We learn that he commissioned a megayacht. Now, do you want to update towards “He’s interested in boats” or do you want to update towards “He spends his money on something he won’t enjoy”?
Having known a few yacht owners in my time, I very much would update toward the latter. I often think that the point is “having a yacht” and not at all the yacht in itself.
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.
Really? Let’s take a random member of the Walton family who is stupidly rich but about whose preferences we know nothing—an uninformative prior.
We learn that he commissioned a megayacht.
Now, do you want to update towards “He’s interested in boats” or do you want to update towards “He spends his money on something he won’t enjoy”?
Having known a few yacht owners in my time, I very much would update toward the latter. I often think that the point is “having a yacht” and not at all the yacht in itself.
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.