Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

A statement similar to the above title is often attributed to Albert Einstein and also to Basic Text of Narcotics Anonymous. No matter the source, the point is significant.

This point was also raised in an interesting comment by political economist Michael Munger:

"My friends generally dislike politicians, find democracy messy and distasteful, and object to the brutality and coercive excesses of foreign wars, the war on drugs, and the spying of the NSA.

But their solution is, without exception, to expand the power of "the State." That seems literally insane to me—a non sequitur of such monstrous proportions that I had trouble taking it seriously.

Then I realized that they want a kind of unicorn, a State that has the properties, motivations, knowledge, and abilities that they can imagine for it."

http://www.fee.org/the_freeman/detail/unicorn-governance  

Do we ever act insane? If so, what to do when we discover this?