Look where I was on 4.20! Nowhere near Hippie Hill, but crossing off a bucket list item, thanks to my dear friend, Pedro Moura.
Dan Ariely has long been on my "top 5 folks I'd like to have dinner with" list. He's a psychologist and behavioral economist who's obsessed with the question of how and why people behave irrationally...in predictable ways. His work gets to the heart of why we all act in ways that don't make sense...even though we believe that we're always sensible, rational, etc.
He was here using his superpowers for good at the The Common Cents Lab (part of Center for Advanced Hindsight) to help startups apply what he's learned to create products that improve financial decision-making for low- to moderate-income people in the US.
Thanks to Pedro bringing me as his +1, got to play some irrational games w/his grad students and have a chat with the man himself. Amazing and grateful--he was every bit as brilliantly plain-spoken, generous and curious as I imagined. He does a weekly column for WSJ called Ask Ariely and here's a brief sampling of this work:
https://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/12/your-money/irrational-game-aims-to-steer-consumers-toward-rational-choices.html