Stupid Questions Thread - January 2014

RomeoStevens

Haven't had one of these for awhile. This thread is for questions or comments that you've felt silly about not knowing/understanding. Let's try to exchange info that seems obvious, knowing that due to the illusion of transparency it really isn't so obvious!

Okay. But that still makes it sound like there would almost never be actual real-life cases where you could clearly say that the person exhibited circular preferences? At least I can't think of any real-life scenario that would be an example of the way you define "bad" circular preferences.

I feel like it happens to me in practice routinely. I see options A, B, C and D and I keep oscillating between them. I am not indifferent; I perceive pairwise differences but can't find a global optimum. This can happen in commonplace situations, e.g., when choosing between brands of pasta sauce or somesuch. And I'll spend several minutes agonizing before finally picking one.

I had the impression this happened to a lot of people.

0Douglas_Knight12y

I can't find it anymore, but years ago I found on LW a recording of an interview with someone who had exhibited circular preferences in an experiment.

4ChristianKl12y

I think there are plenty of cases where people prefer not sit on in front of their computer today over going to the fitness studio while preferring going to the fitness studio to sitting on in front of their computer tomorrow. Changing the near to a far frame changes references. I know that not an exact example of the Dutch Book but it illustrates the principle that framing matters. I don't think it's hard to get people in a laboratory and offer them different food choices to get a case where a person prefers A for B, C for A and B for C. I think it's difficult to find general model real life cases because we don't use the idea as a phenomenal primitive and therefore don't perceive those situations as general situations where people act normal but see those situation as exception where people are being weird.