Koen Smets – Medium

Koen Smets

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Koen Smets

Best of Koenfucius 2023

My 10 most read posts of the past year

Jan 4

Best of Koenfucius 2023

Jan 4

Pinned

Koen Smets

We are all economists

Mainstream and behavioural economics are two sides of the same coin

Jun 3, 2016

We are all economists

Jun 3, 2016

Koen Smets

Rationality is bullshit — Part 2

Is it possible to categorize our own choices, decisions and behaviours as rational or irrational? Or is the notion of rationality in this…

5d ago

A surreal set of scales with cogwheels in the scales, unable to tip either way

5d ago

Koen Smets

Rationality is bullshit — Part 1

The term ‘rationality’ and its derivatives lack accuracy, more often than not meaning whatever the person using it wants it to mean. Might…

Oct 25

A chessboard with pieces made from cogwheels

Oct 25

Koen Smets

Many of our beliefs are wrong but some are useful

We may have some beliefs that are true, but many, even though they serve us well, are at the very least open to question.

Oct 18

Stylized heads showing anchors in their brains

Oct 18

Koen Smets

Absolute goals in a world of relative trade-offs

Some decisions often come down to how much money, time or effort something we want (or want to avoid) is worth. This can be remarkably hard…

Oct 11

A juggler juggling four normal and one huge ball

Oct 11

Koen Smets

Reality is what we feel

Much as we like to believe we can and do use rational thought about facts to interpret the world and react to it, it is our feelings that…

Oct 4

A set of scales with a heart weighing more than a brain

Oct 4

Koen Smets

The curse of extremism

We have a taste for the extreme — after all, who is interested in what is just middling? But together with other tendencies, it can…

Sep 27

Colourful dials (like political parties’ colours) showing all the needles in the red

Sep 27

Koen Smets

Navigating life’s hard choices-when ranking doesn’t work

Choosing between two options can be simple: compare them, rank them, and pick the best one. But sometimes ranking seems impossible. Then…

Sep 20

Two desserts: a lemon sorbet and a piece of apple pie

Sep 20

Koen Smets

The wrong way round

We seem intuitively to understand the meaning of statistical distributions, but our interpretation can be the wrong way round

Sep 13

A person wearing a raincoat the wrong way round

Sep 13

Koen Smets

Koen Smets

Accidental behavioural economist in search of wisdom. Uses insights from (behavioural) economics in organization development. On Twitter as @koenfucius

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