Overview
intransitive preferences
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Preferences violating the condition that if one alternative is preferred to a second, and the second is preferred to a third, then the first should be preferred to the third. The following is the simplest example of intransitive preferences: x is preferred to y, y to z, and z to x. It is often interpreted as necessarily irrational, but it can arise from the aggregation of rational individual preferences into a group preference ranking, as in Condorcet's paradox, and it can even arise plausibly in an individual's preferences from a lexicographic semiorder, or when multiple attributes are involved, as in a person who rates three similarly priced cars, x, y, and z on three equally important attributes as follows:This person evidently prefers x to y because it is better on two of the three equally valued attributes, y to z for the same reason, and z to x for the same reason. See also Arrow's impossibility theorem, cyclic preferences, decision theory, money pump. Compare transitive preferences. [From Latin in- not+transitivus going over, from transiens going over, transire to pass over, from trans across+ire to go]
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satisfactory
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