Rationality indeterminacy

First, I shall explain how rational-choice theory can fail through indeterminacy. In general, there are two forms of indeterminacy. There may be several actions that are equally and optimally good. Or there may be no action that is at least as good as all others. 

A second prominent feature here is the ergodic character (or lack thereof) of the process, depending on the rationality or irrationality of <. This leads inevitably to the fascinating question, Does a real system choose between these values of , and if so, how The boundaries themselves remain neutral with respect to the choice of whenever they are compatible with the flow. Thus, for a slide flow, the walls must be parallel to the slides, whereas for a tube flow, they must be parallel to the tube. In both cases there remains an additional degree of freedom, which is precisely the choice of f. Other examples of indeterminancy arise from the neglect of fluid and particle inertia, as already discussed in Section I (see also the review in Leal, 1980). Whether or not inclusion of nonlinear inertial effects can remove the above indeterminacy, as it often does for the purely hydrodynamic portion of the problem, is a question that lies beyond the scope of the present (linear) Stokesian context. 

Lupton (ibid) asserts that the early modems eliminated gemtine indeterminacy, or uncertainty , by inventing risk . They had learnt to transform (what until then was perceived to be) a radically indeterminate cosmos into a manageable one, through the myth of calculability . Hence risk, in its purely technical meaning, came to rely upon conditions in which the probability estimates of an event are able to be known or knowable. According to Lupton, uncertainty, in contrast, was used as an alternative term when such probabilities are inestimable or unknown. The distinction presupposed that there was a form of indeterminacy that that was not subject to rational calculation of various alternative possibilities. Keynes (cited above) built on this distinction when he pointed at the animal spirits of investors. 

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