Little Lapses of Reasoning

Sometimes, as Mrs Vache Folle delights in reminding me from time to time, I have pretty stupid thought processes. “Why,” she asked me this weekend, “did you buy so much junk food at the supermarket” (I usually do the shopping because I get home early on Fridays)? “Because,” I replied matter of factly, “I am starting a diet on Monday.” In my mind, it seemed self evident that starting a diet meant a last weekend of cookies and honey roasted cashews before a lifetime of deprivation.

“Did you know,” she asked me one Saturday morning, “that there is a Raptor Center here in Dutchess County where they keep a number of raptors? Perhaps we’ll check it out.” I was taken aback. Real live raptors right here in Dutchess County? “I thought they were extinct.” “Not velociraptors”! Mrs Vache Folle cried. “Owls and hawks and eagles. You know, predatory birds”. It did not seem half as interesting to me with just birds instead of dinosaurs.

Mrs Vache Folle has her own moments now and then. We keep a bird feeder right outside a picture window where we can watch the birds from the dining room or the kitchen. “Did you ever notice,” she asked one morning., “that the birds always seem to know when it is our meal time? They always know to come to the feeder when we are eating. Why do you think that is?” It had not occurred to her that the birds are always at the feeder and that she took notice of them only when we were preparing or eating our meals. Alas, this is my only example of a lapse of reason on her part. She is otherwise entirely sensible.

Even sensible, educated folks are apt to reason strangely from time to time. We want to optimize but we are sometimes too stupid or ill informed to do so. I have found myself driving across town to save $5 on a $20 item, but I won’t even cross the street to save $50 on a $5,0000 item. My friends who are parents take unearthly precautions to guard against child snatchers, a very remote risk, but they think nothing of putting their children into the car and driving around with them as passengers, where the risk is several orders of magnitude greater. My conspecifics will pay taxes out the wazoo and surrender civil liberties to protect against mythical Islamofascist boogeymen, but they don’t even see the real and immediate threat that their own government poses to them.

Rational animals? Not so much.