Really? When deciding what restaurant to go to for dinner, you examine all possible consequences of all the choices at your disposal (and the probability distributions across them), evaluate or rank them all, and select one? You don’t use any rules at all?
No, I guess I examine some subset of consequences that seem relevant to each decision (i.e., might differ across my choices in a predictable way, and the differences make a difference for my values). I can’t confidently say that I don’t use any rules at all (maybe I’m using some rules in some subconscious way, or I’m doing something that counts as “using a rule”) but neither can I say what those rules are.
Why do you think that there needs to be a rule, instead of, say, multiple rules (some combination of which may bear on any given situation)? And why can’t rules depend on variables? (Or contain heuristics, etc.?)
I wasn’t intending to make a point about single vs multiple rules (but since you ask, having multiple rules seems to require some meta-rule to tell you which rules to use in which circumstances and how to adjudicate conflict between them, so that meta-rule would be “the rule”). My point was more that I don’t see what rule(s) I could be using that would seemingly take into account so many variables in such a fluid and dynamic way, and can seemingly handle new unforeseen circumstances/variables without me having to think “how should I change my rules to handle this?”
This seems stupendously unlikely. My reason for thinking otherwise is that this just isn’t consistent with anything we know about how people make decisions.
Can you list some such inconsistencies, so I can have a better idea of what you mean?
Are you just saying that the preferences revealed in your choices conform to the VNM axioms (or some other formalism—if so, which?)?
No, I mean things like when one of my choices would predictably cause some bad consequences (and doesn’t cause enough good consequences to compensate) I seem to fairly reliably avoid making that choice, even when there’s enough novelty involved that it seems unlikely I would have created a rule to cover the situation ahead of time, and without having to think “how should I change my rules to handle this?”
No, I guess I examine some subset of consequences that seem relevant to each decision (i.e., might differ across my choices in a predictable way, and the differences make a difference for my values). I can’t confidently say that I don’t use any rules at all (maybe I’m using some rules in some subconscious way, or I’m doing something that counts as “using a rule”) but neither can I say what those rules are.
I wasn’t intending to make a point about single vs multiple rules (but since you ask, having multiple rules seems to require some meta-rule to tell you which rules to use in which circumstances and how to adjudicate conflict between them, so that meta-rule would be “the rule”). My point was more that I don’t see what rule(s) I could be using that would seemingly take into account so many variables in such a fluid and dynamic way, and can seemingly handle new unforeseen circumstances/variables without me having to think “how should I change my rules to handle this?”
Can you list some such inconsistencies, so I can have a better idea of what you mean?
No, I mean things like when one of my choices would predictably cause some bad consequences (and doesn’t cause enough good consequences to compensate) I seem to fairly reliably avoid making that choice, even when there’s enough novelty involved that it seems unlikely I would have created a rule to cover the situation ahead of time, and without having to think “how should I change my rules to handle this?”