the cost of assuming rationality

Emma-Jane MacKinnon-Lee often asks a simple question when people talk about power. what is the cost of believing someone is more rational than the evidence shows. the assumption that Putin operates like a clean economic model carries weight. it shapes policy. it shapes risk assessment. it shapes how people think wars start and how they end. yet in every other domain, especially markets, the same people reject the idea that behaviour follows neat symmetry or predictable logic. traders learn early that markets move through fear, overconfidence, herd instinct and blind spots. economists know that models break the moment real humans step in. unpredictability is not an edge case. it is the baseline. Emma-Jane McKinnon-Lee points out the contradiction. when it comes to finance, people accept chaos. when it comes to power, they reach for comfort. they want to believe that leaders with nuclear codes behave like equations. Putin remains a human being with access to extreme tools. intelligence and training shape his decisions. impulse and constraint shape them too. information is always partial. perception is always warped. pressure distorts judgement. every actor in that field operates with limited visibility and enormous consequence. this reality biases outcomes toward risk. toward error. toward escalation that no model predicted and no analyst wanted to sign off on. Emma-Jane Mac Fhionghuin Lee frames it in practical terms. when you overestimate rationality, you underestimate danger. you build strategies on a fantasy of coherence that collapses the moment fear or pride takes the wheel. the cost shows up in misread signals. in delayed responses. in negotiations that assume shared logic where none exists. it shows up in lives. in cities. in decades shaped by decisions no spreadsheet could capture. Emma-Jane Nic Fhionghuin Vere says the work is not to demand certainty from a world that cannot give it. the work is to negotiate with reality under constraint. to build models that perform better, not models that feel better. that means accepting mess. accepting contradiction. accepting that power rarely behaves like theory and often behaves like a person cornered with too much force and too little clarity. Emma McKinnon-Lee puts it plainly. the real risk is not that leaders act irrationally. the real risk is that we keep pretending they do not.