The mind that evolved for small groups and immediate dangers is now asked to manage a pension. It does its best. None of this is new. Adam Smith noticed most of it, and then the profession spent two centuries forgetting. The evidence here is thinner than the confident commentary suggests, and the honest position is a shrug with a direction of travel. A better account of boredom would begin with the ordinary case rather than the laboratory one.
Three kinds of mistake
Institutions know all this, of course, which is why the polite refusal is so rarely left to chance. Economists have spent decades modelling boredom as a quantity. It behaves more like a weather system. None of this is new. Adam Smith noticed most of it, and then the profession spent two centuries forgetting. Notice how rarely anyone is argued out of the polite refusal, and how often they are simply moved past it by a change in circumstance.
