>The problem with calling things irrational is that it doesn’t allow you to make any predictions. You’re saying “there’s no logic to this thing” which may or may not be true but it is fairly bold to look at something you don’t have an explanation for and say “that’s irrational”.
That's absolutely true.
But it's not the kind of irrational that's the article tries to refute. That one comes with mechanisms and predictions, it's just not conscious (or not fully conscious) to the subject.
The kinds of non-rationality ("automaticity") discussed are e.g. as if we noticed that every time we play somber music at work, a subject gets more moody. There's a mechanism to invoke it, and we can predict the reaction of us playing it vs more energetic music, but the subject would not consciously know that it does it - and it wont be a "rational" decision they made to be more moody.
Basically, the article tries to refute the existence of a whole class of unconscious automatic responses, bring back the crude man as some fully "rational agent" that economics threw into the dustbin decades ago.
That's absolutely true.
But it's not the kind of irrational that's the article tries to refute. That one comes with mechanisms and predictions, it's just not conscious (or not fully conscious) to the subject.
The kinds of non-rationality ("automaticity") discussed are e.g. as if we noticed that every time we play somber music at work, a subject gets more moody. There's a mechanism to invoke it, and we can predict the reaction of us playing it vs more energetic music, but the subject would not consciously know that it does it - and it wont be a "rational" decision they made to be more moody.
Basically, the article tries to refute the existence of a whole class of unconscious automatic responses, bring back the crude man as some fully "rational agent" that economics threw into the dustbin decades ago.