Economists assume that people respond in approximately rational ways to the information available to them.
But behavioral research now challenges even that more limited claim. For example, even patently false or irrelevant information often affects choices in significant ways.
The NYT article also sheds light on why the local MSM is “constructive” or “nation-building”: the state’s ability to frame a discussion, any discussion, is vv impt.
Which makes one wonder why ST was giving extensive coverage to Dr Goh Keng Swee’s widow. Surely when they got married, it ran against the grain of the state’s version of S’pore’s values: a marriage is forever: hence the absence of publicity abt Dr Goh’s second marriage. So why publicise loudly this breach of S’porean values after his death?
Maybe ST will be rebuked by the government: remember the rebuke to ST on the way ST covered the AWARE saga?
Or maybe it is to remind us that Dr Goh was only a mortal.
Sorry for this distracting and irrelevant discourse. But it goes to illustrate the point that it is easy to get distracted.
