Preferences

> we're not perfect rational optimizers of anything

"Perfect" is too strong an hypothesis, but none of those behaviors are irrational per se.

People would rather be fit than overweight, but that's not the choice on the table. You can either make sacrifices now to be fit X time from now, or eat that ice cream and suffer later. The rational choice depends on the relative value you put on those things (and your discount rate, if you want to get really technical).

Taking the "wrong" side of the tradeoff could certainly qualify as being stupid, and as you note all of us would turn out to be plenty stupid if we started rigorously analyzing our choices, but this is a matter of people claiming to have preferences they don't actually have, as proven by the only thing that matters: their behavior.


dkarl
If you assume that people's preferences are revealed by their behavior, then you are assuming there is no stupidity. You're starting from that conclusion.

However, you could also choose to believe their regrets, when they look back on their own choices and say that the pleasure than they gained from them did not repay the misery they suffered because of them.

If you choose to disbelieve their regrets, then maybe you would agree to label their regrets as stupid?

qsort OP
Regrets are mostly irrelevant to this discussion. A "regret" is either:

- I now have information I did not have at the time I made a choice that binds me now.

- I changed my mind.

Whether I believe it or not makes no difference because it contains no information.

As an aside: none of this is supposed to invalidate the experience of people having regrets, or struggling with addictions. If I see a friend getting drunk every night I won't go "ah, yes, they are correctly maximizing their utility according to their own discount rate and inter-temporal budget constraints". They are separate conversations, though, and we can have the kind of conversation where I help you solve problems or the kind of conversation where I just listen to you. They don't tend to mix well.

dkarl
Regrets are not irrelevant when people face the same decisions over and over and make choices that they previously regretted.

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