DANGEROUS DECISION MAKING was the title of an article in the Feb 2004 issue of FLYING magazine that referenced an article in the 2003 issue of USAA magazine. The original USAA article was titled "The Psychology of Investing" and it recounted research done in the area of decision making by Daniel Kahneman of Princeton and Amos Tversky of Stanford. Their research studied how the calculation of potential gains and losses often led to poor decision making. USAA applied those principles to a discussion of why investors stay committed to bad investments. FLYING magazine recruited those same principles to help explain why pilots remain committed to poor decisions that led to accidents or disaster.
I saved the article because it resonated with me as I questioned why educated friends who were Republican remained committed to an administration that clearly was leading the country toward disaster. The same principles could equally explain why the administration itself remained irrationally committed to failing policies on many fronts.
Read those principles on the flip: