hmmm ok so I missed some really key points to consider but I'm still not entirely convinced.

In my mind the situation is clearer if we ask ourselves why we are making the raise in the first place. If our main goal (and most of our profit from the raise) is related to stealing the blinds, then making a 3x raise risks less while getting most of the folds that a 4x raise would get. This seems like it would occur more often in games at 50NL+ and less at micros since at micros you have looser opponents who call raises from the blinds more often.

If we're raising for value and hoping for a call where we can play a large pot in position then wouldn't we want our raise to be bigger since this results in bigger pots that we win. For example, we raise 4x and get called by the bb. on the flop he checks, we cbet and take the pot. This is a fairly common situation and we just won an extra bb because of our larger raise. Over time that probably adds up, and we're not losing much in terms of being played back at since at the micros this is very uncommon.

On the other hand, its much more likely that we have a marginal hand where we just want to win the blinds than it is we have a hand we want to raise for value.

Gah, still a little confused..