You seem to claim that a person that works ineffectively towards a cause doesn’t really believe in his cause—this is wrong. Many businesses fail in ridiculously stupid ways, doesn’t mean their owners didn’t really want to make a profit.
If a businessowner makes silly product decisions because of bounded rationality, then yes, it’s possible they were earnestly optimizing for success the whole time and just didn’t realize what the consequences of their actions would be.
If a(n otherwise intelligent) businessowner decides to shoot the clerk at the competitor taco stand across the street, then at the very least they must have valued something wayyyyy over building the business.
If an otherwise intelligent businessowner decides to shoot the clerk at the competitor taco stand across the street, then at the very least they must have valued something over than building the business.
Or the businessowner’s thinking process is damaged (despite being intelligent—these coexist a lot more often than we would like), and they sometimes do useful things and sometimes act counterproductively. You could view this as “they sometimes act in a way that soothes a damaged part of their mind, which they value more highly than building the business”. Which way of viewing it is more helpful?
I think the “damaged thinking” view would more likely predict that, when they’re soothing the damaged part of their mind, they don’t think through the consequences very thoroughly, while the other perspective—”they’re 100% rational, and their values include doing some of this weird stuff”—predicts they always understand the consequences. Now, you could add in another assumption: “They place high value on not thinking through the consequences of certain actions.” (I guess you can ultimately explain any behavior pattern by making enough assumptions about what they value.) I don’t have a strong position here on the best way of modeling it.
You seem to claim that a person that works ineffectively towards a cause doesn’t really believe in his cause—this is wrong. Many businesses fail in ridiculously stupid ways, doesn’t mean their owners didn’t really want to make a profit.
If a businessowner makes silly product decisions because of bounded rationality, then yes, it’s possible they were earnestly optimizing for success the whole time and just didn’t realize what the consequences of their actions would be.
If a(n otherwise intelligent) businessowner decides to shoot the clerk at the competitor taco stand across the street, then at the very least they must have valued something wayyyyy over building the business.
Or the businessowner’s thinking process is damaged (despite being intelligent—these coexist a lot more often than we would like), and they sometimes do useful things and sometimes act counterproductively. You could view this as “they sometimes act in a way that soothes a damaged part of their mind, which they value more highly than building the business”. Which way of viewing it is more helpful?
I think the “damaged thinking” view would more likely predict that, when they’re soothing the damaged part of their mind, they don’t think through the consequences very thoroughly, while the other perspective—”they’re 100% rational, and their values include doing some of this weird stuff”—predicts they always understand the consequences. Now, you could add in another assumption: “They place high value on not thinking through the consequences of certain actions.” (I guess you can ultimately explain any behavior pattern by making enough assumptions about what they value.) I don’t have a strong position here on the best way of modeling it.