People are often faced with so called hard choices – also known as hard cases of comparison. In trying to characterize these hard choices, philosophers have made two central claims. First, failure of transitivity underlies hard cases of comparison. Second, using a random procedure is considered inappropriate in order to arrive at a decision in hard cases. While having some argumentative support, both claims primarily rely on expert intuitions. The results of the experiments we present in this paper challenge both claims, as well as the representativeness of expert intuitions that support these claims, by showing that most people (i) violate transitivity only if a hard choice is important, and (ii) find it appropriate to use a random procedure even in hard cases of comparison.

中文翻译：

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如何不刻画艰难的选择

人们经常面临所谓的艰难选择——也称为比较困难的情况。在试图描述这些艰难选择的特征时，哲学家们提出了两个核心主张。首先，传递性的失败是比较困难的情况的基础。其次，为了在困难的情况下做出决定，使用随机程序被认为是不合适的。虽然有一些争论的支持，但这两种说法主要依赖于专家的直觉。我们在本文中提出的实验结果通过表明大多数人 (i) 仅在艰难选择很重要时才违反传递性，以及 (ii) 发现支持这些主张的专家直觉的代表性，来挑战这两个主张即使在比较困难的情况下，也可以使用随机程序。