What is it about?

Why do people behave as they do? Why do they hold the beliefs they hold? And why does society work the way it does? Answers abound, yet they are often scattered across disciplines and rarely speak to one another. In this Substack, I extend the argument developed in Optimally Irrational (2022) to answer these many questions. The outlook is naturalistic: it explains human and social affairs as part of the natural reality, without calling on “skyhooks”—ad-hoc principles ungrounded in how the world actually works. Specifically, the perspective I develop here rests on the view that economics and game theory are the grammar of life.

This stance differs sharply from many dominant approaches in the social sciences and humanities, which, surprisingly often, rest on theoretical principles with scant empirical footing.

Who should read it?

General audience curious about the world. These essays are intended for any curious reader who wants to understand why the world works as it does. My aim is to present clear answers to puzzles about human psychology and social life. I write the posts to be enlightening, offering new insights into key questions about many aspects, large and small, of life.

Social scientists and scholars in the humanities. I also hope that social scientists, philosophers, and scholars in the humanities will engage with these posts. Their fields often dismiss naturalistic explanations out of hand—frequently, I believe, for political rather than intellectual reasons. I aim to show here that this perspective offers a powerful way to make sense of social life.

Economists, evolutionary biologists, and psychologists. These readers will likely be sympathetic to the intellectual stance of the Substack. Yet I often draw on leading economists who are not necessarily at the centre of current academic discussion, such as Schelling, Shapley, and Binmore, and combine their contributions with very recent developments in game theory and information economics. I use this framework to explore applications that extend well beyond the usual terrain of the economics discipline.

What to expect?

The breadth and depth of the posts are as ambitious as what you could expect from the general perspective I described. Some posts are on the foundations of human psychology, blending insights from cognitive neuroscience, economics, and computer science. Others focus on the principles of social life, drawing on economics, sociology, and political science. Some posts decipher mundane daily interactions, while others aim to make sense of major issues in geopolitics.

What it is not

I suspect that, save for a small minority of early converts in economics and biology, describing economics and game theory as the grammar of life will strike many readers as either too grandiose, too uninspiring, or both. Some may fear that the endeavour will shed no more light on psychology and society than a lecture by Mr Spock. Others may worry that the approach must inevitably lead to arch-conservative conclusions about the social world.

I shall therefore pre-empt three likely criticisms.

Can economics and game theory really be the key to making sense of human behaviour? Economics is not primarily the study of growth, inflation, or trade balances; above all, it is the science of optimal choice. Its tools help us identify how scarce resources (including limited options) can best be allocated to achieve our goals. As a consequence, it has a natural connection with biology. As the biologist Theodosius Dobzhansky famously said, nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution, a process that pushes towards the optimisation of organisms’ design.1

Galileo observed that mathematics is the grammar of the universe; the position taken here is that economics, with its mathematical analysis of optimal decision-making, is the grammar of life, the part of the universe in which organisms make choices.2

Can this perspective recover the rich aspects of social life? Economic explanations are often accused of being reductionist, overlooking such things as emotions, kindness, and cognitive limitations. The charge is justified when they rely on a wooden homo economicus who resembles an obtuse computer. The perspective I advanced in Optimally Irrational, and continue to develop here, shows that a careful use of economic principles can recover the richness of human psychology and social behaviour. Far from offering drab tales populated by self-centred automatons, it helps uncover deep explanations for many of the fascinating mysteries of mind and society.

What are the prescriptive implications of this approach? Across much of the social sciences and humanities, economic and evolutionary approaches are often viewed with suspicion, or outright condemnation, for allegedly justifying the world and its injustices. Although this Substack is primarily about describing the world, it inevitably carries prescriptive implications. These don’t fit neatly into today’s political debates. Relative to left-leaning ideals, the posts will often criticise the lack of attention to feasibility and the risks of pursuing solutions that are not feasible. Relative to right-leaning positions, the posts will emphasise that they frequently underestimate the potential benefits of social cooperation.

A desirable task of politics is to find workable paths that allow society to realise the full potential of social cooperation. I hope that my posts can help readers across the political spectrum gain a better understanding of key challenges and their possible solutions, beyond those typically discussed in partisan debates.

Who am I?

I am a professor of economics and a behavioural scientist with over 50 publications in economics and other behavioural sciences, and the author of Optimally Irrational, where I argue that many of the cognitive biases and puzzling behaviours discussed in the behavioural economics literature re can be understood as good solutions to the problems we actually face in real life.

Endorsements

This Substack builds on the perspective developed in my book “Optimally Irrational” (Cambridge University Press 2022).

Page’s book is the best I know at expounding how this cross-fertilization of disciplines works - meaty in its choices of examples without going overboard, one could not find a better source for studying the current state of play. - Ken Binmore, Emeritus Professor of Economics, University College London

An antidote to the generally pessimistic view that the field of behavioral economics has conveyed about human cognition and behaviour. Lionel Page builds a much . richer understanding of the plethora of cognitive deficiencies and human misbehaviours reported in the literature. This book is a must read to any scientist interested in the irrational side of human behaviour. Beyond, it will be a great read to educated readers fond of behavioural economics. - Peter Bossaerts, Faculty of Economics, Cambridge University

The human mind is an elaborate product of natural selection. Optimally Irrational is very welcome in bringing into focus the evolutionary underpinnings of human cognition as applied to economic decisions. Behavioral economics has often taken psychological mechanisms as arbitrary, without regard to the evolutionary design problems that created them. Page’s deeper examination of behavioral economics is thoughtful and wide-ranging. I learned much from this insightful and engaging book. - David Hirshleifer, Professor of Finance, University of California Irvine

Almost a century after the official divorce of economics from psychology, and some three decades into the behavioral revolution, Lionel Page offers a lucid and intelligent assessment of the state of the science… with a strong and enlightening focus on historical and philosophical perspectives, striking a balance between observation and theory, and helping us to tell apart insightful analysis from fanciful idealization, as well as robust findings from anecdotal evidence. - Itzhak Gilboa, Professor of Economics and Decision Sciences, HEC Paris

Rationality, central in economics and empirically abandoned in the “behavioral revolution,” is, unfortunately, rarely discussed because of its slippery nature. This monograph, very very well building up, captures its essence, as of behavioral economics. Nuanced and in-depth. It thus serves two methodological purposes—a fortunate combination because one cannot be understood well without the other. - Peter Wakker, Erasmus School of Economics, Erasmus University

Why subscribe?

The content of this Substack is free. Subscribe to get full access to the newsletter and website. Never miss an update.

Stay up-to-date

You won’t have to worry about missing anything. Every new edition of the newsletter goes directly to your inbox.