Sharing what I have learned from what I have read: A blog by Joe Abittan
In many decision situation there is a default choice. Many online forms already have a bubble selected as you scroll through, there are many opt-out clauses in hospital disclosures, and when you go to sign-up for a social media platform there are pre-set security and information sharing agreements and settings. These defaults can matter a … Continue reading More On Default Choices
This last election season was not a great one for political polls. The presidential election polls were off for the second straight presidential election, leaving many with doubts about the effectiveness of polling. Many state senatorial polls were also off, leading to expectations that were not met by the actual election outcomes. I spent a … Continue reading Conforming to What We Think People Expect
Every time I pick the wrong line at the grocery store I am reminded of the sunk-cost fallacy. There are times I will be stuck in line, see another line moving more quickly, and debate internally if I should jump to the other line or just wait it out in the line I'm already in. … Continue reading Sunk-Cost Fallacy
"A general limitation of the human mind," writes Daniel Kahneman in his book Thinking Fast and Slow, "is its imperfect ability to reconstruct past states of knowledge, or beliefs that have changed. Once you adopt a new view of the world (or any part of it), you immediately lose much of your ability to recall … Continue reading Can You Remember Your Prior Beliefs?
We often overlook businesses when we think about the problems in American healthcare and how we can fix the issues that plague our system. But about half of all American's receive their health insurance as a benefit provided by their employer. Businesses purchase and provide health insurance for millions of Americans, and must think about … Continue reading Businesses and Solving Healthcare Problems
"Deep work is not some nostalgic affectation of writers and early-twentieth-century Philosophers," writes Cal Newport in his book Deep Work. "It's instead a skill that has great value today." A tension that I think a lot of us face (I know its true for me) is that we are pulled in two different directions … Continue reading The First Value of Deep Work
My general sense the last several years is that people are starting to sour on the idea of a new year's resolution. People that I have talked the last few years seem to be getting away from the idea of making a big change for the upcoming year, or at least if they are planning … Continue reading Temporal Landmarks
I wrote earlier about moving school start times to a later hour for high school students. In most school districts across the United States, our high school students start the day the earliest, and our elementary school students start the latest. Research, however, shows that swapping that order and pushing high school students' start times … Continue reading Taking Issues of When Seriously
I think the idea of political stability is generally underrated and under-explored in the context of current American political discussions. We are in the midst of deep demographic changes in our country, we seem to be at a real inflection point in jobs and automation, and inaction on several major policies have driven support for … Continue reading We Should Give Our Desire for Normalcy and Incrementalism More Attention
I work for a growing but still small tech start-up in the healthcare space based out of the bay area. The company has a great mission and is amazing to work for, but we have certainly had a lot of growing pains and unanswerable questions over the last four years that I have worked for … Continue reading Solving the Wrong Problem