Question

Passage A
Behavioral economics has demonstrated that human decision-making routinely departs from the idealized rationality posited by classical economic models. Bounded by cognitive limitations and heuristics, individuals consistently succumb to present bias, status quo inertia, and choice overload. Recognizing these systemic vulnerabilities, proponents of libertarian paternalism advocate the strategic implementation of "nudges"—subtle alterations in choice architecture that steer individuals toward beneficial outcomes without restricting choice or altering economic incentives. A prototypical example is automatic enrollment in retirement savings plans: by establishing participation as the default, policymakers dramatically increase savings rates while preserving an individual's right to opt out. Because cognitive biases are deeply ingrained evolutionary features of human psychology, attempting to eradicate them through didactic instruction is largely futile. Choice architects must instead accept cognitive flaws as fixed parameters and structure decision environments so that automatic impulses align with long-term welfare. By quietly channeling heuristic thinking rather than demanding effortful deliberation, nudges offer an efficient, non-coercive mechanism for social optimization.

Passage B
While nudging has attained immense popularity among policymakers, its fundamental premise rests on a patronizing and overly pessimistic view of human agency. By surreptitiously manipulating default options and environmental cues, choice architects exploit the very cognitive heuristics they lament, treating citizens as passive subjects incapable of reasoned judgment. More critically, nudges yield fragile, non-transferable behavioral compliance: an individual steered into a prudent retirement default remains entirely unequipped to navigate complex health insurance selections or deceptive consumer contracts. Rather than accommodating cognitive limitations through opaque environmental engineering, public policy should focus on "boosting"—interventions designed to expand and empower individuals' intrinsic decision-making competencies. Boosts operate by equipping people with transparent procedural tools, such as fast-and-frugal decision trees and natural frequency representations of statistical risk. Unlike nudges, boosts require conscious cognitive effort, fostering transferable skills that persist across novel environments. Sustainable autonomy requires cultivating deliberative resilience rather than quietly managing behavioral symptoms through engineered defaults.

Based on the passages, the author of Passage B would be most likely to criticize the approach advocated in Passage A on the grounds that it