Nudge (book) way alongside Malcolm Gladwell's "Blink" (inferior social science, far breezier style) on the bestseller list". Elizabeth Kolbert writing for "The New Yorker" held reservations about some of the book's conclusions when she wrote that many of the suggestions in "Nudge" seem like good ideas, and even, as with “Save More Tomorrow,” practical ones. The whole project, though, as Thaler and Sunstein acknowledge, raises some pretty awkward questions. If the “nudgee” can’t be depended on to recognize his own best interests, why stop at a nudge? Why not offer a “push,” or perhaps even a “shove”? And if people can’t be
Nudge (book) they are influenced by their social interactions. The book describes two systems that characterize human thinking, which Sunstein and Thaler refer to as the "Reflective System" and the "Automatic System". These two systems are more thoroughly defined in Daniel Kahneman's book "Thinking, Fast and Slow". The Automatic System is "rapid and is or feels instinctive, and it does not involve what we usually associate with the word "thinking"". Instances of the Automatic System at work include smiling upon seeing a puppy, getting nervous while experiencing air turbulence, and ducking when a ball is thrown at you. The Reflective System is