In a well-functioning democracy, people frequently encounter topics and points of view that they did not specifically select but from which they learn. Those encounters can change minds and, even, the course of lives. – Cass Sunstein
In ‘The Force Awakens,’ women as well as men are in positions of authority. And you don’t have to work hard to do that – it’s not a statement, it’s the world. – Cass Sunstein
The process of getting regulations right is described publicly as far more political than in fact it is. It’s essentially a legal and technical enterprise. – Cass Sunstein
If there’s a regulation that’s saving 10,000 lives and costing one job, it’s worth it. – Cass Sunstein
If a company has acted badly, people want to punish it – not in order to deter future misconduct, but simply because they’re outraged. And the more outraged they are, the more punishment they want to inflict. – Cass Sunstein
Individual investors beware: If you’re constantly worried about a crash, you’re probably making some big mistakes – and losing a lot of money in the process. – Cass Sunstein
Concerned about re-election, interest-group reactions, the media, or fundraising, many legislators have found it in their interest to refuse to cooperate with members of the opposing party – or to treat them as enemies in some kind of war, in which the whole point is to defeat and humiliate them. But the American people have been the real losers. – Cass Sunstein
Many progressives understand Scalia, and other conservative judges, in crassly political terms – as opponents of affirmative action, abortion, gun control, and campaign finance legislation. But what Scalia cared most about was clear, predictable rules, laid down in advance. – Cass Sunstein
Facebook seems to think that it would be liberating if everyone’s News Feed could be personalized so that people see only and exactly what they want. Don’t believe it. That’s a prison. – Cass Sunstein
Here’s a more controversial idea: In general, Democrats and progressives ought to allow Trump considerable room to choose his own employees – far more room than Republicans allowed during the Obama administration. Tit-for-tat is a dangerous game. – Cass Sunstein
One lesson is that if you want to predict voter turnout, you should ask whether at least one candidate is attracting high levels of enthusiasm – not whether the stakes are high, or even perceived to be high. That fits the historical pattern. – Cass Sunstein
We shouldn’t limit the idea of ‘policy recommendations’ to regulators. On the Internet, all of us are, in a sense, policymakers. – Cass Sunstein
Research shows that if people are talking and listening to like-minded others, they become more dogmatic, more unified, and more extreme. Personalized Facebook experiences are a breeding ground for misunderstanding and miscommunication across political lines and, ultimately, for extremism. – Cass Sunstein
The U.S. is blessed with tremendously creative and imaginative law students at places like Chicago, Harvard, Columbia and Yale. – Cass Sunstein
In psychology and behavioral economics, people have shown that if you just describe options in a certain way, or make some features of a situation salient, you can get people to do and even see what you want. You don’t have to be a Jedi to manipulate people’s attention. – Cass Sunstein
When President Barack Obama is trying to persuade Americans not to do something, he has a go-to line: ‘That’s not who we are.’ Whether the issue involves discrimination, immigration, torture, criminal violence or health care, he invokes the nation’s very identity. – Cass Sunstein
Republicans are right to express concern about excessive regulation, and they can do a lot to reduce it, above all by scrutinizing rules on the books and by putting all new proposals through a cost-benefit filter. There’s room for plenty of creativity here. – Cass Sunstein
If you have an architecture of control, let’s say, where you select in advance everything that’s going to affect your life, then you’re going to live in a very small world that will have an echo chamber feature… Pandora, which I love, actually feeds into that. – Cass Sunstein
Personalization is everywhere. We are constantly asked, directly or indirectly, to create Our Own Whatever – containing and limited to our ‘favorite sources of information.’ Republicans do that; Democrats do it; environmentalists do it; terrorists do it; science fiction enthusiasts do it. That’s a real problem, I think. – Cass Sunstein
If you look at a great city, one of its amazing features is that you’re going to find all sorts of things that you might not specifically have chosen in advance. And they will change your day. Maybe your month. Maybe your whole life. – Cass Sunstein
Top 1 Percent progressivism emphasizes the idea of fairness – but it’s nevertheless a politics of outrage, animated by at least a trace of envy. It’s as if ‘millionaires and billionaires’ were the principal problem facing America today. – Cass Sunstein
What unites Sanders, McCarthy, McGovern and Reagan is the unmistakable clarity of their moral convictions, their tendency to outrage, and their insistence that the United States needs to embark on a whole new path. – Cass Sunstein
When like-minded people, talking mostly with one another, end up thinking a more extreme version of what they thought before they started to talk… If you put a bunch of rebels in a room and ask them to discuss rebellion, they’ll get more extreme. – Cass Sunstein
What’s disgusting about genetic modification of food? I speculate that many people have an immediate, intuitive sense that what’s healthy is what’s ‘natural,’ and that efforts to tamper with nature will inevitably unleash serious risks – so-called Frankenfoods. The problem with that speculation is that it’s flat-out wrong. – Cass Sunstein
Wherever people find themselves in trouble, or at some kind of crossroads, the series proclaims you are free to choose. That’s the deepest lesson of ‘Star Wars.’ – Cass Sunstein
