- All over the world
'sludge' is an obstacle to freedom.
Sludge consists of frictions
that separate us from something we want.
When there's waiting time, paperwork requirements,
some confusing process that you can't navigate-
that's sludge.
It's like a kind of gooey, viscous substance
in which your feet are stuck and you can't get out.
If you're dealing with a criminal justice system
it's especially severe,
but if you're dealing with a hospital or your employer,
your school, your government or company,
it can also be really bad.
And it's not merely frustrating;
it's treating you without dignity.
The question is: What are we gonna do about it?
Sludge reduction can produce big dividends.
My name is Cass Sunstein.
I teach at Harvard Law school.
I have a new book, it's called "Sludge,"
and it's about what makes it hard for us
to get where we're trying to go.
Sludge can be good when it is ensuring
that people aren't reckless or impulsive.
For example, if you need to get a driver's license
you will encounter some sludge.
It's justified.
You shouldn't get a driver's license
just because you want one.
It's a matter of health and safety.
Sludge can also be good
when it's a way of ensuring that
the people who are seeking benefits
are actually entitled to them.
So to impose a little bit of sludge
to make sure that those who are trying to get something
from the government or company
actually have a right to that thing,
that's 'okay sludge.'
Sludge is bad when it makes navigation really hard
between a human being
and something that can make their life much better.
So it might be that in order to get a loan
you need to fill out paperwork,
and it might be 14 pages.
And each of the pages might have really small font.
And we might, three pages in, give up and think,
"I can't handle this", or "I'll handle this tomorrow."
And tomorrow never comes.
Sludge.
To get health care,
sometimes you might have to wait
for weeks or months to get a test-
sludge.
And you might find in a hospital, for example,
that nurses are spending 10 hours a week
entering things into forms-
that's sludge.
Our lives depend on our capacity to navigate something,
and when we can't frequently
because sludge stands in our way,
we're lost in a world of just fog and diminishment.
One of the less lovely facts of the last decades
of research into behavioral science
is that we now know more than we ever did
about how to manipulate people.
But if you have a company that wants to make money
at people's expense, it can use sludge strategically
as a way of achieving that goal.
'Dark patterns' are patterns of architecture online
that end up exploiting people's lack of information
or behavioral biases
to ensure that they end up buying things
they really ought not to buy,
or that they part with something
that matters to them
without fully knowing what they're getting into.
So for many of us unsubscribing to something is an ordeal.
And that's intended by the people who make it an ordeal
because subscribing makes them money.
They impose sludge
in order to make it hard for us to unsubscribe.
I myself subscribe to four magazines
which I more or less hate
because I didn't want to navigate the sludge
that was entailed in the unsubscribing to those products.
It's also the case that you can use sludge
as a way of disguising terms
that you're obliging people contractually to agree to.
It's time to recognize, right, not to be manipulated,
and often the method by which people are manipulated
is through the selective imposition of sludge.
Some of the most admirable designers of programs or cities
or products, are acutely attentive
not only to the product itself,
but to what human beings are actually like-
and often with a kind of humor and delight.
Never with a sense of condescension,
and never exploiting people's human foibles
to try to trap or trick them.
We can think of companies that are minimalist
with respect to sludge, in the sense that
it's just really easy to deal with them.
If you want to buy something,
return something, make a complaint-
they make it really easy for you.
The products are easy to use;
they're very intuitive and people want
to continue buying those products.
A 'Sludge Audit' is an exercise by which someone sees
how much sludge there is in a system.
A sludge audit should be focused on time,
because sludge is a kind of 'time tax.'
So you could imagine a hospital doing a sludge audit,
asking what are the obstacles patients face
in terms of waiting time.
Or a government can ask with respect to poor people
who are eligible for certain benefits,
what do they have to do every month
to maintain their eligibility?
They might have to do something
that's very burdensome every week,
and the sludge audit might uncover that.
Reducing sludge is not merely a way of giving people access
to the things to which they have a right frequently,
but it's also a way of demonstrating that they count.
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