[ExI] Rational?? -- Don't make me laugh!

BillK pharos at gmail.com
Sat Mar 15 18:23:17 UTC 2008


The AGI list has drawn my attention to a NYT book review:
<http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/16/books/review/Berreby-t.html?ref=review>

PREDICTABLY IRRATIONAL
The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions.
By Dan Ariely.
280 pp. Harper/HarperCollins Publishers. $25.95.

Quote:
At the heart of the market approach to understanding people is a set
of assumptions. First, you are a coherent and unitary self. Second,
you can be sure of what this self of yours wants and needs, and can
predict what it will do. Third, you get some information about
yourself from your body — objective facts about hunger, thirst, pain
and pleasure that help guide your decisions. Standard economics, as
Ariely writes, assumes that all of us, equipped with this sort of
self, "know all the pertinent information about our decisions" and "we
can calculate the value of the different options we face." We are, for
important decisions, rational, and that's what makes markets so
effective at finding value and allocating work. To borrow from H. L.
Mencken, the market approach presumes that "the common people know
what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard."

What the past few decades of work in psychology, sociology and
economics has shown, as Ariely describes, is that all three of these
assumptions are false.

A more accurate picture is that there are a bunch of different
versions of you, who come to the fore under different conditions. We
aren't cool calculators of self-interest who sometimes go crazy; we're
crazies who are, under special circumstances, sometimes rational.
-------------------------


BillK



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