Posted: Mar 01, 2010 8:10 am
by Mr.Samsa
Humans aren't irrational, they just aren't rational in the economic sense (maximising returns). But they are 'rational' in the sense that they make consistent choices given specific input variables. Human behavior can be described quite easily, problems only arise when you remove the subjects from the lab and put them into a world full of variables and confounds (whilst this naturally decreases our predictive power, we can still be highly successful in predicting and controlling behavior - otherwise behavioral therapies would be useless).

In a lab setting though, where I can control the variables, humans run like clock work.