[pp]

Most studies that I'm aware of in behavioral psychology (granted, it's a young branch of science) confirm my point, though. When they tell people about the anchoring heuristic, people still continue to make similar mistakes.

One way to explain would be to think about the number of variables we should account for in virtually any everyday decision. Finding even a fairly optimal solution would consume too many resources and evolution has taught us to deal with this using emotional shortcuts. On the evolutionary time scale, the 50 years when the question of choosing a programming language was relevant would be a tiny dot.

On the other hand, rational knowledge can by absorbed subconsciousness eventually. But when it does, we become unaware of it, by definition.