Number of words: 177

“Imagine there’s a device that costs about 50p per household, per year, and if you install it in your house, it decreases the chance of a house fire by 30 percent.” And everybody goes, “That’s an absolutely brilliant idea. I want to buy one of those. And, actually, I think the government should pay for it and they should issue one to all households.” But, it’s not technically a device: it’s actually a TV commercial. To run the ad costs about 50p per household, per year, and it actually decreases the likelihood of household fires by 30 percent. There is a TV commercial that’s had precisely that effect. And then people go, “No, that’s not quite the same.” And the question you have to ask is, “Why is it not the same?” In other words, why do we regard solutions that involve, to a small extent, tampering with our heads or just supplying information or supplying persuasion … why do we regard those solutions as lesser value than those that involve technology, for example?

Excerpted from https://blog.ted.com/qa_with_rory_su/