Profit Dazzles the Mind
Updated 2026-08-10
INTRODUCTION
English translation pending.
CORE DEFINITION
A phrase from the Records of the Grand Historian, in the biography of Lord Pingyuan, meaning that the lure of profit derails reason. As a thinking model it connects to the scarcity research of Mullainathan and Shafir, which shows that scarcity captures attention and consumes cognitive bandwidth. The key qualification is that the impairment is temporary and situational: the same person reasons well outside the tempting context. The practical implication is procedural, since the impaired person cannot reliably detect their own impairment.
SCAFFOLDING EFFECT
Reduce cognitive load
- Temptation scan: name the large short-term gain in front of you before evaluating the decision. - Rule setting: pre-commit to third-party review whenever a decision exceeds a value threshold. - Cooling off: insert a mandatory delay between the offer and the commitment.
Anchor fast decisions
Attention is a limited resource, and a large salient reward captures it, leaving less capacity for weighing alternatives, checking evidence, and considering long-term consequences. Because the mind is occupied with the reward, the person experiences their reasoning as clear while it is in fact narrowed. This is why the failure is invisible from the inside and why external rules, rather than self-monitoring, are the reliable remedy.
MINIMUM ACTION
In progress 0/1Practice this model in one real situation:
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Source support: Explicit
- zdic.nethttps://zdic.net/hans/%E5%88%A9%E4%BB%A4%E6%99%BA%E6%98%8Fverified
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