Where Do Bad Ideas Come From?

[Valin]

Foreign Policy:

STEPHEN M. WALT
Jan./Feb. 2011

We would all like to think that humankind is getting smarter and wiser and that our past blunders won't be repeated. Bookshelves are filled with such reassuring pronouncements, from the sage advice offered by Richard Neustadt and Ernest May in Thinking in Time: The Uses of History for Decision Makers to the rosy forecasts of Matt Ridley's The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves, not to mention Francis Fukuyama's famously premature claim that humanity had reached "the end of history." Encouraging forecasts such as these rest in part on the belief that we can learn the right lessons from the past and cast discredited ideas onto the ash heap of history, where they belong.

Those who think that humanity is making steady if fitful progress might point to the gradual spread of more representative forms of government, the largely successful campaign to eradicate slavery, the dramatic improvements in public health over the past two centuries, the broad consensus that market systems outperform centrally planned economies, or the growing recognition that action must be taken to address humanity's impact on the environment. An optimist might also point to the gradual decline in global violence since the Cold War. In each case, one can plausibly argue that human welfare improved as new knowledge challenged and eventually overthrew popular dogmas, including cherished but wrongheaded ideas, from aristocracy to mercantilism, that had been around for centuries.

Yet this sadly turns out to be no universal law: There is no inexorable evolutionary march that replaces our bad, old ideas with smart, new ones. If anything, the story of the last few decades of international relations can just as easily be read as the maddening persistence of dubious thinking. Like crab grass and kudzu, misguided notions are frustratingly resilient, hard to stamp out no matter how much trouble they have caused in the past and no matter how many scholarly studies have undermined their basic claims.

(Snip)

Last but not least, discredited ideas sometimes come back to life because societies simply forget important lessons about the past. Political psychologists generally agree that personal experiences have a disproportionate impact on our political beliefs, and lessons learned by older generations rarely resonate as strongly with their successors. And besides, as the years go by it becomes easier to argue that circumstances have changed and that "things are different now," encouraging the wrong-headed view that previous wisdoms about how to deal with particular problems might no longer hold. Of course, sometimes those arguments will be correct -- there are few timeless verities in political life -- and even seemingly unassailable truths might someday be seriously challenged if not discredited. All this just further complicates the problem of learning and retaining the right lessons from the past.

(Snip)

[pollyannaish]

Even in areas where there is a clear scientific consensus, like climate change, public discourse has been distorted by well-organized campaigns to discredit the evidence and deny that any problem exists. Not surprisingly, those whose economic interests would be hurt if we significantly reduced our reliance on fossil fuels have aggressively funded such campaigns.

 

Interesting article and I come away with mixed feelings.

 

Oddly he seems to believe there is a "right" answer out there we are just not seeing because we are too blinded by our own scotomas. I believe it is impossible to not have them, and he definitely has his own. The notation above is a good example. If you are questioning everything, shouldn't you also be questioning scientific "consensus" because it too could be a bad idea based on flawed methodology?

 

It's a good start, but I ended up frustrated because it is clear that he believes in something as being the "correct" or "good" idea...yet doesn't say what that is specifically. He just hints at it. He is correct (imo) in saying that we don't know, often, why something fails or succeeds, but he also hints that finite conclusions can be drawn. I am not sure they can. Partially because there are always too many moving parts, and partially because no one is immune from their own perspective. For instance, he excoriates the "sellers" of the Iraq war on not using the Powell doctrine based out of Vietnam. But at the same time glosses over the lessons learned in WWII from our perspective. It seems that particular conflict could have gone either way. AND it seems the Powell doctrine is more appropriately applied to a decentralized Afghanistan, while the WWII lessons are more aptly applied to Iraq because of the leader there.

 

It just left me slightly frustrated.

 

 

To put this into a personal context. In my job hunt, in every interview, I have been asked what my ex employers would say is my biggest strength and what is my biggest weakness. This is a standard question, but one I find incredibly frustrating to answer. I have a pretty good grasp on the things that give ME trouble in any job...but what my employers found frustrating may have nothing to do with what I know gives me trouble. The question assumes that trouble I may have on a job is the same in every situation. But it is not. In fact, the very things one employer has praised me for, will show up as a complete negative in another context.

 

CONTEXT is everything. One strategy works here, and another there. When all the parts are moving parts...you can't be absolutely black and white about anything. The best you can do is make something work in this moment now. That requires a lot of experimenting. And a lot of mistakes. A lot of bad ideas. Until you find the one the works right here, right now.

 

Thanks for posting this Valin! Lots of food for thought, and fodder for discussion.

 

Edited to add: Off to reread it.

[Valin]

Interesting article and I come away with mixed feelings.

 

Same here, but thought it worth posting if only to spark thought/debate.

 

It appears to me that much of the time there is not a good or bad answer, only a bad and worse answer.

 

Hindsight is always 20/20, and the law of unintended consequences is always in effect.

 

 

 

So the answer is to quote Winston Churchill

KBO....Keep Buggering On.

[NCJim]

Where Do Bad Ideas Come From?

 

mostly from the left.....