Cass R. Sunstein > Quotes

“Emotions can get in the way of truth-seeking. People do not process information in a neutral way.”
― Cass R. Sunstein, On Rumors: How Falsehoods Spread, Why We Believe Them, What Can Be Done

“To become an extremist, hang around with people you agree with.”
― Cass Sunstein

“...when like-minded people get together, they often end up thinking a more extreme version of what they thought before they started to talk to one another.”
― Cass R. Sunstein, On Rumors: How Falsehoods Spread, Why We Believe Them, What Can Be Done

“As Joseph Schumpeter remarked, you cannot fool all of the people all of the time, but you can fool enough of the people for long enough to do irreversible damage.”
― Cass R. Sunstein, Can It Happen Here?: Authoritarianism in America

“We can believe in hierarchy. We can believe the universe was made just for us. Hierarchy and a major sense of entitlement are not insurmountable problems. The problem occurs when we treat those whom we believe lie beneath us as slaves. Religion once sustained human slavery. It was wrong then. When it blindly sanctions the slavery of every nonhuman animal, it is wrong now.”
― Cass R. Sunstein, Animal Rights: Current Debates and New Directions

“do not be misled by expert bravado or by an expert’s own sense of how he or she is doing. Evidence is a much better guide than an impressive self-presentation.”
― Cass R. Sunstein, Wiser: Getting Beyond Groupthink to Make Groups Smarter

“Star Wars and Star Trek are good in different ways, and in fairness, you can’t really rank them. But Star Wars is better. “YOUR”
― Cass R. Sunstein, The World According to Star Wars

“Asked to resolve problems in a language that is not their own, people are less likely to depart from standard accounts of rationality.”
― Cass R. Sunstein, Why Nudge?: The Politics of Libertarian Paternalism

“There is another problem. Echo chambers can lead people to believe in falsehoods, and it may be difficult or impossible to correct them. Falsehoods take a toll. One illustration is the belief that President Barack Obama was not born in the United States. As falsehoods go, this one is not the most damaging, but it both reflected and contributed to a politics of suspicion, distrust, and sometimes hatred. A”
― Cass R. Sunstein, #Republic: Divided Democracy in the Age of Social Media

“How about 4, 5, 1, 2, 3, 6, 7? Think about it for a minute. That approach has the advantage of giving you “I am your father,” and of starting with the mysteries of the two best, while treating the prequels as kind of a flashback (as you’re also focused on the cliffhanger ending of 5). Then you get to wrap everything up with the real finale, and the best, before the third trilogy starts. Not a bad idea at all. A”
― Cass R. Sunstein, The World According to Star Wars

“[d]espotism is a legitimate mode of government in dealing with barbarians, provided the end be their improvements, and the means justified by actually effecting that end.”
― Cass R. Sunstein, Why Nudge?: The Politics of Libertarian Paternalism

“Do musical preferences predict political inclinations? Not long ago, an official with Pandora said that its predictions about those inclinations, based on zip code as well as musical choices, are between 75 and 80 percent accurate. And with that level of accuracy, it developed an advertising service “that would enable candidates and political organizations to target the majority of its 73 million active monthly Pandora listeners based on its sense of their political leanings.”
― Cass R. Sunstein, #Republic: Divided Democracy in the Age of Social Media

“Or consider the fact that after people buy a new car, they often love to read advertisements that speak enthusiastically about the same car that they have just obtained. Those advertisements tend to be comforting because they confirm the wisdom of the decision to purchase that particular car. If you are a member of a particular political party or have strong convictions, you might want support, reinforcement, and ammunition, not criticism.”
― Cass R. Sunstein, #Republic: Divided Democracy in the Age of Social Media

“Janis believed that groups are especially likely to suffer from groupthink if they are cohesive, have highly directive leadership, and are insulated from experts.”
― Cass R. Sunstein, Wiser: Getting Beyond Groupthink to Make Groups Smarter

“If government is to respect people's autonomy, or to treat them with dignity, it should not deprive them of freedom. It should treat them as adults, rather than children or infants.”
― Cass R. Sunstein

“Economists suggest that we should assess the value of decisions in terms of two considerations: the costs of decisions and the costs of errors.”
― Cass R. Sunstein, Wiser: Getting Beyond Groupthink to Make Groups Smarter

“Padmé insists: “There’s always a choice.” Does Anakin hear the echo of her voice decades later, when he decides to save their son from the Emperor? I like to think so.

“YOU GET MANY OPPORTUNITIES TO KEEP YOUR EYES OPEN”

Here’s Leia, speaking of Han’s apparent desertion of the rebellion in A New Hope: “A man must follow his own path. No one can choose it for him.” Here’s Obi-Wan to Luke, again in A New Hope: “Then you must do what you think is right, of course.” Here are Lucas’s own words: “Life sends you down funny paths. And you get many opportunities to keep your eyes open.” He was talking about his own life, but he might as well have been talking about Star Wars and the characters who populate it.”
― Cass R. Sunstein, The World According to Star Wars

“People are moderately more likely to favor approaches that involve reflection and deliberation.”
― Cass R. Sunstein

“Luke begins as that innocent farm boy, with no particular religious convictions. He is isolated and rootless—an excellent target for extremists. Sure enough, he embarks on what an online commentator describes as a “dark journey into religious fundamentalism and extremism.” A disaffected and somewhat lost young man, in search of something, he comes across Obi-Wan Kenobi, plainly a religious fanatic, who follows self-evidently extremist ideas about the Force. “Within moments of meeting Luke, Obi-Wan tells Luke he must abandon his family and join him, going so far as telling a shocking lie that the Empire killed Luke’s father, hoping to inspire Luke to a life of jihad.” Obi-Wan”
― Cass R. Sunstein, The World According to Star Wars

“Our favorite messengers are sometimes wrong and our least favorite messengers are sometimes right.”
― Cass R. Sunstein, How to Humble a Wingnut and Other Lessons from Behavioral Economics

“People are more likely to object to nudges that appeal to unconscious or subconscious processes.”
― Cass R. Sunstein

“The American constitutional order is meant to create a deliberative democracy, in which debate and discussion accompany accountability. This is not merely a system of majority rule, through which majorities get to do as they like simply because they are majorities. Reason-giving is central, and a deliberative democracy gives reasons.”
― Cass R. Sunstein, Impeachment: A Citizen's Guide

“In contrast to status quo conservatism, authoritarianism is primarily driven not by aversion to change (difference over time) but by aversion to complexity (difference across space). In a nutshell, authoritarians are “simple-minded avoiders of complexity more than closed-minded avoiders of change” (Stenner 2009b: 193).”
― Cass R. Sunstein, Can It Happen Here?: Authoritarianism in America

“it can be masked with a veneer of legality, it can be cloaked with plausible deniability. It is always possible to justify each incremental step.”
― Cass R. Sunstein, Can It Happen Here?: Authoritarianism in America

“You can become radicalized in the sense that you come to believe, firmly, a position that is within the political mainstream—for example, that your preferred political candidate is not just the best but immeasurably better than the alternatives, and that any other choice would be catastrophic.”
― Cass R. Sunstein, #Republic: Divided Democracy in the Age of Social Media

“This conception of representation appears throughout The Federalist Papers. No. 57 urges that: “The aim of every political constitution is, or ought to be, first to obtain for rulers who possess most wisdom to discern, and most virtue to pursue the common good of the society; and in the next place, to take the most effectual precautions for keeping them virtuous whilst they continue to hold their public trust.”
― Cass R. Sunstein, Can It Happen Here?: Authoritarianism in America

“It might also count as an insult to dignity, and a form of infantilization, if the government constantly reminds people of things that they already know.”
― Cass R. Sunstein

“In the long term, Trump, if successful, may be able to replace disloyal appointees with loyal appointees, and may be able to attract loyalists to civil service positions. In the short term, he can threaten to undermine agencies that fail to do his bidding or in any other way pose a threat to his power.”
― Cass R. Sunstein, Can It Happen Here?: Authoritarianism in America

“in the event of an “authoritarian revolution,” authoritarians may seek massive social change in pursuit of greater oneness and sameness, willingly overturning established institutions and practices that their (psychologically) conservative peers would be drawn to defend and preserve.”
― Cass R. Sunstein, Can It Happen Here?: Authoritarianism in America

“The multiple failures of top-down design, and the omnipresence of unintended consequences, can be attributed in large part, to the absence of relevant information.”
― Cass R. Sunstein