ACCORDING to the philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson, 鈥渁 foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds鈥�. Now, mathematicians have proved him right by showing that inconsistency has its benefits: for example, in making us more knowledgeable or leading to a more balanced diet.
Economic theorists have long argued that people should choose in an ordered, consistent way between the things they like. For instance, if you prefer Coke to Pepsi, and Pepsi to lemonade, then you should prefer Coke to lemonade. But experiments have shown that what people prefer often depends, for example, on how the choice is presented.
This inconsistency has its advantages, say mathematicians Edward Piotrowski and Marcin Makowski of the University of Bialystok in Poland. Inspired by Polish mathematician Hugo Steinhaus (1887-1972), whose diary mentions a cat that preferred fish to meat, meat to milk, and milk to fish, Piotrowski and Makowski compared various strategies for selecting from available resources, and discovered that the cat can obtain an optimal balance of resources, and a more balanced diet, by altering its strategies over time, and in some cases using those based on inconsistent preferences. They argue that inconsistent choices might do the same for humans, lending more balance to our consumption of everything from food to goods to information.
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