… The belief, or rather hope, that humankind is ultimately rational has gripped Western politics at least since Descartes, and inspired such 19th-century optimists as Thomas Jefferson and John Stuart Mill. “Where the press is free, and every man able to read, all is safe,” Jefferson famously wrote.
But in recent years we’ve learned much about the human mind that contradicts the view of people as rationally self-interested decision-makers. CONT.
Gideon Lichfield, Quartz