Opinion certainty 4/5 debate potential 2/5

Milkman: Modeling people as perfectly rational economic actors is absurd

Katy Milkman · Understanding the science of fresh starts (Katy Milkman, behavioral economist) | Masters of Scale · Jan 3, 2025 · at 5:33

Behavioral scientist Katy Milkman reflects on why she originally studied engineering instead of classical economics.

0:00 / 0:15exact quote · 15.1s
▶ Watch the full episode on YouTube → 720p mp4 · rendered on demand · StarZero watermark
“I ended up being an engineer as an undergrad because economics did not make sense to me. I just thought, You know, why would you possibly think that people are perfectly rational decision-making agents and model the economy and their decisions that way? This is absurd.”

quote is from the automated transcript, cleaned for reading: filler sounds and stutters are removed, nothing is rephrased. names can be misheard (the analysis reads context, assessments check outside sources). how →

More from Katy Milkman

Insight
Milkman: Pushing through painful goal pursuit fails; making it enjoyable improves outcomes
“The science shows that that's a terrible strategy and that what we actually need to do is try and find a way to make it enjoyable, to pursue our goals.”
Katy Milkman Jan 3, 2025 ▶ 15:53 Understanding the science of fresh starts (Katy Milkman, behavioral economist) | Masters of Scale
Assertion Not yet assessed · timeframe Jan 2030
Milkman: Hiring in batches leads to more diverse teams than one-off hiring
“What we have shown in our research is that when people hire in sets, meaning, you know, let's hire five at a time as, you know, everybody will bring on all our new folks together. We'll hire five people all at once in April instead of sort of one person per mo…”
Katy Milkman Jan 3, 2025 ▶ 30:55 Understanding the science of fresh starts (Katy Milkman, behavioral economist) | Masters of Scale
Insight
Milkman: Fresh starts only provide temporary motivation for one-off actions
“But a big problem with fresh starts is that all they do is they give us a temporary boost in motivation. So they're actually really great moments to do something that's sort of a one and done.”
Katy Milkman Jan 3, 2025 ▶ 9:51 Understanding the science of fresh starts (Katy Milkman, behavioral economist) | Masters of Scale
Assertion Supported
Milkman: 40% of premature US deaths stem from daily behavioral choices
“So this pie chart kind of blew my mind and changed my life because it showed that 40% of premature deaths are due to behaviors we could change, daily decisions we make.”
Katy Milkman Jan 3, 2025 ▶ 7:15 Understanding the science of fresh starts (Katy Milkman, behavioral economist) | Masters of Scale
Assertion Supported
Milkman: Mondays and new months serve as powerful psychological fresh starts
“Actually every Monday seems to be a very powerful fresh start when we look at our data, and they come around conveniently once a week, so that's a great one to peg yourself to the start of a new month also seems to do it for some people”
Katy Milkman Jan 3, 2025 ▶ 16:21 Understanding the science of fresh starts (Katy Milkman, behavioral economist) | Masters of Scale
Insight
Milkman: Self-nudging works by making the lowest-friction default path the healthy choice
“We can think about this Powerful nudge and how we can use it as a snudge by just creating frictions that are aligned with making the lazy and easy path the one that is healthy and beneficial in the long run.”
Katy Milkman Jan 3, 2025 ▶ 20:29 Understanding the science of fresh starts (Katy Milkman, behavioral economist) | Masters of Scale
Made with StarZero

Turn any episode into a week of clips.

This entire site, about 200 episodes transcribed, diarized, checked and made playable, runs on the StarZero media pipeline. Drop in your own episode and the podcast clipper finds the moments worth sharing, cuts them, captions them, and reframes them for every feed.