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Why wouldn't it? It's a more accurate model than what came before it, the rational actor model.
by tw1010 8y ago
Why wouldn't it? It's a more accurate model than what came before it, the rational actor model.
- gota 8y agoIt helps that when you read Dan Ariely's stuff it confirms every kind of thought you had on the back of your head about how people 'work'. I'm aware that doesn't mean it's correct per se, in a hard-science sense, but it does help popularizing the field when every person who reads Predictably Irrational recommends it to other people
- mc32 8y agoPerhaps it’s facile to say it’s to economics understading what placebo is to medicine.
- nybble41 8y agoTo support a claim that an economic actor is not rational you would first need to assert that you are more familiar than they are with their personal preferences and their understanding of the available options, which seems to me the height of arrogance. Which do you suppose is more likely: that people deliberately choose to act in ways that they know are not in their own best interest, as they define it, or that they are acting rationally but their idea of what is in their best interest differs from your own? A key element of the rational actor model is that there is no way to know anyone else's preferences aside from observing the choices they make. Even asking them directly is not considered an authoritative source, since preferences can change at any time and people don't always know just what they would choose until they're actually confronted with the choice.