Seems to me Brooks’s thoughts are marred by a basic conflation of two points:
1) We should aim to be guided by emotion and not just reason in our dealings with others and our formulation of policy.
2) To predict how people are likely to behave, we need to avail ourselves of realistic psychological theories, and not model ourselves simply as rational agents.
The second proposition is true, the first at best only partially so. The partial truth of the first lies in the value of emotion/non-rational abilities in one-on-one and small scale human interactions—hence the social abilities referred to at the bottom of his piece. Insofar as it begins with a (quite improbable and completely undefended) comparison of large scale U.S. policy failures, however, this presumably is not to his basic point.
Seems to me Brooks’s thoughts are marred by a basic conflation of two points:
1) We should aim to be guided by emotion and not just reason in our dealings with others and our formulation of policy.
2) To predict how people are likely to behave, we need to avail ourselves of realistic psychological theories, and not model ourselves simply as rational agents.
The second proposition is true, the first at best only partially so. The partial truth of the first lies in the value of emotion/non-rational abilities in one-on-one and small scale human interactions—hence the social abilities referred to at the bottom of his piece. Insofar as it begins with a (quite improbable and completely undefended) comparison of large scale U.S. policy failures, however, this presumably is not to his basic point.