What Is Apathy? I Don't Care.

As far as I can see, Varian implies in the following combination of quotations that the student need not care about vast chunks of his textbook:

"...we show that the theory of utility-maximization implies certain testable restrictions on the observed choices of consumers. Such restrictions have several sorts of uses. For example, one can use these observed restrictions to test the model against actual behavior of economic units. Given some data, one can ask if it could have been generated by a maximizing unit..." -- Hal R. Varian (1978) Microeconomic Analysis, Second Edition, W. W. Norton & Company, p. 2

"...the utility maximization hypothesis imposes certain observable restrictions on consumer behavior. In particular, we know that the matrix of substitution terms... must be a symmetric, negative semidefinite matrix." -- Hal R. Varian (1978) Microeconomic Analysis, Second Edition, W. W. Norton & Company, p. 135-136

"It can be shown that any continuous function that satisfies Walras' law is an excess demand function for some economy; i.e., the utility maximization hypothesis places no restrictions on aggregate demand behavior... Thus, any dynamical system on the price sphere can arise from our model of economic behavior." -- Hal R. Varian (1978) Microeconomic Analysis, Second Edition, W. W. Norton & Company, p. 246

In other words, the empirical content of the "utility maximization hypothesis" on the level of the theory of markets is close to empty.