About Me

I ramble about a number of things - but travel experiences, movies and music feature prominently. See my label cloud for a better idea. All comnments and opinions on this blog are my own, and do not in any way reflect the opinions/position of my employer (past/current/future).

30 October 2012

The (Honest) Truth about Dishonesty

Came across the YouTube video courtesy of the Schneier Blog, on dishonesty, Prof Dan Ariely. The talk, based on his book of the same name, makes the point that almost everyone makes decisions that have some good and some bad outcomes. However, when these outcomes have a biased incentive scheme (as in the case of bankers), the decision making process itself gets clouded; and the perceived reality is not the same as the actual reality. He also talks of some mechanisms that seem to help with "resetting" the compass - and the Catholic confession is used as an example. While he was going through the example, it occurred to me, that South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation process was very much a similar resetting process; and is perhaps one of the best, mass scale, examples of such a process. But this means, in theory, the persons who are only doing a "little bad", could be influenced to do a lot less "little bad", if such processes occurred regularly. Could such a simple idea be a building block for wider social change?

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