Description
Rational choice theory has long promised a unified account of decision, belief, and action. From its classical formulation in Expected Utility theory to its modern refinements in Rank-Dependent Utility and Cumulative Prospect Theory, the paradigm rests on a simple but powerful assumption: preferences can be represented as stable functions. Once properly specified, these functions are presumed to encode rational behavior across contexts, choices, and time. Yet after decades of empirical investigation, this promise remains unfulfilled. Decision paradoxes - Allais-type violations, Ellsberg ambiguity effects, Birnbaum preference reversals, order effects, framing effects - are not marginal deviations. They are robust, reproducible, and systematic. More importantly, they do not disappear with better elicitation, greater incentives, or increased expertise. On the contrary, many of them intensify under conditions of learning, repetition, and deliberation. The persistence of these phenomena suggests that the problem is not psychological noise or bounded computation, but something more fundamental.