There is a revealed preferences of use vs non use.
If you, scarface_74, are locked in a cell and fed rotten food, and you choose to eat it instead of starve, it means you like it, right? You've revealed your preference for rotten food, so I shouldn't listen to you when you say you don't like it.
I think you should explain yourself more clearly. It really feels like you're trying to paper over specious argument with vagueness.
I use text messages to talk to people.
Because if you aren't, you are probably missing something relevant about being a US teen, if you're thinking they should just do what you do.
Revealed preference theory is tenuous at best*, and you are making incorrect assumptions and broadly misapplying it onto something that is unsupported and unjustified.
* https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revealed_preference#Criticis...
Let's not play that game anymore. Be clear. What do you think that's supposed to tell me? Flip your question around: If I said I don’t like Truth Social. But I’m always on it, what conclusion would you infer from that?
Is that the point you were trying to make?
Go on. How do you interpret that? What does that tell you?
> It tells me that you really like Truth Social and I shouldn’t believe what you say - you “revealed” your true “preference”
That's what I thought you where thinking. Thank you for at least not beating around the bush anymore.
You're wrong though, and you're thinking about this too simplistically. Yours is one possible interpretation, but not the only one, and not necessarily the right one or even a likely one. The discrepancy between "revealed preference" and "stated preference," only gives you the barest scrap of information. You're jumping to conclusions when you go from that scrap to "you really like X" and "I shouldn’t believe what you say." With the information in the scenario you outlined, about as much as you can reasonably infer is "you can tolerate Truth Social."
It's just like my scenario with the prison cell and the rotten food: if you eat it, it doesn't mean you "really like" it and "I shouldn’t believe what you say." It means you can tolerate it and you have a desire to avoid a negative outcome (starvation) that trumps whatever disgust you feel eating it.
tl;dr: complex and ambivalent feelings are a real and common phenomenon that you should consider.
Are you really saying it’s stretch that when people say one thing and do another, what they do is more indicative of their preferences than what they say?
Revealed preference theory depends on the spending of money as the signal. That is the theory. It simply does not apply to free things. You’re trying to invent some other theory, for which you’re going to need to justify some other way. Revealed preference theory does not apply the way you’d like it to, and does not support your implied claims in this thread.
I say I want to do one thing. But I do another. Which evidence do give more credence to?
If you did understand what revealed preference theory is trying to do, and how, then you’d understand why your “simple English” rhetorical question isn’t asking a useful or economically valid question.
Take your question. The reason someone might do something different from what they said could be due to anything, such as constraints like cost, time, or availability. It could be due to changing circumstances, or someone else’s preferences. Any given answer to your question cannot be used to infer anything about preference, and assuming it does means you’re not thinking scientifically.
Revealed preference theory is trying to demonstrate what can be proven about preference, which is why it requires a situation where someone spends money on a mutually exclusive choice between two things that are close enough to be an apples to apples comparison. If you don’t do that, then you’re fooling yourself about what the data means.