[Darryl_P]

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By "irrational," we're talking about the human tendency to minimize personal gain solely for the utility of destroying the utility for someone else.

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It's not a frivolous destruction of utility, though. By making an offer which I deem unfair, he has transgressed upon me. It's not a violation of property rights according to AC theory of course since he didn't harm me physically, coerce me, or take any physical posession of mine, but guess what? My defintion of a transgression is different from that of an ACer. I have a particular value system which forms the set of axioms that I use as the basis for all my reasoning. From there, applying cold hard logic to the situation leads to declining smaller offers.

Just because my axioms are different from yours or those of ACers doesn't mean I'm irrational. Irrationality occurs when I deviate from my own values because of emotion. That might happen in an argument with my wife, for example, or some other stressful situation when my reasoning abilites are impaired.

What seems irrational to me, though, is to assume human nature is (or should be) a certain way despite strong evidence to the contrary and assume anyone who has other values is irrational.