Janice Stein on When Being Rational Is Irrational
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We have evidence in front of us now that we have leaders who barely meet the minimum requirement of rationology. And now the good fight with Yasha Monk. When I went to graduate school, one of the big fields of study and one of the dominant methodologies was based on the assumption that human beings are rational, that you can use methods of rational choice to predict how human beings in general and politicians and statesmen in particular are going to act. This was at the basis of analyzing everything from
the likelihood of nuclear war to how a representative in Congress would act faced with different kinds of political incentives. Now, I feel a little bit torn about this subject. I was quite dismissive about it in grad school. I've come to appreciate it more over time, but I also see that it has some very serious limitations. And my guest
Today, Janice Stein is one of the most prominent critics of rational choice as a way of trying to understand the social world and particularly as a way of trying to understand this political moment. Janice is the founder of the Monk School for Public Policy at the University of Toronto and a national treasure in Canada, as I learned when I got to spend a little bit of time with her there a couple of months. ago. We also talked about the fundamental issues facing the international order today. I think Janice and I share a political sensibility in which we want to preserve many things of the current order, but also recognize the ways in which it really has failed to live up to its promises, in which attempts to just make a little bit of cosmetic change and otherwise desperately hold on to it are destined to fail because there's
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