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> Before entering the theater I can choose among theaters > and compare the opportunity costs of my movie-going > experience (which would include the utility

> Before entering the theater I can choose among theaters > and compare the opportunity costs of my movie-going > experience (which would include the utility of consuming > popcorn after its cost). Doesn't this answer the question right here? People don't do that. Everything we know about cognition and human decision making (from neuro scientists, not from economic philosophers) tells us that humans are not rational actors making decisions using game theory. All the answers certainly show the descriptive power of economic philosophy, but since the same group could be just as convincing about "why movie theatre popcorn is so cheap" I'm not sure what the point is of debating these things in a framework without any predictive power.

Symmetry 15y ago
Except that if "rational actor" didn't describe humans at all people couldn't even manage to get to work in the morning. There are a large number of ways in which people aren't rational actors - we are loss averse, we overuse the availability heuristic, we're subject to anchoring effects, etc. However, if you look at the space of all possible ways someone could behave, we're not too far from being perfectly rational. If I'm in a store and I'm thirsty I'll buy a drink rather than some salt or a mop. If I want to get to my friend's house I probably won't try to get there by swimming except in really unusual circumstances.
- freshhawk 15y ago
  Right, but predictions or descriptions of human behaviour based on guesses as to where humans fall on the line between perfectly rational and completely irrational are also guesses. And when discussing movie theatre popcorn I think it's pretty clear that the irrational or arbitrary aspect of human rationality is in play here. The discussion on stackexchange is silly, you mentioned anchoring effects yourself.

Symmetry 15y ago

Except that if "rational actor" didn't describe humans at all people couldn't even manage to get to work in the morning. There are a large number of ways in which people aren't rational actors - we are loss averse, we overuse the availability heuristic, we're subject to anchoring effects, etc. However, if you look at the space of all possible ways someone could behave, we're not too far from being perfectly rational. If I'm in a store and I'm thirsty I'll buy a drink rather than some salt or a mop. If I want to get to my friend's house I probably won't try to get there by swimming except in really unusual circumstances.

freshhawk 15y ago
Right, but predictions or descriptions of human behaviour based on guesses as to where humans fall on the line between perfectly rational and completely irrational are also guesses. And when discussing movie theatre popcorn I think it's pretty clear that the irrational or arbitrary aspect of human rationality is in play here. The discussion on stackexchange is silly, you mentioned anchoring effects yourself.