The Disgruntled Rationalist began as a way to at least try to understand the irrationality that permeates the world. Growing up in the mountains of Montana primed me to value self-reliance and to believe in the basic goodness of humanity. Subsequent graduate work in economics at Boston University and Princeton solidified an assumption that people were logical – these were pre-Kahneman (at least, pre-Nobel Kahneman) times, and the economic fraternity was only starting to admit psychologists. However, during a twelve-year career on Wall Street, on both the sell-side and the buy-side, watching the certainty with which investors claimed credit for chance nullified my confidence in rationality. Together with my growing conviction that artificial intelligence would displace humans in a broad range of professions, this drove me to want to be part of a broader conversation on the human condition. Consequently, I have left Wall Street and returned to Montana as an intellectual explorer…one who now has the added benefit of family across town rather than 2,500 miles away.
To read more about the impetus for this blog: Read More.