Downvoted for trying to argue against a principle that is actually irrelevant to your claims. (“The utility function is not up for grabs” doesn’t mean that decisions are always rational, and is actually inapplicable here.)
I didn’t mean decisions are always rational. I meant that it makes no sense for preferences to be rational or irrational: they just are. Rationality is a property of decisions, not of preferences: if a decision maximizes the expectation of your preferences it’s rational and if it doesn’t it isn’t.
Preferences can, however, be inconsistent. And rational decision-making across inconsistent preferences is sometimes difficult to distinguish from irrational decision-making.
Downvoted for trying to argue against a principle that is actually irrelevant to your claims. (“The utility function is not up for grabs” doesn’t mean that decisions are always rational, and is actually inapplicable here.)
I didn’t mean decisions are always rational. I meant that it makes no sense for preferences to be rational or irrational: they just are. Rationality is a property of decisions, not of preferences: if a decision maximizes the expectation of your preferences it’s rational and if it doesn’t it isn’t.
Preferences can, however, be inconsistent.
And rational decision-making across inconsistent preferences is sometimes difficult to distinguish from irrational decision-making.