DW,
It's a perfectly rational design, because what it is doing is performing in exactly the same manner it does in Normal Law.
How could it be "rational" when nothing else does (perform in the same manner as in NL)? This "rational design" may have been part of the reason they were all killed that night. Granted, the pilots may have not known a lot of things they should, but I am entirely on the side of, and in awe of, the estimable Gretchenfrage, on all of this stuff. I think it is relatively clear (as clear as anything in these thread can be) that the AB FBW is over-designed, by and for nerds.
I may not be a real pilot, but I
do have a rawther large brain!
