","_EventCurrencySymbol":"","_EventCurrencyCode":"","_EventCurrencyPosition":"","_EventDateTimeSeparator":"","_EventTimeRangeSeparator":"","_EventOrganizerID":[],"_EventVenueID":[],"_OrganizerEmail":"","_OrganizerPhone":"","_OrganizerWebsite":"","_VenueAddress":"","_VenueCity":"","_VenueCountry":"","_VenueProvince":"","_VenueState":"","_VenueZip":"","_VenuePhone":"","_VenueURL":"","_VenueStateProvince":"","_VenueLat":"","_VenueLng":"","_VenueShowMap":false,"_VenueShowMapLink":false,"_tribe_events_control_status":"","_tribe_events_control_status_canceled_reason":"","_tribe_events_control_status_postponed_reason":"","_tribe_events_control_online":"","_tribe_events_control_online_url":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[61],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1506","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-what-we-like-en"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/metacpc.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1506","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/metacpc.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/metacpc.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/metacpc.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/metacpc.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1506"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/metacpc.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1506\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2122,"href":"https:\/\/metacpc.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1506\/revisions\/2122"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/metacpc.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1934"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/metacpc.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1506"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/metacpc.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1506"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/metacpc.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1506"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}