The classic economic theory embedded in western democracies holds an assumption that human beings will almost always behave rationally in the end and make logical choices that will keep our society balanced on the whole. Daniel Kahneman is the psychologist who won the Nobel Prize in Economics for showing that this is simply not true. There’s something sobering — but also helpfully grounding — in speaking with this brilliant and humane scholar who explains why none of us is an equation that computes. As surely as we breathe, we will contradict ourselves and confound each other.

Daniel Kahneman received the Nobel Prize in Economics in 2002. He’s best known for his book, Thinking, Fast and Slow and is now releasing a new book, Noise: A Flaw in Human Judgment, written with Olivier Sibony and Cass R. Sunstein. He’s the Eugene Higgins Professor of Psychology Emeritus at Princeton University, Professor of Psychology and Public Affairs Emeritus at the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs, and a fellow of the Center for Rationality at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem.

This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the On Being episode "Daniel Kahneman — Why We Contradict Ourselves and Confound Each Other." Find the transcript for that show at onbeing.org.