Cass Sunstein
If you have an architecture of control, let's say, where you select in advance everything that's going to affect your life, then you're going to live in a very small world that will have an echo chamber feature... Pandora, which I love, actually feeds into that.Collection: Architecture
If interviewers are prejudiced against women or Hispanics, for example, a face-to-face interview will predictably result in discrimination. Reliance on tests, or on actual or past performance, can promote equality.Collection: Equality
Catholicism is a wide tent in terms of political and legal positions. We could have nine Catholics on the Supreme Court and a great deal of diversity toward the law.Collection: Legal
If you like dark movies or light movies, 'The Empire Strikes Back' is one of the great movies of all time. It's probably the greatest movie of all time. 'A New Hope' is a superb movie. It's probably the second-greatest movie of all time, but 'The Empire Strikes Back' is better.Collection: Hope
By their innocence and goodness, by their boundless capacity for forgiveness, and by the sheer power of their faith and hope, children redeem their parents, bringing out their best selves.Collection: Forgiveness
The process of getting regulations right is described publicly as far more political than in fact it is. It's essentially a legal and technical enterprise.Collection: Legal
There's an old adage about speakers: You won't remember what they said, but you'll never forget how they made you feel. Trump knows that in his bones. He gives his supporters - and they are growing - a terrific feeling of safety and security, along with a laugh and a smile.Collection: Smile
There's every reason to think that whatever their political leanings, Americans will be highly receptive to numerous reforms designed to improve health, safety, economic security, environmental quality and democratic self-government - at least if those reforms do not eliminate their freedom of choice.Collection: Environmental
Many progressives understand Scalia, and other conservative judges, in crassly political terms - as opponents of affirmative action, abortion, gun control, and campaign finance legislation. But what Scalia cared most about was clear, predictable rules, laid down in advance.Collection: Finance
When President Barack Obama is trying to persuade Americans not to do something, he has a go-to line: 'That's not who we are.' Whether the issue involves discrimination, immigration, torture, criminal violence or health care, he invokes the nation's very identity.Collection: Health
When it imposes expensive regulatory mandates on the private sector, Congress often acts on the basis of interest-group pressures, anecdotes, and the emotions of the moment. The executive branch is hardly perfect, but it is far less likely to do that.
If a major source of the nation's news is personalizing user experiences, people with different points of view will end up in echo chambers of their own design. Facebook didn't create that problem, but it shouldn't aggravate it.
Research shows that if people are talking and listening to like-minded others, they become more dogmatic, more unified, and more extreme. Personalized Facebook experiences are a breeding ground for misunderstanding and miscommunication across political lines and, ultimately, for extremism.
Facebook seems to think that it would be liberating if everyone's News Feed could be personalized so that people see only and exactly what they want. Don't believe it. That's a prison.
If a company has acted badly, people want to punish it - not in order to deter future misconduct, but simply because they're outraged. And the more outraged they are, the more punishment they want to inflict.
Democrats pride themselves on their commitment to science. Citing climate change, they contend that they are the party of truth, while Republicans are 'denialists.' But with respect to genetically modified organisms, many Democrats seem indifferent to science, and to be practicing a denialism of their own - perhaps more so than Republicans.
What's disgusting about genetic modification of food? I speculate that many people have an immediate, intuitive sense that what's healthy is what's 'natural,' and that efforts to tamper with nature will inevitably unleash serious risks - so-called Frankenfoods. The problem with that speculation is that it's flat-out wrong.
Voters like to fall in love with presidential candidates, at least a little bit.
Individual investors beware: If you're constantly worried about a crash, you're probably making some big mistakes - and losing a lot of money in the process.
The U.S. is supposed to be a nation of second chances, but for the 70 million Americans with a criminal record, we're not doing such a great job. Even among those whose crimes were nonviolent and committed long ago, too many still bear a scarlet letter.
When it comes to discrimination, Americans pride ourselves on how far we've come. Racial segregation is history. Explicit sex discrimination is banned. Same-sex marriage is the law of the land. But amidst all the progress, the male-female wage gap persists, and it's big.
We live in a period in which political disagreements are routinely handed over to the courts. Whenever you think that the president is wrong, you might well cry out that he has violated the Constitution - and ask federal judges to rule accordingly.
At least since 1947, the historical record seems to support a simple conclusion: If you want the American economy to grow, you ought to put a Democrat in the Oval Office.
Antonin Scalia was witty, warm, funny, and full of life. He was not only one of the most important justices in the nation's history; he was also among the greatest.
If the prospect of a bad result gets the heart racing - a plane crash, a terrible disease, a loss of 30 percent of your portfolio - most people will take strong steps to avoid it. They will pay too little attention to a comforting thought, which is that worst-case scenarios usually don't come to fruition.
Like a bank run, a decline in stock prices creates its own momentum.
Top 1 Percent progressivism emphasizes the idea of fairness - but it's nevertheless a politics of outrage, animated by at least a trace of envy. It's as if 'millionaires and billionaires' were the principal problem facing America today.
Bottom 10 Percent progressives are not enthusiastic about concentrations of wealth. But that's not what keeps them up at night. Their focus is on deprivation and lack of opportunity. They're motivated by empathy for people who are suffering, rather than outrage over unjustified wealth.
A few weeks ago, I was at the gym, talking to a friend about politics. Overhearing the conversation, a young man - maybe 25 years old - interrupted to say, 'Obama? He hasn't done a single thing!'
What unites Sanders, McCarthy, McGovern and Reagan is the unmistakable clarity of their moral convictions, their tendency to outrage, and their insistence that the United States needs to embark on a whole new path.
After a two-term presidency, many young voters seem to want someone who is radically different from, even the opposite of, the commander in chief to whom they have become accustomed. After all, a two-term president will have led their nation for a significant percentage of their lives. That's boring. Isn't it time for a transformation?
The economic analysis of law has had many good ideas. It's had one great idea -like, world-transforming idea, I think. And the idea is, when you're stuck, minimize the sum of the costs of decisions and the costs of errors.
The only answer to the question 'Which is the worst of the 'Star Wars' movies?' is, there is no worst 'Star Wars' movie. There - one might be the least amazing and fantastic, but there's none that is the worst of the 'Star Wars' movies.
I think the arc of history is long, and it bends toward justice. And I think that's what the 'Star Wars' message is. You know, the dark side is in the human heart. And chaos is very troubling for an individual or for a culture, which can lead you to authoritarian leaders. But the arc of history is on the right side. I believe that.
When government programs fail, it is often because public officials are clueless about how human beings think and act.
When government programs aren't working, those on the Left tend to support more funding, while those on the Right want to scrap them altogether. It is better to ask whether the problem is complexity and poor design. We can solve those problems - sometimes without spending a penny.
Personalization is everywhere. We are constantly asked, directly or indirectly, to create Our Own Whatever - containing and limited to our 'favorite sources of information.' Republicans do that; Democrats do it; environmentalists do it; terrorists do it; science fiction enthusiasts do it. That's a real problem, I think.
Web publishing can create common spaces; it all depends on how we, the readers and sometimes the producers, react to technological change. If we sort ourselves into narrow groups, common spaces will be in big trouble. But there's no reason not to have common spaces on the Internet. There are lots of them out there.
We shouldn't limit the idea of 'policy recommendations' to regulators. On the Internet, all of us are, in a sense, policymakers.
If you look at a great city, one of its amazing features is that you're going to find all sorts of things that you might not specifically have chosen in advance. And they will change your day. Maybe your month. Maybe your whole life.
Wherever people find themselves in trouble, or at some kind of crossroads, the series proclaims you are free to choose. That's the deepest lesson of 'Star Wars.'
For any child, boy or girl, a father is both Jedi and Sith: Obi-Wan Kenobi - gentle and calming and good - and Vader, fierce and terrifying.
I love Richard Thaler's 'Quasi Rational Economics.' A collection of some of his most interesting and inventive essays, the real foundation of behavioral economics.
As an academic, a great deal of my time is spent writing, with very little in meetings. In government, the premium is placed on figuring things out through discussing them with other people.
In government, you're not a writer, you're an administrator.
Television is, in many respects, a passive medium: people receive information without really exchanging ideas with others. By contrast, the Internet can be an active medium, allowing individuals to use e-mail, discussion groups, and even Web sites to engage with one another.
Whatever your gender, you can be a 'Star Wars' fan.
In 'The Force Awakens,' women as well as men are in positions of authority. And you don't have to work hard to do that - it's not a statement, it's the world.
I think President Obama has been an extraordinarily successful president, and that this period will record that with a bunch of exclamation points. But obviously, not everybody thinks that.
Having a constant productive anxiety doesn't mean that people are miserable and wailing but that people know they will be held accountable if things do not go right.