[imported_luckyme]

[ QUOTE ]
I'm not 'proving' my claim about illogical actions but trying to understand what we mean by saying an action is illogical.

[/ QUOTE ]
1)I -> W 2) W -> ~A therefore 3) I -> ~A

when A is done, then it appears illogical, but that is in a very simplified system when there are no Ia, Ib, Ic, to contend with. IOW, I is not as easy to define as we’d like to think. To go along with your poker example, an outside logical observer, perhaps me as his omniscient opponent may predict “ He’ll call even though he knows he’s almost surely beat because …. “ and go on to list Ib, Ic . “He won’t want to look like a wuss”, “99% certainty means he’ll be worrying about not sleeping tonight wondering if I had it.”.

So the logical error occurs in MrP not correctly identifying his needs, ‘leaving out facts’ and pretending that simple ‘I’ was his interest. His action however was consistent with his actual interests whether or not we or he thinks they are worthwhile interests or not. It's no accident that poker is dominated by males, a big chunk of it isn't about the money.

( this is off your point, but often it’s that his reasoning is flawed, he’s not able to juggle enough variables quickly enough to make good decisions, those are illogical actions because the steps themselves are screwed up. It’s a lesser crime to miss some facts, and have the logical steps correct for the shrunken fact set you are working with. Outcome is the same so we usually can’t tell from the outside which one it is just by looking at the final decision.)