Can you define “rational/consistent”? The terms are a bit overloaded, especially in this community, and making your definition precise is itself most of the answer to your question.
For example, you give some good examples of nontransitive decider-actors, and if some of them are “rational”, then nontransitive preferences can be rational, as you point out. Alternatively, one definition of “consistent” is that a decider-actor will always reach the same decision when it has the same information, regardless of what other options it has previously rejected, which requires transitive preferences.
You are showing me an error in casual thought and speech I have. I should not link the two terms as I did—but do carry seem to carry the two concepts around in my head largely in the same bucket as it were. I should stop doing that!
Thanks!
I really should have just stayed with the question of consistency and if transitivity was really a sufficient condition to suggest inconsistency was present—which seemed implied in the comment I read sparking the thought.
Can you define “rational/consistent”? The terms are a bit overloaded, especially in this community, and making your definition precise is itself most of the answer to your question.
For example, you give some good examples of nontransitive decider-actors, and if some of them are “rational”, then nontransitive preferences can be rational, as you point out. Alternatively, one definition of “consistent” is that a decider-actor will always reach the same decision when it has the same information, regardless of what other options it has previously rejected, which requires transitive preferences.
Thought I had replied … but no seeing that now.
You are showing me an error in casual thought and speech I have. I should not link the two terms as I did—but do carry seem to carry the two concepts around in my head largely in the same bucket as it were. I should stop doing that!
Thanks!
I really should have just stayed with the question of consistency and if transitivity was really a sufficient condition to suggest inconsistency was present—which seemed implied in the comment I read sparking the thought.