David Laibson Interview

In this interview, Professor Goodman and Laibson talked in depth of behavioral economics and the applications with the science on understanding how we can generally predict how people might think under various circumstances. I found Professor Laibson's thoughts on the predictability of human nature and the ability to make accurate predictions in the future to be quite informative. In section, I remember talking about Laplace's demon where many of my peers mentioned that this theoretically makes sense, but we all came to the conclusion that there will always be an element of randomness and uncertainty that disallows the possibility of a fully deterministic model. I completely understand that Behavioral Economics is trying to reach a point where we can generally model human uncertainty and behavior, but it is also interesting that with the comments made by Professor Laibson, it almost seems as if we are chasing something that we know cannot be fully explained.