Drama of the Thai Boys

Hollywood is already salivating. Could they rope in Tom Hanks to play some part perhaps. Which studio gets the sole rights? So on and on. This after what the media has dubbed 'heroic rescue' by a team of international divers to save a dozen unknown Thai teenagers from a swampy cave in this SE Asian Buddhist country.

Why the fascination with someone who made poor decisions? Of all places how come a story in remote Thailand garnered the attention of everyone from CNN to Elon Musk? Ironically a large ferry carrying passengers in Thailand sank around the same time, not far from shore and killed dozens. No one knows the name of a single dead.

I guess the answer came in the form of a coincidence. I was recently e-reading. Whoa. Yes my readership knows that I am a paper version reader. But now with laziness has come some change. I discovered an e-book on Behavioral Economics at my local (online) library. This one is written by professor Richard Thaler and titled - Misbehaving.

It highlights as its primary message that people are not economist but human and therefore susceptible more often than not to make irrational decisions. As such it is littered with studies and references and an occasional joke and anecdote.

One of the references IMHO highlights the prominence of the Thai boys story. Thaler cites an essay by another professor Schelling titled - The Life You Save May Be Your Own. In that essay he gives an example of how people will donate their last cent to save a six year old Emily dying from cancer if the treatment prolongs her life by a month but not shed a tear and definitely not approach their checkbook if a county puts out an ad for expanding their local hospital.

He refers to this phenomenon as 'An Identified Life' vs. 'A Statistical Life'. Abstract just does not work.

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