Playing politics

culture

Playing politics The powerful have always manipulated our baser natures. They can do better, says Pat Kane The Ethics of Influence: Government in the age of behavioral science by Cass R. Sunstein, Cambridge University Press, £19.99

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THE cover of this book echoes its core anxiety. A giant foot presses down on a sullen, Michael Jacksonlike figure – a besuited citizen coolly holding off its massive weight. This is a sinister image to associate with a volume (and its author, Cass Sunstein) that should be able to proclaim a decade of success in the government’s use of “behavioural science”, or nudge theory. But doubts are brewing about its long-term effectiveness in changing public behaviour – as well as about its selective account of evolved human nature. Nudging has had a strong and They are entreaties to change illustrious run at the highest level. our habits, to accept old or new Outgoing US President Barack norms, but they presume that Obama and former UK Prime we are ultimately free to refuse Minister David Cameron both set the request. up behavioural science units at However, our freedom is easily the heart of their administrations constrained by “cognitive biases”. (Sunstein was the administrator Our brains, say the nudgers, of the White House Office of are lazy, energy-conserving Information and Regulatory mechanisms, often overwhelmed Affairs from 2009 to 2012). by information. So a good way Sunstein insists that the powers to ensure that people pay into that be cannot avoid nudging us. their pensions, for example, is Every shop floor plan, every new to set payment as a “default” in office design, every commercial employment contracts, so the marketing campaign, every public employee has to actively untick information campaign, is an the box. Defaults of all kinds “architecting of choices”. As exploit our preference for inertia anyone who ever tried to leave and the status quo in order to IKEA quickly will suspect, that increase future security. endless, furniture-strewn path “Ever tried to leave IKEA to the exit is no accident. quickly? That endless, Nudges “steer people in furniture-strewn path to particular directions, but also the exit is no accident” allow them to go their own way”. 52 | NewScientist | 19 November 2016

These, and other limits to our “cognitive operations” – like “present bias”, where we focus on the short term and downplay the future, or our “unrealistic optimism” about our prospects, or our poor assessment of probable outcomes are fully deployed in Sunstein’s argument What critics nearly a decade ago were dubbing Sunstein’s “Homer Economicus” view of human nature (named after Homer Simpson and his notoriously defensive response to the challenges of life in Springfield) stands untouched. Sunstein’s Nudge (with Richard Thaler) was published in 2008, and the thinking behind it, while gaining quick traction, has barely progressed. The book is still largely predicated on data from research on American college kids. It is an expedient rationale

Liberal leaders embraced nudging as a way to circumvent debate

for governing mandarins, giving them a guilt-free alibi for their “liberal paternalism”. An early review of this book in The New Atlantic pointed out that Obama’s enthusiasm for nudging was, in the circumstances, perfectly understandable. Beating back the financial crisis of 2007– 2008, and facing an antagonistic Congress, the question was “how to use executive action to salvage something positive in the face of a hopeless political situation”? Nudges could change public behaviour without having to get a majority on the Floor. “This is not exactly what the candidate of hope and change had in mind by ‘hope and change’, ” writes David V. Johnson, “but it would have to do.” Sunstein makes useful

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Pat Kane is a writer and curator

The sailors’ curse It took centuries to nail the cause of scurvy. Why, asks Jonathon Keats Scurvy: The disease of discovery by Jonathan Lamb, Princeton University Press, £24.95

and the admiralty, yet persistently confounded both because its incidence was unpredictable and it came in countless guises. It could induce black gums, creaky bones, sensory overexcitement and derangement. One doctor aptly dubbed it “an Iliad of diseases”. With such confusion, the cause of scurvy was vigorously debated and attributed to everything from tainted fruit to lack of oxygen. More broadly, says Lamb, opinion “divided over a diet that was

EXPLORING the Pacific between 1768 and 1771, Captain James Cook measured the transit of Venus and mapped New Zealand’s coastline. But the achievement that most excited the Royal Society was the avoidance of scurvy on the Endeavour, a feat Cook attributed “Scurvy had countless guises, inducing black to the malt wort in the diet. For gums, creaky bones the next several decades, malt and derangement” was carried on all British ships. Yet scurvy plagued Cook’s next voyage, wreaking havoc despite either deficient or defective: similar sailing conditions and either there was something precautions (including plenty lacking in what was eaten, or of malt). His experiences are something present in it that emblematic of scurvy, a malady was inimical to health”. It took that was still plaguing sailors well the isolation of vitamin C in into the 20th century. As Jonathan the 1930s to fully establish Lamb shows in Scurvy, the disease malnutrition as the problem. was a major concern of scientists Even more striking than the time it took to nail the cause is The Royal Society was impressed the utter directionlessness that by Cook’s crew escaping scurvy preceded it. Lamb is careful to

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distinctions between nudges and the other things governments and enterprises can do. Nudges are not “mandates” (laws, regulations, punishments). A mandate would be, for example, a rigorous and well-administered carbon tax, secured through a democratic or representative process. A “nudge” puts smiley faces on your energy bill, and compares your usage to that of the eco-efficient Joneses next door (nudgers like to game our herd-like social impulses). In a fascinating survey section, which asks Americans and others what they actually think about being the subjects of the “architecting” of their choices, Sunstein discovers that “if people are told that they are being nudged, they will react adversely and resist”. This is why nudge thinking may be faltering – its understanding of human nature unnecessarily (and perhaps expediently) downgrades our powers of conscious thought. From the psychology and neuroscience around play, creativity, dreaming and sleep, we can as easily derive a picture of human cognition that doesn’t recoil from the buzzing, blooming demands of everyday life, but exults in using imagination, stories, abstraction and metaphor to comprehend the world. Can we architect a society that supports our cognitive surpluses, rather than exploiting our cognitive limits? If “attention is a scarce resource”, as Sunstein writes, perhaps we might manage the coming march of automation a different way, by using it to reduce our overall working hours? This would then increase the zone in which our attention could be freely and creatively exercised. That rebellious, rock-star figure on the cover is entirely appropriate. The ethics of human creativity, and the structural conditions which support its flourishing, may prove to be the ultimate challenge to the nudgers. n

show that the conquest of scurvy does not conform to the standard story of scientific progress. The benefits of citrus for preventing and curing scurvy were discovered and discovered again, only to be lost in the interim. There are myriad reasons for this elusiveness. Beyond the sheer capriciousness of scurvy, there’s the inconsistency of citrus as a source of vitamin C. For example, the popularity of citrus for treating scurvy in the mid-19th century led to the use of West Indian limes, which were far cheaper than Mediterranean lemons but also happened to contain far less vitamin C. Because the limes proved ineffective, all citrus was discredited and the medical establishment swayed back in the direction of attributing scurvy to contamination. Lamb admirably follows this circuitous path, scrupulously avoiding oversimplification. While he can get lost in the details, and his book would be better served by more rigorous organisation of his research, Scurvy serves as a worthy antidote to the sensationalism common in popular science writing. Indeed, it is the opposite of the boilerplate “vitamin that changed the world” narrative. Instead, medical science is shown in the context of contemporary prejudices and politics. Deeply informed by the history and literature of seafaring, Lamb’s book provides valuable insights into the workings of science that can even guide our expectations about research today. n Jonathon Keats is an experimental philosopher and conceptual artist 19 November 2016 | NewScientist | 53