Re:Stuck: Why the rent and mortgage-burdened don’t always mo...
by joe_the_user on Wednesday April 25, 2018 @02:55PM
(#16924827)
I struggle to understand why people who argue for rationality, i.e., people who I know are very very smart and extremely rational, turn around and expect rationality from populations.
Oh, it's just another example of irrationality now isn't it?
I mean, rationality as system certainly is something a fair number of people can master as a series of arguments that they can have down-pat and are able to recite at a moments notice. Actually applying these to subset of a person's behaviors is a harder trick, mastered by a smaller number of people. Applying the implications of irrational behavior of the population at large to one's own world is an even harder trick.
The thing is that "rationality" isn't actually a coherent overall guide to anyone's behavior.
Specifically, if everyone was "homo-economicus", the neoclassical concept of the risk-neutral actor, society itself would collapse in fairly short order.
I'd recommend Herbert Gintis, Game Theory Evolving, for more background on this.
Oh, it's just another example of irrationality now isn't it?
I mean, rationality as system certainly is something a fair number of people can master as a series of arguments that they can have down-pat and are able to recite at a moments notice. Actually applying these to subset of a person's behaviors is a harder trick, mastered by a smaller number of people. Applying the implications of irrational behavior of the population at large to one's own world is an even harder trick.
The thing is that "rationality" isn't actually a coherent overall guide to anyone's behavior.
Specifically, if everyone was "homo-economicus", the neoclassical concept of the risk-neutral actor, society itself would collapse in fairly short order.
I'd recommend Herbert Gintis, Game Theory Evolving, for more background on this.