why stop to declare it irrational in the first place?
Because for me there are basically three ways to evaluate some course of action. You can say that it’s perfectly fine and that’s that (let’s call it “rational”). You can say that it’s crazy and you don’t have a clue why someone is doing this (let’s call it “inexplicable”). And finally, you can say that it’s a mistaken course of action: you see the goal, but the road chosen doesn’t lead there. I would call this “irrational”.
Within this framework, calling something “irrational” is the only way to “dig further and try to figure out why”.
With regard to “suboptimal” vs “irrational”, I read it completely differently.
So we have a difference in terminology. That’s not unheard of :-)
Interesting. I dig into plenty of things before concluding that I know what their goal is and that they will fail, and I don’t see what is supposed to be stopping me from doing this. I’m not sure why “I don’t [yet] have a clue why” gets rounded to “inexplicable”.
Because for me there are basically three ways to evaluate some course of action. You can say that it’s perfectly fine and that’s that (let’s call it “rational”). You can say that it’s crazy and you don’t have a clue why someone is doing this (let’s call it “inexplicable”). And finally, you can say that it’s a mistaken course of action: you see the goal, but the road chosen doesn’t lead there. I would call this “irrational”.
Within this framework, calling something “irrational” is the only way to “dig further and try to figure out why”.
So we have a difference in terminology. That’s not unheard of :-)
Interesting. I dig into plenty of things before concluding that I know what their goal is and that they will fail, and I don’t see what is supposed to be stopping me from doing this. I’m not sure why “I don’t [yet] have a clue why” gets rounded to “inexplicable”.