Boy does it take a while to get to the main topic of the title. From the article/podcast:
...
THALER: Well, first of all, when we use this phrase
libertarian paternalism, we’re using libertarian as
an adjective. And so we’re trying to say we’re going
to design policies that don’t force anyone to do anything.
So the claim that we’re trying to tell people what to
do, or force them to do things, is just completely wrong.
We are also not trying to tell them to do what we think is
smart. We’re trying to help people do what they want to do.
I like to use G.P.S. as an analogy of what we’re trying to
do. So, I have a terrible sense of direction. And Google
Maps is a lifesaver for me. Now, if I want to go visit you,
I can plug in your address, and suppose I’m walking across
the park, and I see, “Oh, there’s a softball game over
there. I think I’ll go watch that for a while,” Google Maps
doesn’t scold me. It will re-compute a new route if I’ve
gone a bit out of my way. It doesn’t suggest addresses to
me. It just suggests a route. And if there’s a traffic jam,
it suggests maybe you should alter your route.
So, we don’t think people are dumb. We think the world is
hard. I mean, figuring out how much to save for retirement
is a really hard cognitive problem that very few economists
have solved for themselves. And it’s not only cognitively
hard, it involves delay of gratification, which people find
hard. It’s just like navigating in a strange city is hard.
So, why not try to help? When I first was working with the
U.K. Behavioral Insight Team, the first “Nudge unit,” the
phrase I kept saying in every meeting with some minister
was, “If you want to get people to do something, make it
easy. Remove the barriers.” That’s what we’re about.
...
"suppose I’m walking across the park, and I see, “Oh, there’s a softball game over there. I think I’ll go watch that for a while,” Google Maps doesn’t scold me."
I've noticed just in the past few days an update has been pushed so that now every time Google has to recalculate the route, instead just saying the new directions "turn right on third street", now it says "OK, turn right on third street", and I find myself having a somewhat negative reaction to the OK, like, yes, of course it's fucking OK you stupid computer, I just did it.
I think it may be an uncanny valley effect; when the computer just blindly told me the next turn after recalculation, I treated it like a tool and wasn't offended that it was giving me output in reaction to my unexpected input. With the addition of "OK" prefixing the new announcement, suddenly it's taken a half-step towards being more human and conversational, and now my brain can't help but run it through my human conversation templates, and none of them are giving me a very friendly interpretation of the "OK" for the scenario "Someone told you what you should do, you silently did something else without telling them you were going to, so they said 'OK, do this thing instead'." My brain hears sarcasm, like "OK fine make this turn instead", or exasperation, or something like that. Especially as my current commute has a place where I'm dodging around some construction that Google just hasn't picked up on so I get three "OKs" in about a minute, and my brain says "ah, that must be increasing exasperation with you".
Obviously, as I've described it to you this way, I intellectually and rationally know that nothing has changed other than the simple addition of a single word announcing a recalculation. But that doesn't invalidate the processing I'm getting from the rest of my brain. It just means I can identify why I'm reacting the way I'm reacting. Many other people will not be so introspective.
Which, getting back on topic, shows how hard all this stuff can be to get right.
Agreed, this is annoying. Little things like this make a big difference in voice UIs.
But not quite as bad as the old Hertz Neverlost (r) system, which would tell you, in a huffy voice, "Please return to the highlighted route!" Rather than just recalculating the route from where you are.
