  Further questions arise about the plausibility of the normative requirement to maximize expected utility. Doubts have been expressed, for instance, in regard to the assumption that it is necessarily irrational to fail to select that action that would be optimal, relative to one’s preferences and beliefs.  Perfectly rational agents often appear to be content with states of affairs that are ‘good enough’, from the perspective of their aims and desires, even when they know that alternatives are available that promise a higher return; they ‘satisfice’, rather than seeking to maximize the value of the outcomes achievable through their actions (Slote 1989). They also treat their past intentions and plans as defeasibly fixed constraints on deliberation, rather than attempting to maximize subjective utility anew in every situation they confront (Bratman 1987). Finally, they can adopt different attitudes toward risk, attaching greater importance to avoiding bad outcomes than to maximizing expected utility, as classically conceived (Buchak 2013). Defenders of the maximizing model contend that it is flexible enough to accommodate alleged counterexamples of these kinds (Pettit 1984). If not, however, there may be grounds for doubting that it represents a basic norm or practical reason.