Ashley Hodgson: "The New Enlightenment and Behavioral Economics"
The Great Simplification with Nate Hagens
Nate Hagens
4.8 • 553 Ratings
🗓️ 14 February 2024
⏱️ 66 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
On this episode, Nate is joined by Ashley Hodgson, a professor in behavioral economics, where she offers a perspective on the superorganism and what she calls 'The New Enlightenment'. By taking a wide-lens look at the way our human systems work, we can see the incentives and structures that push power towards consumptive, short-sighted, and destructive pathways. How could we 'rejigger' these systems to be more aligned with values and goals conducive to supporting humans long into the future? What are the natural laws that inherently depreciate systems - and how might we think about counteracting them? As we enter a world where the perpetual growth we've come to expect is no longer possible, how can we lean into the creativity and ingenuity required when thinking about new economic paradigms?
About Ashley Hodgson
Ashley Hodgson is an Associate Professor of Economics and a YouTuber. She teaches Behavioral Economics, Digital Industries, Health Care Economics, and Blockchain Economics. Her YouTube channel, The New Enlightenment, explores topics related to economics, governance, and epistemics – that is, the determination of truth and validity – in a world of social media and increasing power concentration.
Watch on YouTube: https://youtu.be/lEUhSSl83-Y
Show notes, and find out more: https://www.thegreatsimplification.com/episode/109-ashley-hodgson
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | You're listening to the Great Simplification. |
| 0:05.1 | I'm Nate Higgins. |
| 0:06.4 | On this show, we describe how energy, the economy, the environment, and human behavior all |
| 0:12.2 | fit together and what it might mean for our future. |
| 0:15.9 | By sharing insights from global thinkers, we hope to inform and inspire more humans to play emergent roles in the coming |
| 0:23.5 | great simplification. Greetings. Today's episode is with my friend Ashley Hodgson. Ashley is an |
| 0:34.7 | associate professor of economics and runs the economics department at St. Olaf's University in Northfield, Minnesota, which is very close to where I live, or she teaches behavioral economics. |
| 0:49.3 | Ashley's YouTube channel is called a New Enlightenment, where she explores topics on economics, governance, |
| 0:55.4 | and the epistemics of a world of social media and increasing concentration of power. |
| 1:02.2 | In this episode, Ashley and I discuss our systemic predicament from a perspective rooted in |
| 1:09.3 | behavioral economics. |
| 1:15.0 | For those of you who watched last week's episode with Steve Keene, |
| 1:20.7 | you might understand that I don't have a lot of practicing economic professors in my circle of friends, |
| 1:23.4 | but Ashley is one of them. |
| 1:25.8 | I love her curiosity, her teaching ethic, and similar to me, she has a compulsion to share these ideas with the public. |
| 1:35.7 | Please welcome Ashley Hodgson. |
| 1:37.9 | Thank you. Good to see you. I'm waving to you 25 miles across the river. |
| 2:00.5 | Do you ever do these in person? |
| 2:03.6 | I have never done one in person, though you and I could have because you are by far the closest |
| 2:09.7 | guest that I've had. |
| 2:10.8 | You teach in Northfield, Minnesota, which is a less than a half hour drive from me. |
| 2:17.4 | I don't have the equipment to do it. |
... |
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