Everyone in the English-speaking world should see this

[Vekseid]

And that caveat is largely because it's in English.

Barry Schwartz: The real crisis? We stopped being wise

[DavidLandry]

Just .. amazing. I enjoy his way of talking, and his speech is very well structured. Something i have to pass on to people.

[Lithos]

TED clips are always nice.

But it is even more nice to see them take hold of more humane issues, as often it is just science talk.

[Greenthorn]

Watched up to 14:26 but mommy-mode time.

I really enjoyed what I got the chance to see though...thanks Vek

[MHaji]

I agree for the most part, but the idea that rules and procedures exist solely as a mental shortcut is misleading. Rules and procedures also can protect us from the consequences of someone else's lie - or our own incompetence. In the case of the father who was separated from his kid for two weeks over the lemonade, should they have let the kid go home with his father immediately? Should they have dispensed with the ambulance?

Absolutely not!

Giving a child alcohol can result in real health problems in some cases. And anyone can say, "I thought there was no alcohol." Anyone can come up with an excuse. But there needs to be time to look into these things. The commonsense answer, "They should have let the kid go home and not made a big deal," seems right, but is flat-out wrong.

Two weeks was excessive - three days should have been enough - but insisting that rules can be bent based on a bit of intuition is dangerous. The Rule of Law - respect for Rules - is one of the major causes of western growth and success. In countries where rules are not respected, or people feel that they can bend the rules for people they care about or on a case-by-case basis, corruption reigns. Compare southern Italy to northern Italy, for example.

Wisdom sounds nice and pleasant, and rules sound lockstep and nasty and cold, but people tend to underestimate, not overestimate, the degree to which rules apply to them personally. I do agree that we need to rely on rules less, but that's not usually the problem.

[consortium11]

It's actually quite strange to hear Barry Schwartz talk about freedom (at least from rules) in any meaningful name considering he made his name on the basis that having choice was a bad thing and that I would be better off to be limited in the choices I make.

That said, I'm also obviously not his target audience, as I'm the kid who at 10 years old wanted to go to law school to deal with mergers and acquisitions...

I guess most of it sounds nice, but the way he tries to frame it in the context of the current crises just confuses the issue as he never really grapples with the crises itself. Then again, ever since I heard his take on what freedom and liberty are I've always seen him with a critical eye, so perhaps I'm just being biased.