That doesn't answer my question at all.

Of course. Never meant to, just pointed to a direction that you seem to be unaware of.

>Never meant to, just pointed to a direction that you seem to be unaware of.

What gave you that impression? In my initial comment I acknowledged the concept of excusing suboptimal decision making due to "psychology of decision making when poor and struggling". How is that different than what you're saying?

You call it 'excusing'.

That seems like the right characterization to me? Definition from wiktionary:

>3. (transitive) To provide an excuse for; to explain, with the aim of alleviating guilt or negative judgement.

Earlier in the thread there was definitely a tone of negative judgement. ie. "people show up all the time with a litany of complaints and a litany of awful, awful budget mistakes they have no interest in fixing"

Negative judgment is exactly what is off mark. Real humans make mistakes. No whys or buts or excepts. They just do and they shouldn't be blamed for what is essentially being human. IOW people can't be reasonably expected to make rational, self-interested choices.

(It's actually amazing this is almost a Nobel-prize worthy observation in economics. This is psychology 101.)

If you ask why or what kinds of mistakes they make, now that is where the books go deep. Suffice to say those mistakes are not unpredictable and people can be nudged to make a better (dare I say correct) choice.

>Negative judgment is exactly what is off mark.

Right, but I'm not the person giving the negative judgement. I specifically recognize the possibility of "excusing" them (ie. not negatively judging them) in some cases, and ask whether they should be excused in some cases or all cases. After this long conversation it appears you believe in the latter. Is this correct?