Rationality, by producing consensus and cooperation, could help us realize these shared aspirations for our society. The fundamental issue of irrationality seldom receives any direct attention. But Tuchman offers little in the way of pragmatic proposals on how this arrow might be drawn. In a society that is supposed to understand the benefits of competition, it is remarkable that in both business and government, decisions are taken and policies enacted without conducting effective intellectual exercises to explore the strengths and weaknesses of competing ideas. Competitive intellectual arenas, properly run, have tremendous potential to produce superior ideas.
Infrastructure Consider the incremental process of developing insight.
Basic insights necessarily precede advanced ones. Advanced insights in turn form the basis for still more advanced insights. This accumulation of successive layers of insight represents the process of maturation in individuals, as well as of scientific progress over the ages. In public policy discussions, however, intellectual progress does not occur because basic insights fail to get established. Attempts to develop consensus on advanced insights get bogged down because the basic insights on which they depend are not in place.