Weekend Thoughts: On Irrationality, Identity, and Why We Keep Asking "What Did They Say?"
By Johan
Professor of Behavioral Economics & Applied Cognitive Theory
Former Foreign Service Officer
If you haven’t read Part 1 of The World Ahead 2026, start there. It establishes the analytical framework for understanding how incentive structures shape nations and why American unreliability has become the central driver of global instability. Part 2 drops this week, mapping where major powers stand and what their behavioral incentives reveal about their next moves.
But first, a weekend reflection on something closer to home: why we can’t stop talking about what other people said, and what that reveals about how we process our irrational political landscape.
There’s a conversation pattern I’ve been noticing everywhere lately…in family gatherings, work meetings, social media threads, talking to friends. It goes like this:
“Do you know what [Pat/Neil/Al] said?”
“They said X-Politician is great.”
“Can you believe they said that?”
“Why would they say that?”
“Isn’t that irrational?”
The person repeating the comment isn’t asking for information. They already heard what was said. They’re asking for something else entirely: emotional regulation, tribal validation, reassurance that their worldview is still intact.
And here’s what fascinates me: some people see this pattern immediately and find it exhausting. Others are completely inside it, repeating the same conversational loop without recognizing the mechanism they’re trapped in.
Kahneman’s Elegant Shrug
Daniel Kahneman spent his entire career documenting something most people refuse to accept: humans are predictably, systematically, beautifully irrational.
Not occasionally irrational. Not irrational when stressed or misinformed. Fundamentally irrational.
His work with Amos Tversky demonstrated that people don’t behave like rational agents maximizing utility. They behave like emotional, biased, pattern-seeking organisms running on cognitive shortcuts that evolved for environments nothing like the one we live in now.
The remarkable thing about Kahneman wasn’t just that he mapped human irrationality with scientific precision. It’s that he did so with a kind of amused acceptance. In interviews late in his life, he openly admitted that even after decades studying cognitive biases, he still fell for them. He didn’t see himself as above the system. He saw himself inside it.
And he wasn’t bothered by this.
He didn’t moralize irrationality. He observed it. He saw it as part of the architecture of being human.
His fundamental insight: if you want better decisions, you don’t “fix people.”
You redesign environments, incentives, and choice architecture.
You fix the system, not the chooser.
The Real Question Isn’t “Why Did They Say That?”
When someone obsessively repeats what another person said (especially about politics, race, guns, vaccines) they’re not analyzing content. They’re processing identity threats.
These topics aren’t informational. They’re tribal markers. When someone says “He is strong and great” or “X doesn’t work the way they say,” they’re not making a factual claim you can verify. They’re signaling belonging, expressing fear, asserting worldview.
The person who can’t stop repeating the comment isn’t confused by the statement. They’re destabilized by the signal.
Here’s what’s actually happening in that conversation loop:
“Do you know what they said?” = “I’m feeling unsettled and need to discharge this tension.”
“Why would they say that?” = “Please help me make sense of my emotional reaction.”
“Isn’t that irrational?” = “Confirm that I’m on the right side and my worldview is still valid.”
It’s not information processing. It’s emotional outsourcing.
Why Some People See It Clearly While Others Don’t
There’s a structural reason some people recognize this pattern immediately while others remain trapped in it. It has nothing to do with intelligence or education.
People who see the irrationality clearly:
Aren’t emotionally invested in the statements themselves
Can tolerate ambiguity and contradiction without panic
See patterns across situations rather than isolated incidents
Don’t use other people’s comments to regulate their own emotions
Operate from the premise that humans are fundamentally irrational
People who stay trapped in the loop:
Experience identity activation when certain topics arise
Need to resolve cognitive dissonance immediately
Use gossip and outrage as emotional scaffolding
Process the world through social comparison
Still believe humans are logical creatures who make sense
The difference isn’t cognitive capacity. It’s comfort with human irrationality as the baseline condition.
The System Amplifies What It Rewards
Kahneman understood that individual irrationality becomes systemic dysfunction when institutions, incentives, and information environments reward it.
We’re living in exactly that moment.
Social media platforms maximize engagement through outrage and tribal signaling. Political systems reward identity performance over policy coherence. News ecosystems profit from anxiety and moral panic. The entire architecture of modern information flow is designed to activate emotional reactivity and suppress reflective reasoning.
This isn’t conspiracy. It’s incentive structure.
When the system rewards people for:
Reacting instead of reflecting
Signaling instead of analyzing
Tribal loyalty instead of independent thought
Emotional intensity instead of intellectual honesty
...then of course people behave that way. They’re responding rationally to irrational incentives.
It Is What It Is
Kahneman never tried to fix human irrationality. He mapped it.
He didn’t expect people to transcend their cognitive biases through willpower or education. He knew better.
His stance was almost Zen: humans are irrational. The system is irrational. Expecting rationality is the irrational part.
That doesn’t mean resignation. It means accuracy.
If you want to navigate the world effectively (whether in politics, economics, relationships, or your own decision-making) you need to start from the correct premise: irrationality is the default operating system.
Not a bug. Not a failure. Not something that education or intelligence overcomes.
The default.
Stop Decoding. Start Understanding the System.
The people repeating “Do you know what they said?” aren’t going to stop. They’re not confused, they’re regulating. They’re not analyzing irrationality, they’re discharging the anxiety it produces.
You can’t fix that by explaining it to them. You can only understand the behavioral mechanics well enough to navigate it without getting pulled into the emotional vortex.
This is the skill that matters now: seeing the system-level patterns while others remain trapped in micro-level reactions.
Seeing identity performance while others see political debate.
Seeing emotional regulation while others see rational discourse.
Kahneman spent fifty years demonstrating that we’re all running on flawed cognitive architecture. The question isn’t whether humans are irrational. The question is whether you can see the irrationality clearly enough to operate effectively within it.
Most people can’t.
But some can.
The Fracture Point
And that difference—-between those who accept human irrationality as baseline and those who keep fighting it, might be the most important cognitive divide of our time.
Because when global order is reorganizing and domestic institutions are captured, when American reliability has collapsed and allies are scrambling to adapt, when the maps no longer match the territory and no one knows what rules still apply; the people still asking “why would they say that?” are operating with the wrong framework entirely.
They’re trying to decode statements as if they contain logical content worth analyzing. They’re expecting rational actors in an irrational system. They’re looking for coherent worldviews when what they’re actually witnessing is identity performance under stress.
The world isn’t fracturing because people stopped making sense. It’s fracturing because the incentive structures that held the old order together have fundamentally changed, and most people are still running on cognitive architecture designed for a world that no longer exists.
You can’t reason someone out of a position they didn’t reason themselves into. You can’t expect rational discourse when the entire information ecosystem rewards the opposite. You can’t wait for people to “wake up” when being asleep is more comfortable and the system punishes clarity.
What you can do is see it clearly. Understand the mechanics. Operate from accurate premises instead of comforting fictions.
That’s all. There’s no comfort in clarity. Only accuracy. Radical clarity is tough.
Most won’t. But you’re not most people.
And if you want better outcomes? Remember Kahneman’s fundamental insight: you don’t “fix people.” You redesign environments, incentives, and choice architecture. You fix the system, not the chooser.
That’s the work ahead.
Part 2 of The World Ahead 2026 drops this week. We'll map where the major powers stand, what their behavioral incentives reveal, and who's positioned for what's coming. If you missed Part 1, read it now. It establishes the framework for everything that follows.
Why the Snail
It carries its home.
It moves with intention.
It leaves a trail.
So do I.
Johan is a behavioral scientist and former Foreign Service Officer. He writes about power, belief systems, and how humans make sense of collapse. Subscribe for essays on what happens when the maps no longer match the territory.
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Really made me think. I definitely hear a lot of that. This political environment is so frustrating and people keep spinning in circles. This shows clarity and a way for me to try to break out.
I’ve read kahneman several years ago, and what I remember is somewhat different from what you state. I do not recall him using the term “irrational.” The word is vague, and can mean different things. What he and Tversky demonstrated is that we usually rely on “rule of thumb” thinking, a simple minded, fast thinking that often lead us astray. It might have worked well enough eons ago, but it is dangerous in today’s complex, rapidly changing world. You may call it “irrational” if you like, but this is not Freudian irrationality.