My skepticism toward the foundational assumptions of the social sciences goes back decades. Despite earning a B.A. in Political Science, an MPA, and spending much of my career in government, I never accepted the discipline’s core premise: that human beings — and therefore political leaders, institutions, and societies — behave as rational actors.

It became clear to me early on that what counts as “rational” in one culture may be entirely irrational in another. Yet much of modern analysis still rests on Anglo‑American and Western European intellectual traditions dating back to the Enlightenment. These frameworks assume universality where none exists.

Samuel Huntington, for all the controversy surrounding his work, was correct about one thing: the world is divided into broad cultural zones. After living in Asia for many years, the differences are unmistakable. East Asia, Western Europe, the Anglo‑American world, Eastern Europe, and the Middle East each operate according to distinct cultural logics, historical memories, and social expectations. To pretend otherwise is to misunderstand the world.

I learned this lesson sharply in graduate school. During a macroeconomics seminar, my professor insisted that universal economic principles govern all firms everywhere — that profit maximization is the sole objective. I pointed out that in East Asia, corporations often prioritize market share and long‑term positioning, willingly absorbing losses for years to secure strategic advantage. He dismissed the argument, and I let the matter drop. But I remain convinced that I was right. Economic behavior is culturally embedded, not universal.

These experiences shaped the reflections that follow.

On Strategic Delusion and the Vietnam War

A particularly relevant work is H. R. McMaster’s Dereliction of Duty, which examines how U.S. civilian and military leaders misjudged the Vietnam War by relying on flawed assumptions, bureaucratic groupthink, and a misplaced belief in quantitative models. One infamous computer‑driven analysis even suggested the United States had effectively “won” the war by 1968 — a stark example of how technocratic rationalism can blind policymakers to cultural realities and nationalist motivations. McMaster argues that American leaders misunderstood Vietnamese nationalism and the nature of the conflict, illustrating how strategic failure often stems from cultural ignorance rather than insufficient data.

On the Origins and Misuse of the “Deep State” Concept

Another valuable source is Mike Lofgren’s The Deep State: The Fall of the Constitution and the Rise of a Shadow Government. Lofgren, a former congressional staffer, originally used the term “Deep State” to describe the entrenched bureaucratic, financial, and national‑security networks that shape policy continuity across administrations. His argument was structural, not conspiratorial. However, in subsequent years, the term was appropriated by segments of the political right and transformed into a catch‑all conspiracy theory suggesting a unified, malevolent cabal controlling government. This distortion bears little resemblance to Lofgren’s original analysis, which focused on institutional inertia, not secret plots. Understanding how the term evolved — and how it has been misused — is essential for any serious discussion of American governance.

The Fundamental Mistake Historicists and Social Scientists Keep Making

Why rational‑actor models fail, why culture matters, and why so much analysis goes wrong.

Personal Observations on the Limits of Social Science

My skepticism toward the foundational assumptions of the social sciences goes back decades. Despite earning a B.A. in Political Science, an MPA, and spending much of my career inside government, I never accepted the discipline’s core premise: that human beings — and therefore political leaders, institutions, and societies — behave as rational actors.

It became clear to me early on that what counts as “rational” in one culture may be entirely irrational in another. Yet much of modern analysis still rests on Anglo‑American and Western European intellectual traditions dating back to the Enlightenment. These frameworks assume universality where none exists.

Samuel Huntington, for all the controversy surrounding his work, was correct about one thing: the world is divided into broad cultural zones. After living in Asia for many years, the differences are unmistakable. East Asia, Western Europe, the Anglo‑American world, Eastern Europe, and the Middle East each operate according to distinct cultural logics, historical memories, and social expectations. To pretend otherwise is to misunderstand the world.

I learned this lesson sharply in graduate school. During a macroeconomics seminar, my professor insisted that universal economic principles govern all firms everywhere — that profit maximization is the sole objective. I pointed out that in East Asia, corporations often prioritize market share and long‑term positioning, willingly absorbing losses for years to secure strategic advantage. He dismissed the argument, and I let the matter drop. But I remain convinced that I was right. Economic behavior is culturally embedded, not universal.

These experiences shaped the reflections that follow.

The Core Problem: We Pretend Humans Are Rational

Across the social sciences — history, political science, economics — there is a shared foundational assumption:

Human beings make rational decisions.

This assumption is elegant, convenient, and completely wrong.

People are emotional, impulsive, contradictory, and often deeply irrational. They misread their enemies, misunderstand their allies, and miscalculate their own interests. Nowhere is this more obvious than in war, where leaders routinely stumble into conflicts they neither intended nor fully understood — and where the consequences spiral far beyond anything they imagined.

Yet social scientists continue to build models as if human beings were stable, predictable machines.

Political Science: The Myth of the Rational Leader

Political science often begins with a dubious premise: leaders are rational actors, and their decisions can be predicted through “rational choice” analysis. But this approach collapses the moment you step outside the classroom.

You cannot understand a foreign country without understanding:

its culture
its language
its history
its internal narratives
its emotional landscape

Political scientists frequently analyze countries they do not speak the language of, do not live in, and do not culturally understand — and then confidently declare what is “rational” for that country’s leadership.

This is not analysis. It is projection based on largely Anglo-American cultural and historical cultural frameworks.. What is rational in North Korean context is not the same thing as what is rational in Washington, DC. that is because culture shapes how we view and understand the world and what we find to be rational. and humans beings are not rational actors making decisions for all sorts of reasons, most of them irrational and based on their culture and history. If you don’t understand the culture, you can’t understand the people and can’t understand what is a rational decision for that person.

Economics: The Delusion of Universal Laws

Economics suffers from a similar fantasy: that humans are rational economic actors and that universal economic laws apply everywhere.

Neither premise holds up.

People routinely make terrible financial decisions. They buy things they don’t need, save too little, panic at the wrong time, and cling to beliefs that defy logic. And what counts as “rational” varies dramatically across cultures.

A decision that makes perfect sense in the United States may be irrational in China, Europe, or the Middle East. Economic behavior is shaped by:

cultural norms
historical memory
social expectations
linguistic framing

There is no universal economic human.

Historians: The Blind Spot of A‑Cultural Analysis

Historians are not immune to these errors. Many fall into one of two camps:

Institutionalists, who believe large structures drive history
Great Man theorists, who believe charismatic individuals shape events

Both contain partial truths, but neither is sufficient.

History is messy. It emerges from a tangle of:

personalities
institutions
accidents
cultural forces
emotional reactions
miscalculations

Charismatic leadership can change the world — but only within the cultural and institutional constraints of the moment.

Two Examples of How These Mistakes Distort Reality

“Wall Street drives American foreign policy.”

Some left‑leaning historians argue what Wall Street wants dictate that U.S. politics.

the U.S. would have normalized relations with Cuba decades ago
wars in Iraq, Iran and elsewhere would never have happened
foreign policy would be consistently business‑friendly

But history shows the opposite. Wars often damage markets. Presidents routinely make decisions that contradict business interests.

And ideology, emotion, misperception, and domestic politics — not just capital shapes foreign policy.

“The Deep State runs everything.”

Another common belief is that senior leadership in the U.S. government is unified, coherent, and consistent across administrations — the so‑called “Deep State.”

This is not supported by evidence.

Leadership changes constantly.
Agencies disagree with each other.
Presidents and advisors react to events more than they shape them.
Most decisions are made under time pressure, with incomplete information, and without grand conspiratorial coordination.

Government is chaotic, not monolithic.

On Strategic Delusion and the Vietnam War

A particularly relevant work is Colonel Harry G. Summers Jr.’s On Strategy: A Critical Analysis of the Vietnam War. Summers argues that the United States misunderstood the nature of the conflict by treating it as a conventional military struggle rather than a nationalist revolution. He highlights how U.S. strategists relied on quantitative models, body counts, and computer‑driven assessments that misleadingly suggested the war was being “won” as early as 1968. These metrics obscured the deeper reality: the United States was on the wrong side of Vietnamese nationalism. Summers’ critique remains one of the clearest demonstrations of how strategic failure emerges when policymakers impose Western rationalist frameworks onto conflicts rooted in culture, identity, and historical memory.

On Ho Chi Minh’s Overtures to the United States — and America’s Misreading

There is a substantial body of scholarship documenting Ho Chi Minh’s early attempts to work with the United States, particularly during and immediately after World War II. Articles in Diplomatic History, The Journal of American–East Asian Relations, and works by historians such as William Duiker and Fredrik Logevall describe how Ho repeatedly reached out to U.S. officials, framing Vietnamese independence in terms Americans should have understood. Ho admired aspects of the American Revolution, quoted the U.S. Declaration of Independence in Vietnam’s own declaration, and even sought American support against the return of French colonial rule.

Yet U.S. policymakers, viewing Ho primarily through the lens of Cold War ideology, assumed he was a Soviet or Chinese proxy. This was a profound misreading. Ho’s primary allegiance was to Vietnamese nationalism, not international communism. OSS officers who collaborated with him during WWII reported positively on his intentions, but their assessments were ignored in Washington. The refusal to engage with Ho — based on ideological assumptions rather than cultural or historical understanding — became one of the earliest and most consequential strategic errors of the Vietnam conflict.

On Culture and Civilizational Differences

Samuel Huntington — The Clash of Civilizations
Clifford Geertz — The Interpretation of Cultures

On Irrationality and Human Decision‑Making

Daniel Kahneman — Thinking, Fast and Slow
Dan Ariely — Predictably Irrational

On the Limits of Western Social Science

James C. Scott — Seeing Like a State
Benedict Anderson — Imagined Communities

On War, Miscalculation, and Unintended Consequences

Barbara Tuchman — The Guns of August
Richard Ned Lebow — Why Nations Fight

On Strategic Failure in Vietnam

Harry G. Summers Jr. — On Strategy: A Critical Analysis of the Vietnam War

On the Origins and Misuse of “Deep State”

Mike Lofgren — The Deep State: The Fall of the Constitution and the Rise of a Shadow Government

Here is a fully integrated, polished, academically toned Substack‑ready essay that weaves together your personal observations, the main argument, and the two new historical sections. I’ve shaped it so the narrative flows cleanly from your lived experience into broader critique, then into historical examples, and finally into suggested readings.

This is my personal observation dating back decades. I never bought into the social science delusion despite getting a BA in Political Science, and an MPA degree, and working for decades in the government. I realized a long time ago that what is rational in one culture is not rational in another culture, and much of analysis is based on Anglo-American and European culture and though dating back to the Enlightenment era. I also believe that Samuel Huntington was on to something when he said that world is divided into broad cultural zones. Living in Asia all these years, it is obvious that East Asia, Western Europe, the Anglo-American cultures, Eastern Europe, and the Middle East are different cultural zones.

In graduate school, I had a dispute with my macro economic professor who had said that there are universal economic principles that all firms follow across the world – profit taxation is the only thing with which they are concerned. I pointed out that in East Asia what drives corporations is market share and they have a long term point of view willing to lose money to achieve market share. He did not like my analysis and I shut up! But I am convinced I was right.

in the end, while social science offers some powerful insights into human history and politics, there are significant limits to their understanding of how the real world works, human beings are not rational actors, or decision makers and you can not understand human behavior outside of the cultural framework that we all live in.

Food for thought.

The End

#currentEvents #politics #PresidentTrump

March 21, 2026, 8:56 am 0 boosts 0 favorites

My skepticism toward the foundational assumptions of the social sciences goes back decades. Despite earning a B.A. in Political Science, an MPA, and spending much of my career in government, I never accepted the discipline’s core premise: that human beings — and therefore political leaders, institutions, and societies — behave as rational actors.

It became clear to me early on that what counts as “rational” in one culture may be entirely irrational in another. Yet much of modern analysis still rests on Anglo‑American and Western European intellectual traditions dating back to the Enlightenment. These frameworks assume universality where none exists.

Samuel Huntington, for all the controversy surrounding his work, was correct about one thing: the world is divided into broad cultural zones. After living in Asia for many years, the differences are unmistakable. East Asia, Western Europe, the Anglo‑American world, Eastern Europe, and the Middle East each operate according to distinct cultural logics, historical memories, and social expectations. To pretend otherwise is to misunderstand the world.

I learned this lesson sharply in graduate school. During a macroeconomics seminar, my professor insisted that universal economic principles govern all firms everywhere — that profit maximization is the sole objective. I pointed out that in East Asia, corporations often prioritize market share and long‑term positioning, willingly absorbing losses for years to secure strategic advantage. He dismissed the argument, and I let the matter drop. But I remain convinced that I was right. Economic behavior is culturally embedded, not universal.

These experiences shaped the reflections that follow.

On Strategic Delusion and the Vietnam War

A particularly relevant work is H. R. McMaster’s Dereliction of Duty, which examines how U.S. civilian and military leaders misjudged the Vietnam War by relying on flawed assumptions, bureaucratic groupthink, and a misplaced belief in quantitative models. One infamous computer‑driven analysis even suggested the United States had effectively “won” the war by 1968 — a stark example of how technocratic rationalism can blind policymakers to cultural realities and nationalist motivations. McMaster argues that American leaders misunderstood Vietnamese nationalism and the nature of the conflict, illustrating how strategic failure often stems from cultural ignorance rather than insufficient data.

On the Origins and Misuse of the “Deep State” Concept

Another valuable source is Mike Lofgren’s The Deep State: The Fall of the Constitution and the Rise of a Shadow Government. Lofgren, a former congressional staffer, originally used the term “Deep State” to describe the entrenched bureaucratic, financial, and national‑security networks that shape policy continuity across administrations. His argument was structural, not conspiratorial. However, in subsequent years, the term was appropriated by segments of the political right and transformed into a catch‑all conspiracy theory suggesting a unified, malevolent cabal controlling government. This distortion bears little resemblance to Lofgren’s original analysis, which focused on institutional inertia, not secret plots. Understanding how the term evolved — and how it has been misused — is essential for any serious discussion of American governance.

The Fundamental Mistake Historicists and Social Scientists Keep Making

Why rational‑actor models fail, why culture matters, and why so much analysis goes wrong.

Personal Observations on the Limits of Social Science

My skepticism toward the foundational assumptions of the social sciences goes back decades. Despite earning a B.A. in Political Science, an MPA, and spending much of my career inside government, I never accepted the discipline’s core premise: that human beings — and therefore political leaders, institutions, and societies — behave as rational actors.

It became clear to me early on that what counts as “rational” in one culture may be entirely irrational in another. Yet much of modern analysis still rests on Anglo‑American and Western European intellectual traditions dating back to the Enlightenment. These frameworks assume universality where none exists.

Samuel Huntington, for all the controversy surrounding his work, was correct about one thing: the world is divided into broad cultural zones. After living in Asia for many years, the differences are unmistakable. East Asia, Western Europe, the Anglo‑American world, Eastern Europe, and the Middle East each operate according to distinct cultural logics, historical memories, and social expectations. To pretend otherwise is to misunderstand the world.

I learned this lesson sharply in graduate school. During a macroeconomics seminar, my professor insisted that universal economic principles govern all firms everywhere — that profit maximization is the sole objective. I pointed out that in East Asia, corporations often prioritize market share and long‑term positioning, willingly absorbing losses for years to secure strategic advantage. He dismissed the argument, and I let the matter drop. But I remain convinced that I was right. Economic behavior is culturally embedded, not universal.

These experiences shaped the reflections that follow.

The Core Problem: We Pretend Humans Are Rational

Across the social sciences — history, political science, economics — there is a shared foundational assumption:

Human beings make rational decisions.

This assumption is elegant, convenient, and completely wrong.

People are emotional, impulsive, contradictory, and often deeply irrational. They misread their enemies, misunderstand their allies, and miscalculate their own interests. Nowhere is this more obvious than in war, where leaders routinely stumble into conflicts they neither intended nor fully understood — and where the consequences spiral far beyond anything they imagined.

Yet social scientists continue to build models as if human beings were stable, predictable machines.

Political Science: The Myth of the Rational Leader

Political science often begins with a dubious premise: leaders are rational actors, and their decisions can be predicted through “rational choice” analysis. But this approach collapses the moment you step outside the classroom.

You cannot understand a foreign country without understanding:

its culture
its language
its history
its internal narratives
its emotional landscape

Political scientists frequently analyze countries they do not speak the language of, do not live in, and do not culturally understand — and then confidently declare what is “rational” for that country’s leadership.

This is not analysis. It is projection based on largely Anglo-American cultural and historical cultural frameworks.. What is rational in North Korean context is not the same thing as what is rational in Washington, DC. that is because culture shapes how we view and understand the world and what we find to be rational. and humans beings are not rational actors making decisions for all sorts of reasons, most of them irrational and based on their culture and history. If you don’t understand the culture, you can’t understand the people and can’t understand what is a rational decision for that person.

Economics: The Delusion of Universal Laws

Economics suffers from a similar fantasy: that humans are rational economic actors and that universal economic laws apply everywhere.

Neither premise holds up.

People routinely make terrible financial decisions. They buy things they don’t need, save too little, panic at the wrong time, and cling to beliefs that defy logic. And what counts as “rational” varies dramatically across cultures.

A decision that makes perfect sense in the United States may be irrational in China, Europe, or the Middle East. Economic behavior is shaped by:

cultural norms
historical memory
social expectations
linguistic framing

There is no universal economic human.

Historians: The Blind Spot of A‑Cultural Analysis

Historians are not immune to these errors. Many fall into one of two camps:

Institutionalists, who believe large structures drive history
Great Man theorists, who believe charismatic individuals shape events

Both contain partial truths, but neither is sufficient.

History is messy. It emerges from a tangle of:

personalities
institutions
accidents
cultural forces
emotional reactions
miscalculations

Charismatic leadership can change the world — but only within the cultural and institutional constraints of the moment.

Two Examples of How These Mistakes Distort Reality

“Wall Street drives American foreign policy.”

Some left‑leaning historians argue what Wall Street wants dictate that U.S. politics.

the U.S. would have normalized relations with Cuba decades ago
wars in Iraq, Iran and elsewhere would never have happened
foreign policy would be consistently business‑friendly

But history shows the opposite. Wars often damage markets. Presidents routinely make decisions that contradict business interests.

And ideology, emotion, misperception, and domestic politics — not just capital shapes foreign policy.

“The Deep State runs everything.”

Another common belief is that senior leadership in the U.S. government is unified, coherent, and consistent across administrations — the so‑called “Deep State.”

This is not supported by evidence.

Leadership changes constantly.
Agencies disagree with each other.
Presidents and advisors react to events more than they shape them.
Most decisions are made under time pressure, with incomplete information, and without grand conspiratorial coordination.

Government is chaotic, not monolithic.

On Strategic Delusion and the Vietnam War

A particularly relevant work is Colonel Harry G. Summers Jr.’s On Strategy: A Critical Analysis of the Vietnam War. Summers argues that the United States misunderstood the nature of the conflict by treating it as a conventional military struggle rather than a nationalist revolution. He highlights how U.S. strategists relied on quantitative models, body counts, and computer‑driven assessments that misleadingly suggested the war was being “won” as early as 1968. These metrics obscured the deeper reality: the United States was on the wrong side of Vietnamese nationalism. Summers’ critique remains one of the clearest demonstrations of how strategic failure emerges when policymakers impose Western rationalist frameworks onto conflicts rooted in culture, identity, and historical memory.

On Ho Chi Minh’s Overtures to the United States — and America’s Misreading

There is a substantial body of scholarship documenting Ho Chi Minh’s early attempts to work with the United States, particularly during and immediately after World War II. Articles in Diplomatic History, The Journal of American–East Asian Relations, and works by historians such as William Duiker and Fredrik Logevall describe how Ho repeatedly reached out to U.S. officials, framing Vietnamese independence in terms Americans should have understood. Ho admired aspects of the American Revolution, quoted the U.S. Declaration of Independence in Vietnam’s own declaration, and even sought American support against the return of French colonial rule.

Yet U.S. policymakers, viewing Ho primarily through the lens of Cold War ideology, assumed he was a Soviet or Chinese proxy. This was a profound misreading. Ho’s primary allegiance was to Vietnamese nationalism, not international communism. OSS officers who collaborated with him during WWII reported positively on his intentions, but their assessments were ignored in Washington. The refusal to engage with Ho — based on ideological assumptions rather than cultural or historical understanding — became one of the earliest and most consequential strategic errors of the Vietnam conflict.

On Culture and Civilizational Differences

Samuel Huntington — The Clash of Civilizations
Clifford Geertz — The Interpretation of Cultures

On Irrationality and Human Decision‑Making

Daniel Kahneman — Thinking, Fast and Slow
Dan Ariely — Predictably Irrational

On the Limits of Western Social Science

James C. Scott — Seeing Like a State
Benedict Anderson — Imagined Communities

On War, Miscalculation, and Unintended Consequences

Barbara Tuchman — The Guns of August
Richard Ned Lebow — Why Nations Fight

On Strategic Failure in Vietnam

Harry G. Summers Jr. — On Strategy: A Critical Analysis of the Vietnam War

On the Origins and Misuse of “Deep State”

Mike Lofgren — The Deep State: The Fall of the Constitution and the Rise of a Shadow Government

Here is a fully integrated, polished, academically toned Substack‑ready essay that weaves together your personal observations, the main argument, and the two new historical sections. I’ve shaped it so the narrative flows cleanly from your lived experience into broader critique, then into historical examples, and finally into suggested readings.

This is my personal observation dating back decades. I never bought into the social science delusion despite getting a BA in Political Science, and an MPA degree, and working for decades in the government. I realized a long time ago that what is rational in one culture is not rational in another culture, and much of analysis is based on Anglo-American and European culture and though dating back to the Enlightenment era. I also believe that Samuel Huntington was on to something when he said that world is divided into broad cultural zones. Living in Asia all these years, it is obvious that East Asia, Western Europe, the Anglo-American cultures, Eastern Europe, and the Middle East are different cultural zones.

In graduate school, I had a dispute with my macro economic professor who had said that there are universal economic principles that all firms follow across the world – profit taxation is the only thing with which they are concerned. I pointed out that in East Asia what drives corporations is market share and they have a long term point of view willing to lose money to achieve market share. He did not like my analysis and I shut up! But I am convinced I was right.

in the end, while social science offers some powerful insights into human history and politics, there are significant limits to their understanding of how the real world works, human beings are not rational actors, or decision makers and you can not understand human behavior outside of the cultural framework that we all live in.

Food for thought.

The End

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Critique of Social Science

Critique of Social Science

A Critique of Social Science -The mistake historians and social scientists make

Personal Observations on the Limits of Social Science

https://theworldaccordingtocosmos.com/?author=1