Good Defaults

The human mind is lazy. Most times we will simply go with the default option presented to us.

This won’t be true if you’re a geek about that topic (like me and phones, or my dad and cars). But most of the time, we just have too much to think about that we don’t bother doing proper research before buying “the best pen I can get for 2 bucks”. I mean, who DOES that?

We shy away from financial mumbo jumbo

But what happens when it’s a bigger issue? Like what kind of medical insurance to take? Or how to pay off your study loan? People will spend ages deciding which university to study in. And that’s how it should be. But we’ll spend virtually zero time deciding on a good insurance on ourselves and our future health.

I think it’s because most of us don’t understand the language of having good criteria to make a decision. Therefore, most of us make decisions based on how “pretty that laptop is” (most girls I know) or “if that car can be shown off to my friends” (most guys I know).

Buying a car? Or a house? These are decisions that will affect your life for years to come. It will affect your life because most people will

spend a huge chunk of their money on it, sacrificing other luxuries.
buy them on a bank loan, which will mess with their monthly finances.
keep this purchase for a long time. They’re not easy things to change.

Knowing this, the large purchases in life should therefore be based on well-reasoned criteria.

Criteria and how it affects decision-making

It’s a bit obvious that having criteria will affect the decisions you make. But what you need to be sure of before hand is that you have GOOD criteria that is relevant to what you’re spending on. The criteria for buying clothes might be how good it looks, but the criteria for a laptop should be whether it overheats, how long the battery lasts and how light the laptop is.

To know the criteria you need, you just need to spend a little time to think. To know which product has your criteria, you’ll have to spend time and do your research.

And herein lies the problem. We can’t be bothered to spend that much time on each and every decision in our lives. Especially when it’s such an abhorrent (hateful) topic as losing your money. So the best way is to provide “good defaults“.

This term is taken from website design (which I’m sure took it from somewhere else too). In site design, it comes out when people are asked to fill in a form. I’m pretty sure all of us hate filling in forms right? It’s one of those things that we evolved as a species, the gene that hates forms.

To make sure that people weren’t turned off by it and wouldn’t leave their websites, designers had to do something that reduced the pain of typing in each and every one of their forms, clicking over and over again to make a choice. So they used good defaults.

90% of people would choose “the free account” and “that they wouldn’t want promotion emails”. Leaving those options as default means giving the user a “good default”. (understanding dawns on the readers Ahhhhh! Now the title makes sense!)

Why government (and anyone in authority) should use good defaults too

You’ll often have to have your people make decisions. How many percent of your wages to put into EPF? How to pay back your student loan? Whether to have car insurance? You’ll want to ensure that your people make the best choice. You also don’t want to be an evil dictator. What to do?

Solution: Give good defaults. 11% of your wages, the maximum, into EPF. Pay back teh student loan RM100 per month starting 1 year after graduation. Take car insurance. BUT! But give them the option to change their minds. Most people can’t be bothered (or are too dumb) to change their minds about every little thing to come along. The ones who do care will take the time to research and change their minds if they don’t like it.

This is why I really believe setting up organ donation as a default would really work. Nowadays the default is that we as citizens DON’T donate our organs. That default could be changed. And if that were the default, 90% of us would leave it as it is. Some of us would change from the default, opt-out and say no (although I have no idea why). That’s fine. That choice would be there.

Pushing people to make the right choices

Let’s be honest. Us humans make the wrong decision all the time. Sometimes, we make those choices despite knowing it’s the wrong one. And most of the time it’s because we’re too lazy to make the right decision. I want to donate my organs but can’t be bothered to find a day to go and test myself and fill the forms up (I hate forms!!!) and wait in line at some unknown location that I haven’t even looked up yet. Don’t bother inviting me either. I would still probably give excuses (I really hate forms).

But making it a default would be good and would push most of us to make the right choice.

Tadaa! And that’s what is meant by “good defaults”.