Feel free to reuse anything here. I feel like that was only bits and pieces of what I'm really thinking, but human behavior is so vast in scope that it defies easy analysis.
If you ever write more of what you're thinking on this topic, please let me know at hn@ycombinator.com. I'd like to read it. Users often point things out that we haven't thought of, but this was a particularly memorable case to me.
I completely agree about wanting to stay on the human side of formal vs. human.