{"id":7550,"date":"2015-02-22T18:52:30","date_gmt":"2015-02-23T02:52:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.blackswanreport.com\/blog\/?p=7550"},"modified":"2015-02-22T18:52:30","modified_gmt":"2015-02-23T02:52:30","slug":"academics-find-it-irrational-that-one-can-prefer-apples-to-oranges","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.blackswanreport.com\/blog\/2015\/02\/academics-find-it-irrational-that-one-can-prefer-apples-to-oranges\/","title":{"rendered":"Academics find it “irrational” that one can prefer apples to oranges…"},"content":{"rendered":"

Academics find it “irrational” that one can prefer apples to oranges, oranges to pears, but pears to apples (something called intransitivity of preferences). I leave aside the problem that in real life choices have synchronies: I am not (dynamically) inconsistent if I prefer soup to grapes at the beginning of dinner, but grapes to soup at the end. Things never presents themselves to us in a textbook way, but over time and in different contexts. But there there is a deeper logic for such inconsistency –even in the *static* case.
\n—
\nRecall that the antifragile is what likes a bit of randomness.
\n—
\nIt may be very efficient, in the long run, to inject some randomness in one’s choices in order to span a broader set of objects, and intransitivity is one way to do so. Break the routine of choices. This is similar to gift giving: a gift is something that you would not buy otherwise; it too breaks your routine of choices — like a book you would have never thought of buying.
\n—
\nMother nature may have a way to force you to make “mistakes” of small consequence may reveal deeper preferences or more interesting attributes of the world. This is optionality.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

via Academics find it “irrational” that one can… – Nassim Nicholas Taleb<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Academics find it “irrational” that one can prefer apples to oranges, oranges to pears, but pears to apples (something called intransitivity of preferences). I leave aside the problem that in real life choices have synchronies: I am not (dynamically) inconsistent if I prefer soup to grapes at the beginning of dinner, but grapes to soup […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[145],"tags":[896,765],"class_list":["post-7550","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-facebook","tag-intransitivity","tag-optionality"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.blackswanreport.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7550","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.blackswanreport.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.blackswanreport.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blackswanreport.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blackswanreport.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7550"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.blackswanreport.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7550\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7552,"href":"https:\/\/www.blackswanreport.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7550\/revisions\/7552"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.blackswanreport.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7550"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blackswanreport.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7550"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blackswanreport.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7550"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}