It might sound reasonable, but that’s a very different matter from the purchase actually being an effective per-dollar way to get something that will actually make him happy.
Would knowing that he’s commissioned a mega-yacht make me update in favor of the proposition that having a megayacht would make him feel happy or fulfilled? A little bit, sure, it’s better than nothing. But I would absolutely weight his thus “revealed” preference less strongly on that question than I would the evidence of simply asking him what he thought about yachts, and even that is pretty shaky evidence.
In which case you want to update towards “He’s buying himself a bit more status” which still seems entirely reasonable to me :-)
It might sound reasonable, but that’s a very different matter from the purchase actually being an effective per-dollar way to get something that will actually make him happy.
Would knowing that he’s commissioned a mega-yacht make me update in favor of the proposition that having a megayacht would make him feel happy or fulfilled? A little bit, sure, it’s better than nothing. But I would absolutely weight his thus “revealed” preference less strongly on that question than I would the evidence of simply asking him what he thought about yachts, and even that is pretty shaky evidence.