[rad88]

The hacker news banner color doesn't matter and few have ever wanted to change it. But your financial position and needs, what % of your salary you can afford to money-hole until retirement, does matter and is pretty individual. It doesn't defy credulity to me that generally people would make a choice about this (when can I retire?), and that the default doesn't influence it.

I grant that it would be surprising if it had no influence at all, but I think the effect is more the social signal that you should want to save the max, that your neighbors probably do (it's the default after all), etc., rather than people completely ignoring/missing it.

[concordDance]

The default influenced me and pretty much everyone in my company Ive talked to (namely, almost everyone stuck to it). So yes, it defies credulity.

[rad88]

I believe you. If you know it influenced you though, that means you didn't ignore it or not even realize you could change it, which is the idea I was replying to.

Again, it would be surprising if it didn't matter at all, but not unimaginable. What you're saying is that almost everybody in your company would have contributed a lesser amount if not for the default. It means you can all afford to give up $20k or whatever in income this year. There are other factors.

There is no truth to the matter of "whether defaults change behavior". This thread started about 401ks and then was taken into color preferences on the web. If someone has a gun to their head is asked if they want to die, I'm sure we'll agree that whatever the default is doesn't matter. Whether defaults do anything depends on what we're talking about. Nudges might work in web ux but not economics, why is that so incredulous?

[concordDance]

But they DO work in economics. Otherwise why would almost everyone contribute the default rather than a lower or higher amount?

Defaults are very strong when there is a lot of uncertainty about the payoffs of different answers.