Except I really doubt it will be genuinely optimal (nothing against elharo, I’d say say this about any financial planning guide). At least “rational” doesn’t seem like an obvious false promise. It reads to me as a reasonable claim about procedure (“my approach to financial planning draws on tools of the sort LWers talk about”) rather than an incredible claim about outcomes (“this is the best possible way to do financial planning”).
I don’t think calling it “rational financial planning” is a great idea. All I’m saying is that it’s better than calling it “optimal financial planning”. It’s probably a good thing to replace “rational” with “optimal” if you have good reason to believe your approach is in fact optimal. But financial planning is a game of such complexity and with so many possible moves that it would be the height of hubris to regard your approach as an actual optimum.
ETA: Ah, I see this in one of your links:
Optimal on the other hand doesn’t so much require specific contrast because pretty much everything is suboptimal by default to some degree or another—optimizing is understood as an ongoing and very relativistic process.
Except I really doubt it will be genuinely optimal (nothing against elharo, I’d say say this about any financial planning guide). At least “rational” doesn’t seem like an obvious false promise. It reads to me as a reasonable claim about procedure (“my approach to financial planning draws on tools of the sort LWers talk about”) rather than an incredible claim about outcomes (“this is the best possible way to do financial planning”).
See this and this (and this) :)
I don’t think calling it “rational financial planning” is a great idea. All I’m saying is that it’s better than calling it “optimal financial planning”. It’s probably a good thing to replace “rational” with “optimal” if you have good reason to believe your approach is in fact optimal. But financial planning is a game of such complexity and with so many possible moves that it would be the height of hubris to regard your approach as an actual optimum.
ETA: Ah, I see this in one of your links:
Fair enough. Disregard my whining.