How nudge theory is ageing well
Review of Cass Sunstein’s two new books in the FT
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Tag: Reason & rationality
The incoherence of evidence-based policy
Values, not data, are the basis of policy. The job of evidence is to inform policy-making to maximise the chances that any given reform achieves the ideological goal. It cannot tell us what that goal should be.
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John Humphrys’s dismal legacy
After 32 years on BBC Radio Four’s flagship news programme, Today, John Humphrys has told the Daily Mail that he is “assuming” he’ll leave the programme this year. Unfortunately, his legacy will be a style of interviewing that has made our news media less, not better equipped to give our politicians the scrutiny and interrogation a healthy democracy needs…
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Lessons from a divided nation
Could Brexit be good for business? Perhaps – if only because it has taught us several important lessons about how not to conduct collective decision-making, which corporations would be wise to heed.
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Universities and the altar of profit
You might think that a university philosophy department facing closure in Hull is of as much interest to the average person as the shutting of a butcher’s in Wolverhampton is to a vegetarian in Totnes. But the events unfolding on Humberside are symptomatic of a deep malaise affecting not just universities but the wider culture. The crude pursuit of what is “practical”, “efficient” or “useful” is threatening everything of value that isn’t evidently profitable.
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