This suggestion reminds me of Aumann’s argument against behavioral economics, as Prof. Avi Diskin describes it: “Behavioral economists criticize classical and neoclassical economics on the grounds that at its foundation lies the assumption of rationality in action—that is, that in any given situation, decision-makers choose actions that achieve the greatest benefit that can be achieved in that situation. This assumption is challenged by the findings of behavioral economists, who demonstrate through surveys and experiments that decision-makers do not make utility calculations, but rather act according to rules of thumb—‘biases’ or ‘heuristics,’ in their terminology—which sometimes lead to obviously poor results. But Aumann argues that even though decision-makers act according to rules of thumb, and not according to utility calculations, those rules almost always lead to desirable outcomes. The exceptions result from uncommon or artificial scenarios. In other words, the rules are rational, even though they can, on rare occasions, lead to actions that are not rational. Hence the term ‘rationality of rules,’ which captures the synthesis Aumann proposes. Thus, for example, blowing up a negotiation in response to the presentation of a humiliating ultimatum is an entirely rational action, even though it produces an immediate loss of utility. It is rational because it deters other people from humiliating behavior in the future, and therefore brings the greatest benefit over time. True, the blowup does not come from a conscious intention to deter, but out of insult, vindictiveness, self-respect, and so on. But those emotions, which might seemingly be described as irrational, lead to action in accordance with the rule of thumb ‘don’t let others humiliate you,’ and that rule is almost always beneficial over time. In his article, Israel Aumann reviews several classic behavioral-economics experiments in which the subjects seemed to act irrationally, and shows that in all those experiments the environment was artificial and the subjects behaved according to a rational rule. The explanation Aumann proposes is that rules of behavior did not appear out of nowhere. Like physiological traits, rules of behavior are also the product of evolutionary development, biological or social. Evolution is based on the principle of ‘survival of the fittest,’ where fitness is in the practical world, which is not reflected in artificial or exceptional scenarios. Aumann’s basic conclusion is that the behavioral economists’ claim—that human beings act according to behavioral rules and do not calculate which action will bring the greatest benefit—is correct. But usually these rules do in fact bring the greatest benefit. Therefore practical behavior is generally rational—exactly in line with the basic assumption of traditional economics” (Life as a Game, pp. 173–175). But while this excuse seems satisfactory with respect to the use of economic models, with respect to what you discuss in that column, the question that naturally arises is: if so, then why the regret? And you answer that “indeed I preferred not to choose, but not at any price. The consequences were not before my eyes. Had they been before my eyes, I would not have decided not to choose. Rather, I myself removed them from before my eyes, and therefore I am not coerced in this.” But according to that, the question arises why in the first place I used the rule of thumb of using rules of thumb (or following the topography). And here it is not clear to me whether there really is some intermediate category between a decision of the will and coercion (although the distinction is very intuitively understandable, so I assume I’m missing something here).

I didn’t understand the question, and in particular I didn’t understand what connection it has to Aumann’s argument.