The One Percent Rule
Rational thinking plays a vital role in our everyday lives, from the decisions we make at work to the way we handle relationships and work through complex challenges. In the field of behavioral sciences, scholars have long debated what it truly means to think rationally and how best to understand human behavior. This debate has come to be known as the " Rationality Wars", a heated discussion of papers, articles and conference talks about ideals that refuse to sit comfortably side by side. These debates are about the elusive pursuit of what it means to think logically, and ultimately, how best to understand the behavior of us flawed, wonderfully unpredictable humans.
The arguments started in the aftermath of World War II, where logical rationality, a sharp-edged, crystalline way of thinking designed to shield the West from the chaos of a nuclear showdown, became the new ideal. Cold War rationality, as it was called, promised a lot. It was the ultimate guard dog for democracy, demanding that decisions be made with calculating precision, far away from messy emotions and misguided hunches. This approach influenced real-world policy decisions significantly, especially in areas like defense strategies and economic planning. For instance, during the Cold War, game theory was used to model conflicts and guide strategies to avoid nuclear escalation. In economics, rational choice theory became the foundation for designing policies that presumed individuals acted purely out of self-interest, aiming to optimize outcomes without emotional influence. However, more recent research in affective science, known as Descartes Error, suggests that emotions play a crucial role in decision-making. Emotions can provide valuable information, help prioritize choices, and motivate action, making them an essential aspect of rational thinking rather than a hindrance. Von Neumann, Morgenstern, and Nash, the champions of consistency axioms, game theory, Bayesian probability, didn't just create theory, they sculpted a methodology designed to fight chaos. But this method, crafted to help overcome high-stakes uncertainty, had its limitations. And this is where the complexity begins.
Enter the era of cognitive psychologists. In the 1970s, two brilliant young minds, Kahneman and Tversky, poised to shake the foundations of rationality. These psychologists did something radical. They took the pristine, orderly landscape of logical rationality and said,
