Garrett: I have a natural inclination being trained as a particular kind of economist to be very skeptical of behavioral economics and some of the claims of irrationality. So I'm going to try to fight it, but I find that approach that you've just laid out extremely compelling. It pushes so many of my happy places. He says his wife was affected by Kahneman's book Thinking Fast and Slow because her colleagues had relied on gut feelings.
Psychologist and author Gerd Gigerenzer of the Max Planck Institute for Human Development talks about his book Gut Feelings with EconTalk host Russ Roberts. Gigerenzer argues for the power of simple heuristics--rules of thumb--over more complex models when making real-world decisions. He argues that many results in behavioral economics that appear irrational can be understood as sensible ways of coping with complexity.