On rationality

In my opinion, there are some errors in the analysis. Take, for example, the case of preferring half a bar of chocolate now over a bar in a week, and on the other hand not preferring half a bar in a year over a bar in a year and a week. Here, immediacy gives a person a value that is worth it to them. What is irrational about that? It’s like buying a lottery ticket at a price whose expected profit is negative (say, paying 20 NIS for it, when the chance of earning a million NIS is 1 in 100,000). Is it irrational? It can certainly be rational, if the person is paying (and this is probably the case) for the thrill and the chance/hope of becoming a millionaire. Why is paying for that irrational, and paying for a circus rational? A person is paying for a state of mind that he wants to be in, pleasure or hope. This is his utility function. The view of this as an irrational step stems from identifying the utility function with the expected profit. Such an identification is really unnecessary. A person who pays more is either stupid or for whom the profit is not only the monetary expectation but also the hope, and so on. If we return to chocolate, a person who wants to eat chocolate now has immediate pleasure and for this he is willing to pay by giving up half a pack. Immediacy is part of the utility (pleasure) and it is worth the loss in profit to him. On the other hand, in a year’s time there is no immediacy because he will be waiting anyway, and there he prefers the whole pack.
The same goes for texting while driving or not exercising or eating too much. All of these are more complex considerations of utility than health or mere life. According to his judgment, it is not worth driving even without texting because it is dangerous. A person still drives occasionally because he prefers a normal and comfortable life over not risking his life.
Ultimately, as in many cases, these analyses are very problematic because they make incorrect assumptions about people’s considerations. In principle, it is very difficult to show that people are not rational because you can always claim non-objective differences (mental and not material-financial) that are also equal to them and enter into their utility function. It is true that there is always the possibility of saying that the person does not prefer the pleasure of the moment and is simply irrational, but it is difficult to prove this. Even if you ask him explicitly what he prefers, and he says that money or life or a full bar of chocolate, this still does not mean that he is irrational. He may only prefer it if you put it in front of his eyes. Otherwise, he represses it and that is his pleasure. For that, he pays or loses. But of course, this is already going too far.
Rabbi Moshe Feinstein once wrote in a rebuttal that if a person consistently acts according to his own method, he is sane (he is not considered a fool). Similarly, if a person thinks he is Napoleon, and accordingly wears an appropriate hat and gives orders – he is rational and logical, even though his name is Moshe Zuchmir and he is not from Corsica. I am not sure that I agree with what he says (more precisely – I do not agree), but his way of thinking assumes what I wrote here: rationality is only in the manner of inference. The basic premises of inference are personal and it is difficult to judge them in terms that are either rational or irrational.