Now on cspan2s book tv. Television for serious readers. Hi, everyone. On the executive director of the Harvard Law School library. I can vaguely see you in the distance. A great lineup of authors, we are super excited to share the work we do. I just want to share a few housekeeping items. We are recording this talk and will post it on our Youtube Channel next week. I hope you will check out online to find out more. Thank you for the support for this Book Talk Series and a big thank you to our team, parker and teresa for helping put this together in this remote space. We welcome your questions and we invite you to use the q and a teacher throughout the talk. For our sponsor. I encourage you to local bookstore, visit the harvard life very library. It is my great pleasure to introduce the Robert University professor at harvard. Director of the program on the economic Public Policy possible. In 2019, the pies from the government of norway, sometimes described in the equivalence of the nobel prize. In 2020, the world health organization, chair of Technical Advisory Group in scientist for help. 2009 to 2012, administrator of the Regulatory Affairs and after that, he turned on the intelligence and Communications Technology and pentagon defense board. Testifying before congressional communities, the un, the world bank and issues of law and Public Policy. Serving as advisor for behavior. His writing is today to discuss his recent book, too much information, understanding were they want him now. Information professional, too much information is how to sift through the Information Available and finally, how to determine whats useful or valuable, questions i regularly ask myself. Insights into our information retrieving behavior and seeks to find the boundaries of when and what too much information is. Thank you so much for joining us and i turn it over to you now. Thank you, thanks everybody this close my personal loan. This makes me especially delighted to talk to you about this. I went to give you from tales that involve numbers talk about what the topic is and what their concerns are. Recently i asked the group a lot like america in terms of demographic diversity and a lot of people. I like to know about the first crush back on you and the answer was 58 said yes which was an english major, i know that 42 said no. It is a 5050 split which is moderately surprising. I asked, those people who want to know, asking a very large class what they thought and 99 said they want to know. Basically, one person didnt want to know. Okay, thats a puzzle. Why do they get a 50 50 split . Lies harvard one 100 . Lets some numbers, youre going to hear some more. When i was in the u. S. Government, i was skiing on information disclosure, regulatory and legal approach to helping people in crisis. We had an active debate in the white house about our calorie label rule and whether it should apply only to restaurants like donalds and burger king or whether it should apply also to Movie Theaters. Given the Health Problem of the calorie labels were attempting to respond to, this was a good idea. As it continued, we propose not to include Movie Theaters but when we finalized public comments, which had some data in them about health risk, we did decide to include Movie Theaters. I sent a note to a very good friend celebrating this decision and her answer to me at three words. Cast ruin popcorn. He was also thought profound because what she was doing was drawing attention to the fact that when people go to the Movie Theater to see kenneth who i recently saw, highly recommend, they dont want to be having a negative relationship to their food. They want to have a fun night out. The concern about popcorn isnt the decisive objection to information provision or calorie labels but if we are thinking about the consequences of information provision, its something that matters. Okay, here is my next tail that goes back decades. My dad, when he was in his 60, a relatively young man was very active tennis player but he started stumbling on the tennis court. Mother and i brought him to the hospital for tests and he had a battery of tests and my mother came back in the afternoon where we were having a late lunch and said to my dad, i have fabulous news, test results are in and you are completely fine. There is no serious problem here but they are going to keep you overnight for further precautionary tests in your basically fine, dodged a bullet. Lets celebrate. We had a very happy lunch there in the hospital, all of us. When it was over, my mother brought me to the car, going back to Harvard Law School she was a little like, maybe a lot like an actor whose emotions were able to switch instantaneously. This wasnt acting. Her emotions switched to an expression of never seen on a human before, which was despair. She said hes going to die, he will die within a year, he has a brain tumor in spite of that, nothing they can do but im not going to tell him and youre not going to tell him either. Okay, that was a life defining moment and it involves something more dramatic than, the popcorn but in the same universe, the thought was that she wanted her husband to have a good final year and not a tombstone of a final here. She also wanted herself to have a good, however much time there was, even though she saw the tombstone. At least she could live a life of a degree of normality she was thinking with her husband for as long as his health held up. Its agnostic on whether she made the right call, every family would make a different call, i think, in those circumstances, there wasnt a onesizefitsall. I believe she made the right call given that her husband and herself, okay. Okay. Motivated by this story which is the further recesses of my mind while in government and by my experience, ive embarked on a Research Project on the topic of information, seeking information appointments implications for law and Public Policy. Ill tell you three pieces of it and then there will be questions. The first part is that government need to do a much better job taking about popcorn, the human consequences of providing information this is true not just of government but people around libraries, doctors, nurses, thanks, lawyers, people in all walks of life need to think much more systematically about the actual consequences of providing information. Ill give you one example is regulation of law, there is a new law in place that requires disclosure of genetically modified organisms and food. The Trump Administration finalized its rule and it is clear from the Trump Administrations analysis, the obama administrations analysis would be very similar. The government doesnt believe the rules will help at all. No evidence of that. Nor does it believe the rules have environmental, no evidence of the so the governments claim is in terms of health and environmental, weve got nothing. We do have cost, its inexpensive rule, crazy expensive but expensive. The labels will cost something. Were going to cost on consumers and no benefits. Its a little worse than that because there is data suggesting some people will see the labels and respond all my gosh, danger. That suggests the human consequences of this information disclosure may be more money, more health, not more Environmental Protection but more fear and avoidance of a product doesnt cause health homes. So to think about those consequences. The second has to do with acquisition of information by government. When i was in government, i oversaw the paperwork reduction act just one they hear a production act but in the law, when i left the government, we imposed Something Like 9 billion annual hours on the american public. Im not proud of that, the number now is over 11 billion hours and those hours, lets call them sludge, consisting of paperwork, part of a universe fiction that people face when they attempt to navigate life. Maybe it comes from harvard, to be from massachusetts. It might be from the department of health and human services. It might come from the department of family security. What is being acquired with that 11 billion hours with a window is on to that problem which is much bigger than that 11 billion. Its often very important but often it really is imposing the only time tax on people who cant afford it but also is like a barrier, a wall separating people from something that could make their lives better. That is too much information. Going to tell you something about social media so were going to start with information as its provided by government mandates then talk about social media. Intrigued by the rules and popcorn claim, ive done a series of survey, data from 11 countries, what the world thinks. What information the world wants and doesnt want and what information the world is willing to pay for and what information the world is willing to pay not to get. Some people are willing to say i dont want to hear that and ill pay you real money if you will shut up. Okay, here is some data. No about 58 of people, a large sample in america want to know whether the prison in which they have a crush have a crush on them. The old tv show, wonder years were everyone in the show seems to want to know whether the person who may have a crush has a crush on them. 42 of americans want to know the calories in their meals for the next year. 57 dont. I already dont want their popcorn to be ruined. 27 of people want to know the year of their death and thats approximately the number we are getting across the world in 11 countries. Strong majority doesnt want to know. 47 of people want to know if they are going to get alzheimers, 58 want to know if they show a tendency to cancer, only 42 want to know what their friends and family really think of them. Because over that one, would you . Why . Why dont they want to know what the family and friends really think of them . 42 minority want to know how much warmer the planet will be in 2100. Only 57 of people want to know if their partner or spouse. 53 want to know if there is a heaven. A bare majority, only 44 want to know if there is a hell. Some people want to know if theres a heaven dont want to know if theres a hell. Respect to relative policy, 67 want to know safety ratings for their tires. 65 want to know side effects pain relievers basically for the kinds of disclosures that they are often interested in providing, we typically get a majority of people interested but it is not overwhelming majority once i acquired this data after about nine months not testing hypothesis, i felt baffled about what i had and while i published as a working paper, i didnt have an account, he was just like random data. An effort to provide an account with the help of neuroscientists the university. Three things going on here. The first is, people care a lot about whether information is useful. That is not shocking discovery. Its more implication than its obvious. Some information is useful in the sense that you can save money or improve your health if you get. Some information is useless in the sense that already know it or if you would, with care. Some information is affirmatively harmful to you in the sense that you will live your life worse if you get it. Okay. Some people are thinking, i am sure, i want to know if i have previous his recent increases speciation if i will get alzheimers. That will help me in my family account better. So please do tell me. Some people by contrast, think i dont want to know that because its going to make me sad and its not going to be had affect my behavior at all. Some people want to know the calorie labels because they think it will help me avoid health risk. Diabetes, obesity, etc. Please tell me. Others say i dont have a health risk. I am fine, its not information im willing to pay for. Others think im overweight. I dont love it but im okay with it. Im still going to the chocolate croissant even if i see the calorie label. It has no impact on me. Lawyers want to know whether there client hiring. The hiring foreign entity might be alert to the propensity to discriminate or the propensity of their employees to discriminate so they might think i dont want to know anything about race or gender of applicants. Its too much information, it will leave me, despite my better self potentially to take into account something i dont want to take into account. Attitudes suggest people deploy discrimination or maybe discriminators and it suggests too much information problem is real and some of these contexts. The second part, which my mother, sorry, my dad. With their own two, emotional impact of information. I want to make a plea for more intensely to this element of information provision and we typically do. By week, anyone in a position to provide or compel the provision of information which isnt the only factor by any means but if people think this information will make me scared or sad, that is lost to their life and also the clue that information provision is less likely to be effective it would be otherwise. If you terrify people with information, it might be that not only will it ruin their day or potential year, it might make it harder for them to take the steps necessary to eliminate the source of terror. Im thinking of the pandemic were an Information Campaign only makes people really scared without also making people feel they have hope, its likely to be doubly imperfect. First it creates a bad. For the emotions. It might be less likely they would do what they can to improve the situation. If we put these two things together, instrumental value and emotional impact, we can Start Testing hypotheses in time, which means kind of now and also understand what probably lies behind the unruly data data i described to you. Some people think this information about my health risk is useful even though it will make me sad, i want to know. Others think its useful, i admit that but i dont want to be made scared so please dont tell me. Others think in respect to disclosures, safety features of things you by, thats useful and i can certainly handle it. Others think its not very useful and i will have to think about that. That provides a global mind material to think about stuff of relatives to policy and help. Let me tell you about those in sequence and policies, but i do, health is not my expertise so i will be a little reckless on the second. Some of you may know that regulators are required by executive orders that have persisted under democratic republican president s, sometimes relevant to Court Proceedings also, costs and benefits. Whether you love costbenefit analysis or not, lets stipulate it is a corner of it. The Government Agencies have often been stymied thinking about how to analyze costs and benefits of cigarettes, having labels, things involving information about sunscreen and whether it will help you avoid skin cancer, nutrition labels, fat labels, explicit fat, etc. , etc. Much more. Have to notice that if we focus on instrument of value and emotional value, we will have a road to thinking about benefits of information disclosure. Latest thing we have in respect to calorie labels, it gives us clarity in respect to the impact. The concerning news is my friend who talked about pooling and popcorn, she was really onto something. People who have selfcontrol want the information and are willing to pay for it. Did you behave differently once they get. People who dont have a lot of control by good independent measures dont want information and are not affected by it. The calorie labels are going to help people who least need them and they are going to have no impact, negative emotional impact of those who most need them. The good news is, the people who want calorie labels want them more than the people who dont want calorie labels dont want them. To give you a little data, my survey which has representative samples finds for basically everything we tested, people are willing to pay more for information even if they are a minority in the population than in accurate, people who dont want information are not willing to pay. In general, information provision seems better willingness to pay which is the gold standard. Lets just say it is a way of measuring, its a good idea. In terms of thinking exactly how good it is, will not have more clarity on how to approach that question because we have a framework in which to do that. The government regulators to thinking not, we have no idea, as they sometimes say or we are going to focus on the Health Benefits. That is important but not the whole picture. If you have Health Benefits that make people miserable, the Health Benefits are missing something. The suggestion is, we not only can do better and thinking about what other effects of the information disclosure but we also should be able to do better figure out what disclosures are best. Which of the impacts which are most likely to change behavior. Which is least likely to trigger information. If we can do that, maybe we can save a lot of lives. If you think about covid19 and Vaccine Hesitancy or mask wearing, soul and life. Okay. Thats about government regulation. Now to talk about health in general, this will be a little reckless but lets speak up on it by talking about behavioral economics first. The framework so far has suggested people are rationally thinking about the instrumental value and emotional impact of information. What we know from decades of work, human beings suffer or benefit from present bias, which means today really matters tomorrow, probably. The next month, certainly the next year, it might be a foreign country. The information provision present bias can screw us up. Present bias and lead us to avoid information that will make us sad but could if we could change our lives for the better. People are less likely check their stock portfolios when the economy is moving. Doesnt make a lot of sense. The abstract, you shouldnt stop checking when the economy is crashing and when the economy is doing well. The reasons seems to be when the economy is doing well, people want to smile and when its doing that, they dont want to scout and they know the information w