Talk:Rational choice models

Invisible Hand

The introduction to this article says that Rational Choice Theory is often associated with the "invisible hand" and as proof cites the Levin and Milgrom Chapter. But Levin and Milgrom don't talk about the invisible hand in that chapter or elsewhere that I can find. And it's not included anywhere else in the article. Should it be better referenced, or omitted? Llamabr (talk) 12:52, 27 April 2021 (UTC)

Substantial edits by Nickrooney99 and Cbonq1 for course credit in April 2021

Section heading changed after realizing my initial error.

I'm a bit too swamped right now to dive into this, but the following edit is substantial with many different parts, some of which I would challenge after taking a quick skim.

• Rational choice theory: Difference between revisions — 23 April 2021

This is the only edit by User:Nickrooney99 at this point in time, and the user has not created a talk page.

In particular, there is no remaining mention of Gary Becker after this edit, which I can't imagine is a step in the right direction given the history of this subject matter.

Additionally, many of the standard "also known as" clauses were removed from the lead sentence. — MaxEnt 18:51, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

In my haste earlier today, I clicked the wrong diff button and confused myself about what I was looking at. My apologies.

There are actually two users and a total of four edits over a couple of days, both my editors with no previous activity, and no subsequent activity (reverse chronology):

• User:Cbonq1
  • 05:00, 25 April 2021 — +94 characters
  • 04:55, 25 April 2021 — +15 characters
  • 04:15, 25 April 2021 — -1602 characters
• User:Nickrooney99
  • 20:07, 23 April 2021 — +845 characters

After three minutes of gradeschool cyberstalking, I was able to determine that user Nickrooney99 and Cbonqe1 are both associated with ECON3430 taught at the University of Queensland in 2021 under Kenan Kalayci, with credit awarded for improving a selected article in Economics, where both were assigned this article, rational choice theory.

• ECON3430_2021 — part of wmflabs.org

The goal of the program is to improve Wikipedia articles related to a Managerial Economics concept.

Students will need to complete the following milestones for the assignment.

1. Complete training modules (Wikipedia essentials, editing basics, and evaluating articles and sources) (4%)
2. Nominate an article to improve (1%)
3. Improve the article assigned to you (10%)

Wikipedia's good article criteria will be used for evaluating the final submission.

Marks will be allocated for the marginal contribution made on the article in bringing the article towards a good article status.

The student's total improvements should be minimum of 2000 characters (or 300 words) and one media item.

Unfortunately, there's no transparency on the grading process, and some elements of these edits are of dubious quality with sophomoric language texture.

I think I've done enough here. I was really here to add stable preference to preference (economics) and only came here as a byproduct, where I noticed some strange omissions, and then investigated.

Without any intended critique of the people behind this process, I recommend reverting half or more of the diffs I've cited above.

I did quickly peek into Kenan Kalayci's bio and he seems like a nice guy with his heart in the right place. However, as an economist, he would surely understand that awarding course credit for babes wet behind the wiki ears wading into the weeds with no declared social context creates at least a somewhat misaligned incentive structure which complicates the lives of regular editors. — MaxEnt 01:14, 18 January 2022 (UTC)

In the bigger picture, there are many other economics articles associated with this course.

I sampled another one to see if the present article is an outlier:

• diff on loss aversion

This edit is of higher quality and a positive contribution.

The full list of articles edited is here:

• Articles Edited

Coloured diffs are available from the assessment tool for each one. — MaxEnt 01:27, 18 January 2022 (UTC)

Baffling there is no strong statement of rational choice axioms

Severe lack of rigor to describe the fundamentals of this subject. In desperate need of an overhaul if I can't get to it myself. No legible documentation of the axioms that describe rational choice theory and have been integral to the field for decades. Adamopoulos (talk) 15:38, 17 April 2023 (UTC)

Would be very nice to have this! I've been on a spree trying to do something similar for social choice theory. This needs:

1. A merge from the duplicate over at decision theory
2. A discussion of the VNM axioms
3. A discussion of the Dutch Book arguments

Much of this can be found on the SEP page on decision theory, which should be a great source for this. Closed Limelike Curves (talk) 04:29, 8 March 2024 (UTC)

Proposed merge of Decision theory with Rational choice theory

Same topic under a different name (t · c) buidhe 07:48, 13 September 2024 (UTC)

This page seems to state otherwise: Rational choice theory does not explain what rational people would do in a given situation, which falls under decision theory. jlwoodwa (talk) 19:32, 15 September 2024 (UTC)

It does, but at least at a first read I have been unable to find anything in the source given (a German language journal article on rational choice theory as an explanatory framework for schooling decisions) that would support such a sweeping statement. Only words to the effect that people frequently use common sense rather than formal reasoning for decision making. That does not seem to be the same thing, or indeed a differentiator from decision theory. In fact, decision theory does not even seem to be mentioned in the article. Felix QW (talk) 08:22, 16 September 2024 (UTC)

It does state that, but it's incorrect, as several people on this talk page have noted before. In fact this whole page is kind of a huge mess. The two definitely need to be merged. – Closed Limelike Curves (talk) 19:31, 21 September 2024 (UTC)

I will note that some people use the two slightly differently in one way: some people will use "decision theory" when referring to the field as a prescriptive model of rationality, and call it "rational choice theory" when describing the descriptive use of it in the social sciences (under the assumption of people making rational choices). These two topics need to be discussed separately, but I would title the second page more clearly using some name like "Rational agent models". – Closed Limelike Curves (talk) 19:35, 21 September 2024 (UTC)

Second this. W9793 (talk) 19:31, 17 October 2024 (UTC)

Maybe we should merge them first and think about it later. They certainly both have similarities and they share problems that need to be fixed. Narfhead4444, Gamer Ordinare 14:19, 30 September 2024 (UTC)