What is something everyone in your world agrees about that you think is wrong?
Recorded Elinor Ostrom said elsewhere, not written here
Yes, we're showing that. But we're also showing a very important role for face-to-face or even written communication. So, the prediction was that nobody would self-monitor because that's a second level social dilemma, if you go to Game Theory. But, what we've found is that people will, but it can be … people can escalate into, 'I'll punish you, you punish him, mamamamamma,' and it gets worse and worse. So, with communication, where there's an agreement on what is going to be the … what we are going to do. The 'we' then being well-defined, then people can follow rules, be cooperative and, occasionally, sanction one another to help that continue.

Adam Smith, Telephone interview recorded immediately after the prize announcement, Nobel Prize Outreach, 12 October 2009 source ↗

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Rahul Dravid India Test and one-day international cricketer, 1996–2012; later India head coach
One of the biggest challenges that the game must respond to today, I believe, is charting out a clear road map for the three formats. We now realise that the sport's three formats cannot be played in equal numbers - that will only throw scheduling and the true development of players completely off gear.
Recorded Bradman Oration, Anzac Hall, Australian War Memorial, Canberra, ESPNcricinfo, 14 December 2011 source ↗
Willem Kolff Physician and inventor; builder of the first practical artificial kidney
I’ve been mortally opposed to the so-called life-and-death committees that were instituted. When there were many more patients that needed to be dialyzed, and not enough artificial kidneys available, you had the institution of the life-and-death committees. ... Depending on the answer to these questions, he could be dialyzed. Otherwise, he could go to hell. I’ve been mortally opposed to that. When I set up a dialysis center here with a grant from some government agency, I was forced to put in a life-and-death committee, but it never met.
Recorded Academy of Achievement recorded interview, American Academy of Achievement source ↗
Twyla Tharp Choreographer, dancer and author
I already knew this, because I had been studying classical ballet for a long time. But a lot of people insisted on a wall between modern dance and ballet, that the two disciplines were totally separate, and if you did one, you couldn’t do the other. I’m beginning to think that walls are very unhealthy things.
Recorded Academy of Achievement (achievement.org), 1993 source ↗
Jessye Norman Operatic soprano and recitalist
I went to the opera practically every night. I went to something practically every night, just learning and seeing and absorbing, and what I noticed is that there were singers that were only sort of slightly older than I whose voices sounded as though they were many decades older than that, and didn’t sound pretty, and I needed to understand what was happening. I mean there were singers that were 28 or 30 years old or something, and I would speak to them afterwards to say, “Was your voice tired tonight? Tell me what’s happening,” because I didn’t understand it. Their voices should have sounded fresh and blooming and wonderful, but instead they sounded different, and it was because they were singing a different opera every night, and singing whatever was offered, and I didn’t understand and needed to understand — because no one was telling me these things — why they just didn’t say no. Why didn’t they just say, “Oh no, I don’t think I should.”
Recorded Academy of Achievement (achievement.org) source ↗

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Question What are bad recommendations you hear in your profession or area of expertise? Craft & work
Yes, but not with a formula. So there are many, many efforts now to decentralize and they create a rigid formula and give people rules from on top and say, 'Now it's yours.' And that isn't worked very well either. … And, you think about the variety. If you look at a countryside, think of the variety out there in terms of the ecological variety. Well, if people are going to manage ecological variety, no single set of rules will work in a semi-arid versus a tropical-wet region. They have to be different.
Recorded Adam Smith, Telephone interview recorded immediately after the prize announcement, Nobel Prize Outreach, 12 October 2009 source ↗
Question How has a failure, or apparent failure, set you up for later success? Do you have a favourite failure? Failure & regret
Yes. Having lived through an era, where I was thinking of going to graduate school and was strongly discouraged because I would never be able to do anything but teach in a city college … Ah ha ha, life has changed!
Recorded Adam Smith, Telephone interview recorded immediately after the prize announcement, Nobel Prize Outreach, 12 October 2009 source ↗

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