(no subject)

[randomness]

You can't make a lot of progress trying to figure out human behavior unless you start from the premise that people are not rational but their actions can follow some observable patterns.

That premise tends to derail observers who assume rationality. They often have difficulty getting their analyses back on track. Worse off are those who refuse to incorporate human irrationality and proceed to build a theoretical structure on false premises.

My own understanding of people improved enormously after I understood this.

Comments

[achinhibitor.livejournal.com]

Dunno... There is a considerable amount of "bounded rationality", people don't have the computational power to be perfectly rational, so they implement various approximations thereto, which break down spectacularly some times. But in many cases, people are more rational than they look, because their ultimate goals are not what they state, or are not similar to the goals one would have in the same situation. E.g., in a lot of situations, maintaining one's social status is important for extracting benefits from the social group. So risking physical damage to enhance one's social status can be very rational. (Although, being a "natural act", the human involved is rarely conscious of the calculated tradeoff.)

[r-ness.livejournal.com]

While I will certainly agree that people often have goals which are different from what they state, and certainly different from what mine might be*, my experience has been that human irrationality isn't simply a matter of lack of computational power.

Your perceptions may differ, but this post is about my understanding.

*Not that I think any one of us is the yardstick by which to measure perfect rationality.