Nudge-it's another book review chock full of ideas.

Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness by Richard H. Thaler

I have trouble with Nudge.

Not with its first premise: people make bad decisions. Nudge backs up my current understanding of our lower lizard brain (as opposed to our higher (literally) thinking brain--the good-at-reasoning and math and statistics, real-smart-monkey brain) that I talked about earlier when reviewing the book Kludge—a sibling monosyllabic title that also explicates the two-brain theory of humans, but starting from evolution. (I understand that Blink does something similar but celebrates the lizard in us all).

Nudge avoids evolution and draws from research. Rather than dwelling on the non-evolving lizardness of your brain-bottom, it demonstrates lower functioning with examples from personal finance, health and school choice, and extended warranties. Homer Simpson personifies the lizard-brain man and pops up often. His inability to delay any gratification, start anything worthwhile or plan more than two seconds out from the present demonstrates our brain at work.

Then the book presents its second big idea. In crazed optimism the authors expect the government to exploit these tendencies of non-thought for the good of us all. Not by prohibitions or enforced actions, but by a nudge--a method that exploits our weakness to guide us to be our best selves. An example is to make the default option in any choice the best option, taking advantage of our inertia against making change (for example, 401Ks should be opt out rather than opt in).

The authors seem to forget how things are done here in the USA. We aim folks on the path to hell for an extra buck. We advertise exploiting sex (part of the lizard brain appeal) to sell toothpaste and floorclearner. But most of all, we don’t buy our congressfolks to make life better for everyone; we buy them to make life better for me, right now. That’s the American way. We have a marketplace and the market decides. He who pays most, gets most--and that means controlling those default choices, hiding outcomes, and downright lying.

Nudge technology, like atom bombs, can lead us to good choices or to very bad choices (well maybe there are no good choices with atom bombs, come to think of it). That most likely path is not discussed.

Kluge: The Haphazard Construction of the Human Mind by Gary Marcus

Now, if you don’t want to blame your momma anymore, this is the book for you. All those problems -- making those questionable food and partner choices, believing in the devil and not in NASA’s moon trip, making dumb math mistakes, forgetting just about anything sometime—These problems are not your mama’s fault; they are not your fault. Those proto-monkeys and lizards did it. They spawned and recreated, bequeathing you a bottom brain that smolders and cooks up schemes for living in the jungle, not the city. Your brain stays always alert for that big, furry, pointy-toothed thing you have nightmares about, while always ready to grub for smelly roots, tasty rabbit parts and potential breeding partners. We have a lizard brain that is worse than our parents’. Gary Marcus explains our thinking tools as a big kludge—just a pile up of lizard, mammal, and, finally, faulty reasoning circuits that do not play well together.

The worst is--we default to the lizard brain when life gets tough.

Most people know how evolution failed us by standing up four-legged hoofers to a life of backaches and, eventually, metal knees. But the million year old brain is just as bad—we react; we don’t plan. We were evolved to eat, not to do math. According to Mr. Marcus, it’s a wonder we can even post well-reasoned stuff like this. He wrote a slim little offering, but it is a nice intro for the layperson. Note: I prefer Amos Twersky talking about wacky thinking or Eleanor Rosch explaining how we make categories in our heads.

Hot and Scaly

Every morning when I go for a walk all the people living here are bundled up in parkas and heavy jackets with knit wool caps on their heads and scarves over their noses, mouths and chins. Even dogs have big red-plaid, flannel jackets which the Soriana store down the street sells like hot cakes (Hot cakes are big here.) Brrrrrrr, the people say (in Spanish) as they walk to work.

So where am I? In southern Mexico and it is almost 60 degrees at 8AM. Then in the afternoon when it is pushing 85, the schoolgirls are down to wool sweaters, skirts and long knit socks guarding their heat supply.

What’s going on? The people here are plump, so it’s not skin and bones cold (like I saw in India) that they are suffering. I think these folks just learned that comfortable means pretty warm. Maybe sweaty. And anything less means cold.

They like it much above our hallowed 68 degrees that I learned about in grade school for the thermostat in the livingroom. And maybe I learned in my skin and bones that sweat is bad and cool is, well, cool.

But I have been happy a lot warmer. It was pretty hot back in the womb. My little cells learned to sweat just fine in there. And it was damp, actually it was downright wet. But then I chilled out in the northlands for 50 years and forgot how happy hot can be.

I have been trying to reset my inner thermostat to 85. That seems right for this part of Mexico, especially next month when it heats up a lot. But the old thermostat seems stuck. I still love those cool evening breezes and the local people marvel at my ability to wear only a t-shirt and shorts when it is 65 degrees out.

They tell us that hot is coming everywhere. We need to get ready for global warming, not just get ready for hiding out from winter in Mexico when we get old. If our inner thermostats get set when we are a couple years old, maybe we just need to wear snow suits until we start school. That’s what they do down here in Mexico. Maybe we could keep kids hot longer after they are born. Make our nurseries into damp, big wombplaces. I bet if my mama had used more blankets at nite then maybe I would be comfortable down south and even enjoy sweating a bunch, like the people here do.

Or maybe I need to call on our good old genetic engineers to work on the thermostat reset gene. So we all could be really comfortable at 85. Then we would be ready when the polar bears start shaving off all that heavy fur and the penguins lose all their cute, heat-holding, baby fat.

While you are at it, Mr. and Ms. Engineer, can you do something about this skin? Its red and burned every day and I have to grease up my face every night like Doris Day used to do in the 50’s, to keep that handsome womanizer (in the movies that is) Rock Hudson out of her bed. I know I have my gringo skin because my ancestors stayed in the hut all winter and there wasn’t much sun anyway up where they lived with the reindeer and moose. Thanks to their shady lives, my skin looks like those glassfishes who live in dark black caves and watch their stomachs digesting shrimp that glow in the dark.

But when things heat up (it’s that global warming again), this old white skin is about as useful as a bay window with a great big skylight over top for keeping out the sun. I feel more related to a shedding snake than my thermo-hero, a lion who just lays back and naps in the jungle heat.

What I need is something darker and oily. Maybe with more hair. Then when the seas rise and I am on very high ground where the sun really beats down, I can cool it all day long.

I won’t tell you to go shopping. They tried that before. You spent your little credit cards till the numbers wore off and then squeezed your house for money and spent, spent, spent. That worked real well. For a couple years.

Now we need to crank up the economy again. Our smart bank guys loaned you so much money that we all went broke spending it. We need a new crank to get things going so we can all be rich guys again.

Some people say the way to go is get a job and make something. But what kind of things do we make here in the old USA. We make music and movies. We make computer games. But you can only sell so many of those. We used to make loans and sell them to just about anyone. That one sure is gone. How about making something you can wear or turn on and watch or just pick up and carry around? We don’t know how to make that stuff anymore.

We do services, not stuff. We do wash-your-pooch, curl-your-hair, mow-your-grass, cook-your-Mac, rub-your-back, paint-your-nails services. Lots of doing. Lots of services. That’s OK, I guess. But we are pretty saturated with services. How much more can you do without getting illegal.

I wish we could still make great stuff like a good fast bicycle or a fancy new kiddee toy or a kitchen seven-in-one mixer or even an old fashioned broom. So I don’t have to always buy stuff from overthere. Overthere is nice, but overhere should be OK too. They say we cost too much to make stuff so we have to use robots or overthere people who work like crazy and don’t like money much. That’s what they say.

I read in the paper today that all the new money is in health! That’s what’s going to crank up the old economy.

So let’s start cranking. Everybody, get sick, right now!

Kickstart those doctors and nurses. Get that health money flowing by sharing some germs and bad habits.

I know we try. We eat fat. We drink our livers blue. We smoke our lungs black. We are not well. But not sick enough to ratchetup the economy. We need a good disease for every red-blooded American. Like a chicken in every pot we need a bunch of microbes in every belly. A virus in every cell. We need some good old fashioned low-grade sicknesses in every home.

We have some bad diseases that you could get. But they kill you quick. We want good diseases that just make you go to the hospital a lot, see a doctor every day, need a nurse, take a bunch of pills, but most of all, let you keep on working your health business job, helping those other sick people. That’s how to make the economy work. Everybody stays sick and goes to see each other for new treatments and meds, paying through the nose with good hard cash.

So where do we get these diseases we need? All the good diseases live down near the equator. Malaria and sleeping sickness keep you hanging on forever and taking pill after pill. They never get cured. They could be a goldmine.

I was going to call on our genetic engineers to fix up those down-south diseases to suit us up-north Americans, but why? We don’t need to do anything this time to be saved. Isn’t it funny how the world works?

Global warming is sending bunches of mosquitoes our way with lots of fancy new diseases in their pointy little snoots. I’m looking forward to that. You should too.

Now, everybody, roll up your sleeves, give them little bugs some blood and, hurray, catch something good for America.

Wetdog Chews the Fat

(ok-this is a story but it is full of ideas)

Wetdog Chews the Fat

I was chewing fat, way back in old, old days, before the first calamity.

All people chewed the fat back then, chewed fat four-leggers, fatty birds, and fat, fat plants.

We all grew round and fat and soft back then. Farms plumped up pigs and ducks and you could squeeze the wet-fat out of corn and other oily plants, all for us to eat.

Then calamity came. Gene engineers melted all our fat with their creeping virus genes. The twisting virus strangled and rebuilt our genes to stop the fat from growing in us living things. All because the engineers sold gene treatments to the rich to make them slim and sleek and to the starlets to let them eat and eat. Their virus genes escaped and stopped all internal living fat-making machines. No more fat in all us living things.

Gene engineers lost control. The virus crossed the planet. Then people, cats, dogs, mice, all creatures, plants, and even labs not specially contained, could never create the fat we loved. No more precious calories bulging under well-sized arms or in bouncing, happy thighs or in our belly rolls. That was the big calamity. All people were doomed evermore to eat and eat and eat.

“Oh rue the day of calamity the angels say.”

Now all must nibble constantly or drain their fuel—like humming birds have always done. These little birds fell down hard when their inner food ran low. Now people do that everyday. Just drop when calories are gone and internal carb accounts are drained.

“Oh, sweet, sweet fatty angels help us through the hour when no sugarbars or chiplets come. “ We pray that prayer ten times a day. “Oh, fatty angels guide us on.“

Now, the calamity has long past. Nothing ever bulges fat. All people are just molded tissues under tight-stretched skin. Lean and mean they used to say when I was young, but that was wrong. Now all are lean—the mean and good ones, too.

Some still want the fat, fat look. They bulge themselves with insert bags surgically slipped underneath their skin. These are the RoundOnes. They look like fatty angels, all round in their bellies and their puffy cheeks. But RoundOnes are not the angels of the earth, as they often claim. They are only stringy lizard folk like me. Eating stringy meals, but singing fat-filled eating songs together every night. Songs about the round way people ought to look. They act like there are no stringy selves inside their puffed out skin.

Everyone knows this noisy, cultish group because most RoundOnes with the insert bags choose Transparency. Their bones and liver, heart and spleen all show through their color-missing skin, show through their insert bags hidden deep in belly spaces. Their organs and a map of arteries and veins are bared. Transparent RoundOnes are not the fatty angels that they try to be. No fatty angel would expose her gassy bubbles, squirting tubes and organs pumping slimy juices.

Some Transparents slip bright glitter chips in the round insert bags that paunch out their shining belly rolls. Some keep swimming fishes in round-the-waist bags dodging intestines and other squirmy body things. I never care to see the golden fish beneath their see-through belly skin.

The true fatty angels float above us, full-covered with their robes and feathered wings. We should do as they would have us do.

“Be round but be covered,” I always say when I see transparancy. “See it and be it,” the Transparents yell back to me. I tell them, “cover up and keep your organs to yourself.”

True fatty angels never would display their inner stuff. We should all be like the angels in their covered state. I follow fat angels’ one true way. I cover all with all the fur I grow myself, thanks to the Furry Way

Fur priests say that our Furry sex is no better than the others. “The Furry sex is not above the Feathers, Scalebacks, and the Crawlers. Furs are not above Transparents and the minor sexes, too. No better in the fatty angels’ eyes. But all Furs know, “Outside is what does matter.” The Fury Oath I took back on my sexing day says so.

The Furry Way called me at my sexing time. That day I took the fur-virus dose. Then during my Adulting Year Away, I grew hair out soft and smooth. I came back brown furred and took my place in my new sexed role.

I am Wetdog. I am fur. I sing each day before I pray:

Fur fends off rays,

wraps bodys warm,

and keeps the nose glare free

and skin from harm.

fur forever and brush my face.

(clap clap clap)

But this story is not about the Furs or insert bags. This story is of LaDu, one of the true fatty angels and how she grew and sprouted wings and flew away.

Yes, I was chewing fat that day back then when we conceived LaDu. That day, my family feasted in the center of the grassy, rolling townyard green on long communal tables fitted out for family days. We feasted on this conception day for the One-Who-Is-to-Be, and that would be my sister, the soon-to-be-conceived, LaDu. She would be conceived as soon as the lambduck leg was carved down to the bone. Townspeople watched from the edges of the yard, remembering their family conception days when they sat and prayed to the angels for their One-to-be.

The calamity would come within the year (of course we did not know it then). That was the last time my family had communal fat to chew. In love and happiness we chomped down to the bone that day. The angels smiled, blessed us all, and wiped their rounded, greasy chins.

I sat on the far side, on the children’s side, with child Lulu and Lulene. We children sang conception songs as parents reached for the center cooking pot for meaty, dripping chunks:

Angels, angels come today

And bring our new baby, baby

We make our baby with this song

Baby, baby come along

Suck the sauce and chew the bone

Feast today for baby comes

Dance the dance and carry on

Make the baby, sing the song

MamaLa and MamaTrogh were furs like me. They sat to my side. These two mamas were my favorite mamapair. MamaLentroline and MamaJenelate sat across from them. They were of the feather sex and had their plumage spread and covered the full tableside. MamaMako was the ScaleBack of the family. She sat with MamaLen from the minor sex of Crawlers. MamaPapa, our Transparent, sat on the far side from me. She wore a feather robe that day and covered well. She had the place of honor. She handed out the meat and did the carving work. The lambduck meat was sliced away. The family laughed as they held the greasy food and let it slide down inside as they swallowed whole their greasy bites.

Time finally came when all were all filled and food was done. The Conception Song had all twenty verses sung, so MamaLa, who led the party day, pulled up the BabyView upon the table. All watched as the projected image of the One-to-Be danced undefined, ghostlike, in the center of the yard. The BabyView had been used for years to conceive by all town families. The engineers built them way back when the sexes were more constrained. Some said the innies and outies existed then and those two sexes were all there were.

MamaLa took the GeneSpin from the BabyView to architect new baby genes for our One-to-Be. The first gene choice went to our MamaPapa. All beamed wide, wide happy smiles. She had the carry for nine months now with the big insertion bag inside that plugged into her bloodtap to carry new baby LaDu. MamaPapa should be first to choose, because she had the babycarry chore. Of course, the family helped and plugged in when they could, but the bag was hers. MamaPapa smiled and picked the eyegene: Orangy-Red. We cheered and clapped and yelled for her.

MamaLu spun again and we called out genes as the choice turn went round the table. Each Mama chose new genes for the One-to-Be. The genes filled in and the projected image ghost grew to fully colored flesh dancing in the townyard air. Of course, the baby was not sexed, not until adulting day, so the baby had that boring look that children have—that’s what the Mama’s said to us—boring red-black-brown-foam-and even blue, but always with that undercoat of red. Not like adults with their fur, scales, and feather rainbow looks.

After an hour of spins, the One-to-Be was fully formed. The genemap blazed in lights above the townyard glen. Then all the Mamas came to MamaPapa’s chair and picked her up. They chanted as they carried the family bagholder over the field to the baby cleanroom for Mamapapa to receive the new one in the angel-blessed bag. The children carried baby presents on their heads and danced around the babycarry’s chair. Fatty angels danced above the townyard square.

The townsfolk who had watched the family party with only sly side looks now dropped their feigned distance to parade across the yard, to sing and to pop bags with loud bangs, as we always do on conception days. The children ran through the line, but the Mamas walked straight to the babyroom. Mamapapa smiled and all children knew it would be their job to wait on her until the day was due when the bag was broken and the One-to-Be would join us and get her baby name. That was the start of our LaDu.

We conceived LaDu the month before calamity. It came like fever through the town and all were changed. Sex did not matter--all sexes: furs, feathers, tranparents, even the antennae folks, too, whom noone ever sees. All caught the virus, young, mid, and old-withered too. Even those conceived but not yet burst to life, like LaDu.

All seemed wrong when the virus came. We were all hungry all the time. We started melting like old lardcakes frying in the pan. In only weeks we looked so lean and many of us danced like rich starlets after their fancy no-fat creams. We would all be fit and lean and become starlets on townyard screens, that’s what the children thought.

MamaPapa stayed big, round in the middle, the bag held her very tight. She slimmed down everwhere but there, in her arms and legs and even in her neck.

In the next months, other babies burst out skin and bone. Lizard babies we called them then. No fat was showing anywhere. Families cried when a bag was popped. Only lizard babies were carried out of for family children to view.

So everyone was crying when Baby LaDu’s day came. MamaPapa flipped the flap and pulled the bag. She popped the plugs and other tube things from the side. The bag was opened and baby given the twelve volt jump from the start machine. We sang the baby welcome song:

Unzip the bag and pull her plug

Let the baby breath in air

Give her room to stretch and move

Then hold her snug with Mama care

But we sang with little heart, for fear of what LaDu would be. A lizard baby scared us all.

But all inside the bursting room were laughing like before Calamity. Then I saw LaDu, fat as any baby ever was. I was down to boney legs and arms but LaDu had fat rings round her arms and legs, and a chin that puckered seven times. She smiled at me and I smiled back and gave her a furry Wetdog cry.

We sang to Baby LaDu that night. Everyone in town put her down to sleep. The next town heard the songs and then the next town too. All knew we slept happy in our family.

Soon engineers came to see Ladu. In white coats they scoped her belly cells. We told them, “see, calamity is done; the virus is not strong. LaDu can beat it. Engineers like you could fix us all. We will plump out again.”

LaDu was hope. LaDu was joy. We sang to her each day and squeezed her tight each night as we lay her in her nesting room.

The engineers came back again. They shook their heads and said we were wrong, “wait, LaDu will be a lizard baby too.” For three months they came but our LaDu got rounder everyday. She bounced her head up and down and we squeezed and squeezed the soft baby fat legs and toes.

Finally the engineers took LaDu away and told us that she was a fatty angel, not of the Wetdog family. She was not a baby but belonged above. They took her to fly above the town, dropping sugarballs and chiplets down.

The family cried but could not save LaDu from her angel fate to save us all and drop us daily sugarballs. MamaPapa, we could not console. She dripped tears like fatty droplets used to fall. She had watched the baby grow inside her see-through bag. Now she watched LaDu dance in the sky each night. She cried for her angel child.

MamaPapa knew what to do. She reinserted the bag from her LaDu and filled it full of chiplets and other LaDu sugar things floating around to remind us all. The RoundOne cult started on that day. Now they bulge around us all.

That was the end of baby LaDu. She was not a baby child at all. She was an angel called to fly, by engineers who knew her fate. She hovers nightly in each townfield sky, projected over clouds and stars. She sings praises to the engineers who found her grounded on the earth. We Wetdogs pray to our LaDu to save us every, every day.