This INTRODCTION shows how leaders (such as Vladimir Putin and Lyndon Johnson) often tell false stories about international affairs but lately have more and more disregarded truth (facts) in domestic policy talk while highlighting stories (like MAGA) instead. Yet truth telling is vital to democracy. Therefore, in post-truth America, political scientists should widen their disciplinary scope to pay more attention to stories than they do today. While doing so, they should (truthfully) criticize those stories within the guidelines of choosing, refraining, and dissembling (which will be explained more fully in later chapters).

People are often reluctant to make decisions by calculating the costs and benefits of alternative courses of action in particular cases. Knowing, in addition, that they may err, people and institutions often resort to second order strategies for reducing the burdens of, and risk of error in, first-order decisions. They make a second-order decision when they choose one from among such possible strategies. They adopt rules or presumptions; they create standards; they delegate authority to others; they take small steps; they pick rather than choose. Some of these strategies impose high costs before decision but low costs at the time of ultimate decision; others impose low costs both before and at the time of ultimate decision; still others impose low costs before decision while exporting to others the high costs at the time of decision. Political, legal, and ethical issues are also raised by second-order decisions.

What do people care about? Psychological work on well-being has long emphasized (1) happiness, sometimes described as “pleasure,” and (2) eudaimonia, sometimes described as “flourishing” and associated with a sense of purpose or meaning. More recent work has explored (3) “psychological richness,” understood to call for a diversity of experiences and perspectives, including experiences that challenge and alter one’s preferences and values. This work is directly relevant to certain admittedly rare decisions that might alter our “core” – our conception of our identity and what we care most about. As examples, consider a decision to become a monk, to change one’s nationality, to have a child, or to get divorced. “Opting” situations raise serious challenges for decision theory, because one’s preferences and values cannot be held constant. If people’s preferences would be different depending on whether they opt, which choice is best? The right choice, I suggest, requires a shift from preference satisfaction to welfare. To decide whether to opt, people must ask: What would make their lives better? That question immediately leads to another one: What is the right conception of welfare? That might be a hard question, but it is the correct one; pleasure, purpose, and psychological richness are relevant to the answer.