Wonderful, El Mat! Rational acts are, indeed, colored by emotion.
It's no surprise that people don't always act in their own best interests. For me, the most powerful force that causes me to act irrationally isn't, strictly speaking, irrational. It's the "fight or flight" instinct at work. I prefer to avoid situations that make my adrenaline flow, even though I really have to get into them, so I keep procrastinating about things which make me anxious in the hope that they will go away.
In other words, I "run away" from the thing that makes me anxious. That's a completely rational act for an unarmed naked ape with no claws and tiny teeth. Too bad the world I live in forces me to face, and conquer, the things I fear. I've no doubt it makes me unhealthy and reduces my life expectancy. I envy the natural born tigers who seem to fear nothing. I think this is why lawyers always dress formally - it's a form of body armor.
Another really strong instinct that makes us act irrationally is love/sex/desire. I see that a lot in divorce cases. One spouse wants out, the other doesn't want to let go, and does crazy things. Sometimes it's destructive, sometimes it's just funny. Normal people don't usually need a lawyer for each of them to help them divide up their personal belongings, unless they are very well off, in which case there are tax considerations, and so on. So it's sort of sad and sort of funny when two middle-class people are arguing over the spoons, while the clock is ticking at the rate of several hundred dollars per hour.
The best way to handle one of these crazy things is for both clients and both lawyers to meet someplace with three vacant rooms (a law office after hours is the usual place), put the clients each in a separate room, and let the lawyers go back and forth. At some point in a four-way, it never fails, we get to a point where one of the lawyers will offer to pay for something just to get it over with! -g- Something trivial, that costs less than an hour's time for two lawyers. The two most recent sticking points were the price of a visit to a doctor, and the price of a round trip bus ticket to New York.
Another strong emotion that causes people to act irrationally is sentimental attachment. Most people who put personal items in storage pay far more per year to store the goods than it would cost to replace them. I was recently involved in a family dispute where the parties (sisters) spent thousands of dollars litigating over two men's suits, a box of family photos, and a shotgun. (Items belonged to their father.)
Thus, one of the things that bemuses me about the economics monographs I am reading these days is the way they are structured. The first part of the paper is a statement of fact; the second, a statement of hypothesis; the third, a description of a set of calculations; and finally, a conclusion, usually accompanied by a set of charts. It's very similar to the type of thing I see in scientific publications, of course, but that's not what bemuses me. What I find odd are the assumptions that the economist makes in order to be able to make things fit into the formula. Frequently, the assumptions are about rational choices. After three years on SI, and 49 years on earth, I know that people don't always make rational choices - but how does that affect the validity of the conclusions? |
