Tuesday, June 06, 2006

rational people do irrational things - all the time!

Sounds counter-intuitive?

Well, we do it all the time (at least I know I do...). It could be seen through the smallest decisions that we make, like eating a delicious piece of chocolate even though we know it'll come back to bite us in the ass, literally, later on; or wanting to sleep just a little longer and then waking up later with the slightest twinge of a headache from over-sleeping (very unpleasant... trust me, I know... people should not be expected to be rational when they are sleepy...).

The way I figure it, it's pretty much a problem of time,one of instant gratification versus delayed regrets. Yet we probably do it over and over again, all the time, many times a day, indefinitely. (I also highly suspect there's a factor of self-control or discipline involved, but let's not get into that now.)

So does this mean I'm not rational, of course not! I deem myself to be a perfectly rational person. It's just that sometimes people suffer short bouts of irrationality when they simply concentrate on the moment, you know, the here and now. I simply consider it ~ human. Plus, being irrational makes things more interesting (just don't be overly and thoroughly irrational, like taking-out-a-home-equity-loan-to-gamble-on-one-game-of-blackjack irrational, okay?).

So rational people of the universe - be irrational!
(picture of cute bear courtesy of Brys Bruins Collectable Bears)

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