This is a little dated (from 2007, might be worth updating the title), and so I wonder what's changed (if anything) in the field of behavioral economics since then.<p>I think what's amazing in what Daniel Kahneman (I've never seen him called Danny before, that's fun!) did is challenge a fundamental pillar of economics, the concept of the "quant", or "rational actor". The idea that people would always act in their own self interest was largely unquestioned, despite economics to that point having a ton of reproducibility problems (as far as I understand it). Once we were able to think of humans as non-rational actors, it demystified a whole category of problems that economics thus far hadn't been able to explain or predict.<p>Because this site has the focus that it does, I feel the assumption will be that this is about (or at least worth reading/watching because of) the people that were gathered in that room, but among them, the most important/influential person is Kahneman, in my view.
I had posted a comment concerning The Edge Foundation and Brockman's extremely close (in some cases almost coincident) relationship with Jeffrey Epstein, which has been flagged.<p>Since one of the main complaints when the Epstein issues at MIT, Edge, etc. arose was "we can't hold all these scientists responsible for associating with obvious sex traffickers, how were they supposed to know?" I can only assume everyone against sharing that information <i>now</i> is doing so specifically to provide the same plausible deniability for associates in the future.<p>Brockman should be a persona non grata in scientific circles for the rest of his life. His publishing agency and foundation are founded on dirty rapist money and should be burned to the ground. Anyone still lending them their name should be shamed and censured.<p><a href="https://newrepublic.com/article/154826/jeffrey-epsteins-intellectual-enabler" rel="nofollow">https://newrepublic.com/article/154826/jeffrey-epsteins-inte...</a>