Tragedy - when logic ignores emotion or when emotion trumps logic.

I like this observation from 10,000 Hours with Reid Hoffman: What I Learned by Ben Casnocha.

Reason is the steering wheel. Emotion is the gas pedal.

It captures the fact that in decision-making, whether as an individual or as a team, there are two steps, the decision-itself and then the decision to act on the decision. Two very different things.

The decision itself is predicated on knowledge, logic, rationality, empiricism and imagination. There are risks and biases and ignorance and prejudices which all stand in the way of making good decisions, particularly under constraints (time and resources) but those issues can be consciously tackled with some degree of improvement likely.

But once the decision is made, there is the separate, but intertwined, decision to act on the decision. Getting people inspired and motivated or reigning in your own dispositions.

These two issues align with the ancient Trivium. Grammar and Logic address the first step of making a decision. Rhetoric tackles the second step of stirring up the emotions to the point of acting on the decision.

Tragedies arise when the decision-making process is truncated; when letting logic supercede emotion or emotion supercede logic.