I don't know about 'we', but I don't believe in an irrational market - the market may well be wrong, but it's not usually wrong for unreasonable reasons. And potential is all investors ever care about: they're looking to put their money where it has the most potential to turn into more money. Predicting the future is necessarily uncertain and involves ambiguous judgment; you can call that touchy-feely if you want to be dismissive, but there is no such thing as data on things that haven't happened yet.
In the case of Tesla vs Ford, there is probably a sense in which the longer the market is 'irrationally' convinced of the value of Tesla, the less irrational it actually is - it's a bet on Tesla's viability and vision, and the longer it seems like a good bet to most people, the more likely it is that it is a rational bet to have made.
Suddenly we believe in a rational market when it comes to Tesla? Everytime I ask basic valuation questions in these threads, I get touchy-feely answers about "potential". And HackerNews is supposed to be a data/tech place. Imagine what average Joe thinks?