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Even such a domain specific definition is borderline useless because there is no way to constrain the "utility" which rational agents are supposed to maximize -

Even such a domain specific definition is borderline useless because there is no way to constrain the "utility" which rational agents are supposed to maximize -- which makes the concept of a rational agent tautological, and not at all predictive. ("People behave that way because they behave that way". I might encode my observations in a utility function but that doesn't suddenly help me generalize to other situations) The other thing is that the limited situations which psychologists/economists measure people in are very artificial, and there's no reason for people to ace the experimenter's metric. Responding to grandparent: It's not just that project are efficient and not quite correct -- they're probably more correct and scientists have no way to tell. "If you judge a fish by it's ability to climb trees, it will live it's whole life thinking it is stupid."

phowon 8y ago
Put another way, even if you take the strict definition of a rational (optimal) agent, in probably any non-trivial or non-contrived corner case, for any arbitrary set of actions, there exists some utility function and information constraint that can justify that set of arbitrary functions. Have a set of "irrational actions"? Add in information and computational constraints and the necessity for heuristics, the exact right kind of risk-aversion / novelty-seeking behavior, (or play with the second or higher derivatives of your utility function), add in social dynamics like signaling, repeated games (or incorporate mental burdens that negate the impact of repeated games) etc. There exists some formalized universe where your agent is indeed rational.
hopler 8y ago
It's really quite simple. Have you ever made a decision and then later thought "even without knowing what I know now, I made a bad choice"? That's irrationality-- given the same information, making two different choices.

phowon 8y ago

Put another way, even if you take the strict definition of a rational (optimal) agent, in probably any non-trivial or non-contrived corner case, for any arbitrary set of actions, there exists some utility function and information constraint that can justify that set of arbitrary functions. Have a set of "irrational actions"? Add in information and computational constraints and the necessity for heuristics, the exact right kind of risk-aversion / novelty-seeking behavior, (or play with the second or higher derivatives of your utility function), add in social dynamics like signaling, repeated games (or incorporate mental burdens that negate the impact of repeated games) etc. There exists some formalized universe where your agent is indeed rational.

hopler 8y ago

It's really quite simple. Have you ever made a decision and then later thought "even without knowing what I know now, I made a bad choice"? That's irrationality-- given the same information, making two different choices.