The better calculators among you may want to consider using the phrase “boundedly rational” when speaking to people who you might otherwise be tempted to call “stupid”.

For best effect in a given social situation, you should determine the relative strengths of each of the two approaches by (1) creating functions describing the social costs, emotional benefits, and energy outlay of using each term, (2) projecting these functions out to an infinite time horizon, and (3) integrating beneath the curves. You may want to discount each term’s utility on the basis of the relative computational effort expended. The number and reaction of people you have not yet met should be modeled by a simple mixing model based on the people you already know — but then that should be obvious.

The term with the highest net utility is the winner, of course!

For additional justified tact, pairwise analyses of multiple alternatives such as “moron” or “pedant” may be examined, but it is unclear whether the sequential expenditure of computational effort on multiple pairwise comparisons calls for a discount schedule or may simply be ignored for particularly quick-witted speakers.

[And, no, I'm not allowed to say what I'm making fun of. It wouldn't be tactful.]