Tag Archives: sociology

Introduction:

Joueurs de Cartes by Theodoor Rombouts

The hours of work I spend on relatively tedious tasks, such as the manual optimization of image dimensions on this site, are often lightened by listening to free online courses on various topics. This past week, I have been retreading the basics of personal finance in this course by Andrew Hingston. How poetic, then, that I should have stumbled across and begun listening to a course which often speaks of risk management and risk minimization, when I was already in the midst of reading a defense of our risky behaviors: The Art of Risk: The New Science of Courage, Caution, and Chance by psychologist Kayt Sukel.

Both individuals are students, to some degree, of behavioral economics—as formulated by, among others, Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman. But their application and incorporation of such insights into their own worldviews are divergent. Whereas in his course Hingston shifts his perspective toward financial priorities so that one can analytically control one’s emotional experiences, Sukel accepts research on risk-taking as an opportunity to offer a naturalistic—even rational—account of risky decision-making. So now, setting other scholars aside, I would like to evaluate Sukel’s book, first for its method and then for its style.

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