Why is it insane? Keeping in mind the cliched definition of insanity, you are the one expecting the different result. Since they WERE put in a cage, and Egwene won, clearly it is not. That cage was in T'A'R, where Mesaana's alleged advantages are irrelevant. Her education and channeling mean NOTHING there, because an idiot more firmly fixed on a wrong idea than a smart person who thinks she knows better, while academically dissipated by that lack of absolute certainty so many intellectuals pride themselves, is more likely to win. T'A'R is malleable to the minds of the people in it. On what basis at all would you claim that any of the Forsaken have stronger wills? Their defining characteristics are sycophancy, self-indulgence and changing sides. None of them, except maybe Ishamael have demonstrated anything like the courage of conviction. The "truth' Egwene fixates on is absurd and completely lack in any basis in reality, but Egwene is dumb enough to believe it, impervious to evidence or argument that might diminish her own stature and Mesaana lacked the self-confidence to believe she was stronger than a woefully ignorant child.