The third eye…. (or what happens when n=millions) How digital media and behavioural data might finally provide us with a robust way of understanding human

All models are wrong, but some of them are useful.

All models are wrong, but some of them are dangerous.

Insert Ogilvy change logo and also slogan "Little ideas from big thinkers."

Technology Psychology Economics The sweet spot

“ ”The proper study of mankind is the science of design.” ”The proper study of mankind is the science of design.” Herbert Simon

How it should work.

How economists* pretend it works * Business executives and civil servants are more guilty than economists in this respect

“Political writers established it as a maxim, that, in contriving any system of government … every man ought to be supposed to be a knave and to have no other end, in all his actions, than his private interest.” David Hume. “There is a kind of mercantile speculation which ascribes every action to interest and considers interest as only another name for pecuniary advantage. But the boundless variety of human affections is not to be thus easily circumscribed.” Samuel Johnson “It seems to me that this failure of the economists to guide policy more successfully is closely connected with their propensity to imitate as closely as possible the procedures of the brilliantly successful physical sciences — an attempt which in our field may lead to outright error. It is an approach which has come to be described as the ‘scientistic’ attitude — an attitude which… is decidedly unscientific… since it involves a mechanical and uncritical application of habits of thought to fields different from those in which they have been formed.” F von Hayek

Beautiful theory. Wrong species.

“Thus, the conventional view that natural selection favors nervous systems which produce ever more accurate images of the world must be a very naive view of mental evolution” (Trivers 1976/2006)

Heuristics sn’t more information always better? In economics, Nobel prizes are regularly awarded for work that assumes that people make decisions as if they had perfect information and could compute the optimal solution for the problem at hand. But how do real people make good decisions under the usual conditions of little time and scarce information? Consider how players catch a ball—in baseball, cricket, or soccer. It may seem that they would have to solve complex differential equations in their heads to predict the trajectory of the ball. In fact, players use a simple heuristic. When a ball comes in high, the player fixates the ball and starts running. The heuristic is to adjust the running speed so that the angle of gaze remains constant —that is, the angle between the eye and the ball. The player can ignore all the information necessary to compute the trajectory, such as the ball’s initial velocity, distance, and angle, and just focus on one piece of nformation, the angle of gaze. Gerd Gigerenzer " " I

David Rock's SCARF model Status Certainty Autonomy Relatedness Fairness

Signalling & Trust

Six ways to trust a taxi driver ●Brand ●Repeated use - loyalty ●Sunk cost (the knowledge) ●Vulnerability to word of mouth ●Longevity (e.g. estd. 1974) ●A range of religious icons dangling from the rear-view mirror

Information asymmetry and commitmentt