‘We Could Often Tell When We Were Wrong’

Jun 2

You have probably been Rickrolled, but there is a non-zero chance you don’t know what Rick Astley looks like:

Rick Astley in 1987

His famous single actually spent five weeks at Number 1 on the charts before the label even made a video for it — scared that people would reject his look and thus the song — unheard of in the late ’80s, where the unabated influence of MTV was unavoidable.

The producers of the song, SAW (Stock Aitken Waterman), also admitted to subconsciously holding it back for the same reasons, taking their time before they presented the track to the label. They were trying different forms for the song, sending it to a number of different producers, trying to find a sound for the single that would harmonize with Astley’s look.

That is until one day someone was playing it in the production studio’s office and Pete Waterman, coming down the stairs, and Mike Stock, going up the stairs, heard the track beaming from one of the rooms and they both stopped in their tracks. “And we said, ‘Bloody hell.’ This sounds fantastic,” Stock related. “We heard it there at that moment and realized it was all hands to the pump. Let’s get it out there. Let’s not hold back.”

Stock, blind to visuals and acting from a state of autopilot, finally realized what he hand on his hands. His opinion on that experience is sagacious:

“We could often tell when we wrong, but you didn’t know when you were right a lot of the time.”

Mike Stock

Much of this anecdote comes from the fantastic Song Exploder podcast. Please consider listening!

Homo Anti-Economicus

May 22
John Stuart Mill worked to define that humans would be efficient with their actions
John Stuart Mill worked to define that humans would be efficient with their actions

For misinformation to work, it has to be treated as factual.

This is the central conceit of a recent Bryan Caplan1 post, “Misinformation About Misinformation”:

Misinformation won’t work unless the listeners are themselves naive, dogmatic, emotional, or otherwise intellectually defective. In economic jargon, the problem is that the story mistakes an information problem for a rationality problem.

Bryan Caplan
“Misinformation About Misinformation”

John Stuart Mill was a British economist who, in the mid-1800s, worked to define the term homo economicus: that humans would be economical (efficient) with their actions. Said a different way: Man would act in their own economic self-interest. And, if they did, markets would work themselves out.

Rational choice theory underscored the economic (monetary) aspect of this, which is why I believe Caplan emphasized this word in his piece. People will make decisions in their lives that make the most economic and social sense for them.

The problem is: They don’t. We’ve known humans act irrationally. It’s funny that I have to say that because if you’re reading this sentence, you’re nodding your head because you know someone who is in debt and just bought a new car. In the face of disease, people are unwilling to act in order to take preventative measures and instead hope to avoid infection.

I agree with Caplan’s premise: It’s not the fault of the entities who produce the poor product. Rationally, their market should cease to exist. If they kept selling a bad product, rational actors would not buy in and the market would dry up.

Except we all know that’s not the case.

via Tyler Cowen

1 Professor of Economics at George Mason University who authors a Substack called Bet On It