Preferences CAN be inconsistent (over time, or across different modes of preference-identification), which is definitely irrational. And sufficiently extreme preferences, even if consistent and consistently pursued, can be judged evil, insane, or harmful to many others.
Revealed preference is a very useful obfuscation over the fact that humans aren’t actually rational in the VNM sense. Not a one of us has a consistent ordering over potential world-states, and we’re full of contradictions between how we think about our wants (which varies in different modes and frames of asking the question) and what we actually do. It’s quite a bit stronger, predictively, especially averaged over a population, than polling or discussion. But it’s not the only valid conception of preferences, and not what most people mean when talking about preferences.
Voldemort can more easily be understood (and predicted) if you model his preference as immortality being instrumental to his quest for being powerful and feared (respected, in his worldview). But remember two things:
it’s fiction—there’s no requirement that it correlate with any possible real person’s behavior or belief patterns.
Even real people are mostly fiction. All such analysis is about models. All models are wrong, some models are useful. For real people, there are tens of billions of nodes in a fairly complicated network changing weights all the time based on a crazy amount of inputs. The underlying reality isn’t a complete and consistent preference ordering—it only considers a small subset of choices at a time. And it’s beliefs of what it’s doing are even less accurate. Other brains’ modeling of what this one is thinking still further from reality.
I would argue that inconsistency of preferences isn’t necessarily a sign of irrationality. Come to think of it, it may hinge greatly on how you frame the preference.
Consider changing tastes. As a child, I preferred some sweets to savory items, and those preferences reversed as I aged. Is that irrational? No and, indeed, you needn’t even view it as a preference reversal. The preference “I prefer to eat what tastes good to me” has remained unchanged, after all. Is my sense of taste itself a preference? It seems like this would devolve into semantics quickly.
My reluctance to characterize preferences as rational or irrational is that I see these as prescriptive terms. But you can’t prescribe preferences. You either have them or you don’t. Only decision rules are chosen.
Preferences CAN be inconsistent (over time, or across different modes of preference-identification), which is definitely irrational. And sufficiently extreme preferences, even if consistent and consistently pursued, can be judged evil, insane, or harmful to many others.
Revealed preference is a very useful obfuscation over the fact that humans aren’t actually rational in the VNM sense. Not a one of us has a consistent ordering over potential world-states, and we’re full of contradictions between how we think about our wants (which varies in different modes and frames of asking the question) and what we actually do. It’s quite a bit stronger, predictively, especially averaged over a population, than polling or discussion. But it’s not the only valid conception of preferences, and not what most people mean when talking about preferences.
Voldemort can more easily be understood (and predicted) if you model his preference as immortality being instrumental to his quest for being powerful and feared (respected, in his worldview). But remember two things:
it’s fiction—there’s no requirement that it correlate with any possible real person’s behavior or belief patterns.
Even real people are mostly fiction. All such analysis is about models. All models are wrong, some models are useful. For real people, there are tens of billions of nodes in a fairly complicated network changing weights all the time based on a crazy amount of inputs. The underlying reality isn’t a complete and consistent preference ordering—it only considers a small subset of choices at a time. And it’s beliefs of what it’s doing are even less accurate. Other brains’ modeling of what this one is thinking still further from reality.
I would argue that inconsistency of preferences isn’t necessarily a sign of irrationality. Come to think of it, it may hinge greatly on how you frame the preference.
Consider changing tastes. As a child, I preferred some sweets to savory items, and those preferences reversed as I aged. Is that irrational? No and, indeed, you needn’t even view it as a preference reversal. The preference “I prefer to eat what tastes good to me” has remained unchanged, after all. Is my sense of taste itself a preference? It seems like this would devolve into semantics quickly.
My reluctance to characterize preferences as rational or irrational is that I see these as prescriptive terms. But you can’t prescribe preferences. You either have them or you don’t. Only decision rules are chosen.