Although these new insights "have given us a much deeper understanding of what we mean by rational behavior, economists believe they already have an excellent theory of economic rationality: 'expected utility theory.'  To this sort of skeptic, the peculiar behaviors described in these neuro-scientific case studies are really just “bugs” in the basic program of economic rationality.  It’s interesting to know what the typical bugs are, but they’re a sideshow to the main event, the exceptions that prove the rule.

"This is the point where we turn the standard economic view of human rationality on its head.  We aren’t rational actors with a few behavioral quirks — instead, our brains are collections of quirks. We’re not a system WITH bugs; we’re a system OF  bugs.

"Working together, under certain conditions, these quirks often produce behavior that an economist would call “rational.”  But under other conditions, they produce behaviors that an economist would consider wildly irrational."