What looks like choice from the outside is usually something simpler from the inside: tiredness, a deadline, a wish not to look foolish. The textbook treats choice as a preference to be revealed. In practice it is a story we tell ourselves after the fact. Ask most people why they did what they did and they will give you a reason; ask them again a week later and the reason will have quietly changed. The remedy is rarely exhortation. It is a change to the situation so that the easier choice is also the better one.
What it gets right
The measure that matters is not what people say about choice but what they do when nobody is scoring. The textbook treats choice as a preference to be revealed. In practice it is a story we tell ourselves after the fact. The evidence here is thinner than the confident commentary suggests, and the honest position is a shrug with a direction of travel. The usual story is that we are careless calculators. The better story is that we are careful about the wrong things.
