How and why markets aren't rational. Navigational tips for successfully charting the Bermuda Triangle of human economic behavior. ™

 
Barry Schwartz asserts, in The Paradox of Choice, that default parameters matter. A 'default parameter' is defined as: the option that is assigned when no choice has been specified.

I would take Schwartz's astute observation even farther and propose that the default parameters one selects are in fact central, defining features of one's character -- personal, organizational, institutional and/or national.

For proof, one need look no farther than the shining example of the presumption of innocence, as described in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights:

Article 11
1. Everyone charged with a penal offence has the right to be presumed innocent until proved guilty according to law in a public trial at which he has had all the guarantees necessary for his defence.

And the Supreme Court's 1895 commentary on Coffin et al. v. United States:

The principle that there is a presumption of innocence in favor of the accused is the undoubted law, axiomatic and elementary, and its enforcement lies at the foundation of the administration of our criminal law.
permalink: posted by saraw1 at 7/31/2006 11:42:00 AM