ABSTRACT
In many important decisions in life, from public to private, irrational thinking can have severe costs. In fact, it can even lead to disaster. This chapter examines some examples of irrational thinking. One particular possibility is that people simply don't understand the nature of a dominating strategy, that is, they do not understand the irrationality of not pursuing it. On the other hand, people may be subject to either primary or secondary irrationality in thinking about the consequences of sterile-needle-exchange programs, or they may reject consequentialism as a basis for government policies. The secondary irrationality that can occur is particularly poignant because without an effort to convince others, there is absolutely no way of knowing whether such an effort would have succeeded. Requiring reason-based decisions results in the type of irrationality, namely, the disjunction effect, which violates the principle of domination.
