The Elephant In The Op-ed

Most writing and talking embraces our usual illusions on human motives. In our book The Elephant in the Brain (with Kevin Simler) we instead expose such illusions. Which many have told us feels depressing and demotivating; it’s not what they wanted to hear. It’s right there in the title, an analogy to “The Elephant in the Room”, which is a big topic which people in a room pointedly ignore.Yet we’ve sold over 60K copies over 8 years, which is quite good for an academic book. We got some pretty high profile early reviews. And have even been on few class syllabi. So there is clearly an audience for our message. But why, if it tells things people don’t want to hear?The most prestigious intellectuals in our world are writers of op-eds, and givers of TED and keynote talks. And such luminaries often offer policies and stances based on their claims that ordinary people are typically mistaken on key things. For example, this is the usual rationale for paternalism, which justifies over half of…