For those who don’t know, Harvard law professor Cass Sunstein, whose book Simpler I reviewed [scroll down about 80 percent] a few years ago and whose book The Cost-Benefit Revolution I reviewed [scroll down about halfway] earlier this year, is married to former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power.
Power has recently published The Education of an Idealist, and I discussed her worldview briefly earlier this week.
In Simpler, Sunstein, drawing on psychologist Daniel Kahneman, lays out two cognitive systems. He writes:
System 1 is the automatic system, while System 2 is more deliberative and reflective. System 1 works fast. It is emotional and intuitive. When it hears a loud noise, it is inclined to run. When it is offended, it wants to hit back. Much of the time, it is on automatic pilot. It is driven by habits. It certainly eats a delicious brownie. It can procrastinate; it can be impulsive. It can be excessively fearful and too complacent. It is a doer, not a planner. It wants what it wants when it wants it. It has a lot of trouble with complexity.
System 2 is a bit like a computer or Mr. Spock from Star Trek. It is deliberative. It calculates. It hears a loud noise and it assesses whether the noise is a cause for concern. It thinks about probability, carefully and sometimes slowly. It does not get offended. If it sees reason for offense, it makes a careful assessment of what, all things considered, ought to be done. (It believes in deterrence rather than retribution.) It sees a delicious brownie, and it makes a judgment about whether, all things considered, it should eat it. It insists on the importance of self-control. It is a planner more than a doer. It can handle complexity.
Throughout his book, Sunstein argues for government nudges to over come our impulsiveness so that we make better decisions and have better outcomes. Government officials, presumably, are less impulsive than we are.
In her book The Education of an Idealist, writing about the aftermath of the U.S. war against Libya, a war that she urged President Obama to undertake, Samantha Power writes:
We could hardly expect to have a crystal ball when it came to accurately predicting outcomes in places where the culture was not our own.
In his acknowledgements at the end of Simpler, her husband, Cass Sunstein writes:
Samantha Power happens to have the best System 1 in the history of the world.
Yup. Power wanted what she wanted when she wanted it. And the results for Libya were horrendous.
Note: For two excellent critical reviews of Power’s book, see Daniel Larison, “Power’s Pathetic Libyan War Excuse,” The American Conservative, September 9, 2019 and Daniel Bessner, “The Fog of Intervention,” New Republic, September 4, 2019.
READER COMMENTS
Mark Brady
Sep 21 2019 at 7:14pm
Good post. Brief and to the point. And it had me laughing out loud.
Alan Goldhammer
Sep 22 2019 at 8:55am
While Power may have had significant influence on the decision to get involved in Libya, this event pales in comparison to all the troubles VP Dick Cheney got us into during the early oughts. We are still paying for the consequences of those interventions whereas I don’t think we have had any lasting impact from the Libya foray.
David Henderson
Sep 22 2019 at 10:18am
Re Cheney, true, but I’m not sure what your point is. I think we should be critical of everyone who makes really bad decisions or has input into those decisions.
Also, I think it’s a mistake to judge politicians by whether they do lasting damage to us, if by “us,” you mean Americans. The Libyan intervention definitely caused lasting damage to Libyans. She claims to care about them. I do care about them.
Jon Murphy
Sep 22 2019 at 12:22pm
Might be a little early to make that call. The events of 9/11 has roots in the 80’s with the US intervention in Afghanistan.
When you destabilize a stable government, God only knows what might crawl out of that mire.
Russell Richards
Sep 23 2019 at 11:52pm
I believe the deaths of the US personnel qualify as lasting impacts.
Zeke5123
Sep 22 2019 at 12:28pm
It is far from obvious that you are correct. The Bush administration successfully negotiated with the Qaddafi to give up nuclear ambitions.
Qaddafi afterwards was involved in a civil conflict with no good guys. Then the Obama administration, based largely on humanitarian concerns, took Qaddafi out.
After giving up the bomb, Qaddafi didn’t really threaten the US in any way.
The message sent to dictators is never give up trying to develop the bomb because once you have the bomb the US can’t mess with you. That was the exact wrong message to send.
Now, we don’t know what the cost will be because the bad incentive may not result in a cost or the cost may be far into the future.
But there is an unaccounted for incentive cost that is obvious; all the more tragic when the intervention made Libya a worse place when the goal was purely humanitarian.
Libya was a boondoggle at least on par with Iraq. If there were a just world, Powers would be laughed out of every conversation for the Libya disaster.
Roger McKinney
Sep 24 2019 at 12:29pm
“We could hardly expect to have a crystal ball when it came to accurately predicting outcomes in places where the culture was not our own.”
That’s why we should stay out of other countries. The great historian of diplomacy Herbert Butterfield wrote that the unintended consequences of war are almost always worse than the reasons for going to war. Because we cant predict them we should have very limited goals in war and never regime change.
David Seltzer
Sep 24 2019 at 6:17pm
“Sunstein argues for government nudges to over come our impulsiveness so that we make better decisions and have better outcomes. Government officials, presumably, are less impulsive than we are.” Seems like Cass is the prince of irony. A subset of flawed humans elected to counsel the rest of “we the flawed” to behave reasonably? Smacks of dirigisme. What’s next if we fail? A shove instead of a nudge? Government officials are less impulsive? Yeah! Right! Endless wars. Gov run schools graduating less than half their students. The VA is another form of the DMV. No apologies for the screed!
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