None of this is new. Adam Smith noticed most of it, and then the profession spent two centuries forgetting. Ask most people why they did what they did and they will give you a reason; ask them again a week later and the reason will have quietly changed. The usual story is that we are careless calculators. The better story is that we are careful about the wrong things. Put a number on nostalgia and it becomes a target; put a target on it and the number stops meaning what it meant.
What follows
The honest conclusion is uncomfortable for reformers: people are not waiting to be corrected. If you want to see nostalgia at work, watch a queue form where there is no reason for one. The measure that matters is not what people say about nostalgia but what they do when nobody is scoring. Notice how rarely anyone is argued out of small talk, and how often they are simply moved past it by a change in circumstance.
