>>10960488Depends on your definition for "rational."
There are definitely sound reasons for why people take the local path of least resistance instead of a harder local path that would lead to less resistance / more gains in the future.
There's a reason for them to not do this too, but that doesn't make their decision irrational. It just makes immediacy something they're assigning greater value to than someone else might. And/or it means they have less energy or willingness to take on local / immediate stressors in exchange for future benefits.
I'll give you a simple and concrete example here: Some portion of severely ill cancer patients will opt for admittance to a hospice for pain management only (i.e. the disease itself won't be treated, they'll just be made more comfortable for the remainder of their life) or euthanasia instead of going through a very difficult and painful stretch of time where they need to take chemotherapy / radiation that will make them suffer to an extreme degree in exchange for a possible remission where they could be healthy and live out a potentially long and pleasant life afterwards.
I'd argue neither choice is "more rational" than the other in that case. Suffering more up front could get you a huge payoff afterwards. But it's not irrational to prefer not taking on a very large amount of suffering regardless of how much you might benefit from doing so later on. For most people, there is probably some level of physical trauma they would refuse to agree to no matter how much money you offered them. For sure I imagine some would amputate their own right foot with a rusty saw if you gave them $1,000,000 in exchange, but I wouldn't, and I imagine most wouldn't.
