Understanding people turns out to be a more urgent task than changing them, and a great deal harder. We describe the departure from the model as an error. We might equally describe the model as a hopeful guess about us. Notice how rarely anyone is argued out of the weather forecast, and how often they are simply moved past it by a change in circumstance. Nobody sets out to be governed by the weather forecast, yet it shapes an astonishing share of the ordinary day.
Why it persists
There is a version of this essay that ends with a policy prescription. This is not that version; the mechanism is interesting enough on its own. The strange thing about the weather forecast is not that it exists but that it works, most of the time, for most people. Institutions know all this, of course, which is why the weather forecast is so rarely left to chance. The remedy is rarely exhortation. It is a change to the situation so that the easier choice is also the better one.
