Here is Charlie Edwards comprehensive review of John Robb's breathtaking talk yesterday - the group would not let him sit down. He also includes audio from Chet
As the facilitator, I have to give the room my full attention.
Early next week I will do my own review and also add as many links as I can. All the main talks are also being video recorded and as soon as I can do the editing these too will be posted.
It is simply wonderful - if we all had the time it could go for 5 days!
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When we proposed making the theme of the conference Local Resiliency in the Context of a decaying Nation State, who could have imagined that by the time we arrived, that we might be living this?
We have a great agenda and an amazing group of attendees. Here is the Agenda
An Expanding Context
Until recently, Boyd’s ideas and devotees lived mainly in the military. This conference is designed to expand the Boydian universe to the rest of society. For the challenges that Boyd and his successors fought in the military now extend to all of human society.
It seems that, just as Boyd sought to restore the human in the military, our complex world demands that we restore the human everywhere. For it is becoming more and more clear that our top down and centralized machine like model can no longer cope with the challenges that we face.
It is Chet and my hope that Boyd’s thinking and the story of his character may help all of us who struggle today to find a better way. It is also our hope that we may find fellowship, solace and courage from each other too. For the pathway of reform is a lonely and dangerous path.
Approach - Allowing all to have a say
Most of the attendees of Boyd 2008 - have done a lot to understand and act upon a more natural design for their area of interest. Nearly all attendees know enough to be a keynote speaker. So we have designed an approach to the conference that will enable all to speak, to be heard and to participate.
Please go to this link for a list of who is coming and see what they bring - I will be updating this list too as I learn more about you.
To ensure that we get the most out of 2 days, we are going to have a hybrid conference design. There will be a scaffolding of traditional talks. There will be times set aside for attendees to choose what they want to discuss in a formal sense. There will be informal time for spontaneous conversation.
The formal scaffolding will focus on offering “maps” or “Views” (the OO in OODA) that can help us locate we are we are right now and where directionally we can go. It will also focus on “Practices” and “Action” (Stories) that help us make progress.
The Open Space times will allow us an opportunity to self-organize and so to go deeper or broader. In the Open Space time slots we will ask those who want to talk about a topic to make an offer to the rest and set aside time and space for that conversation to take place. This article will offer some guidance on the principles of Open Space.
The Informal will enable us to make the personal connection so essential to gain the support we need from our peers.
Web access will be available. We will also be videoing the formal proceedings and will make the formal part of the conference available the next week.
Friday December 5 - Pre-Conference - Attendees arrive on PEI.
Dinner and Get together at Rob’s Place - I will be having an Open House at my house from 5.00pm - 9pm - There will be a bar and a meal that keeps such as Chili Con Carne. Here is a map and directions to our house. Our phone is 902 566 9012 - my cell is 902 940 0652
Saturday December 6 - Day 1
Location - The New Residence at UPEI - Map Here of UPEI Campus
8.30am for 9.00am - A Continental Breakfast will be served at the site
9.00 - 10.30 - Introduction - All the attendees will have an opportunity to introduce themselves and say a bit about what they do and what they hope for. Boyd is clear that war or conflict is won or lost in the minds and the hearts of human beings. My hope is that we will gain a sense of the power that is in the room with us.
10.30 - 11.00 - Mindsets and Character: Col Chet Richards will offer some thoughts on on how Boyd’s thinking about the importance of mindsets and character can help us understand how to cope with conflict. For we live indeed at a time of titanic conflict where the Newtonian, centralized and machine world view is being challenged by complexity of a new a world view of interconnection, decentralization and network. Many who know the new and seek to make it real face powerful opposition - much of what we discuss will be not only about the ideas of the new but also how to overcome this opposition.
11.00 - 11.15 Break
11.15 - 12.15 - John Robb - Keynote - Local Resiliency - John will show us the vulnerability and risks of the State itself in the complex world we now inhabit. He will make the case that a local, distributed and connected alternative can bring back control and resilience in all key areas of human life - energy, food, security, health and education
12.15 - 12.45 - Open Space Begins - Invitations for Conversations on Topics of Interest to Attendees
Lunch will be served at this time and can be taken in your groups - (Lunch will be Thai)
12.45 - 1.30 Open Space Session I - Concurrent sessions
1.30 - 2.15 Open Space Session II - Concurrent sessions
2.15 - 2.45 Break
2.45 - 3.30 - Working successfully across the mindsets. Can the networked world work with the top down world? Stuart Baker, who has been a key adviser in the founding of the PEI Bio Alliance that includes Government, Private Business, Research Scientists and University administrators (who should not be able to work with each other but do in this case) will offer his advice as to how you can “see” or have a “view” or cope with the OO in OODA so that you can make the connections.
3.30 - 4.15 - The Interconnected, Distributed and Networked Organization in Action - Rory Francis - ED The PEI Bio Alliance and Co Chair of the Commission on the Future of Agriculture on PEI will talk about how to set up and run a Chaordic organization - The PEI Bio Alliance is one of these and now has more than 5 years of results. By using these principles, PEI has been able to build a research organization way larger and more effective than would normally be possible for a small jurisdiction
4.15 - 4.30 Break
4.30 - 5.15 - The Interconnected, Distributed and Networked Organization in Action - Amy Shaw VP KETC St Louis will talk about how a public TV station in St Louis is changing the role of public media by becoming the convener for how the City of St Louis helps itself cope with the Mortgage Crisis - taking back the financial and social power of the city. KETC now has the results of the initial work available and proof of concept. This idea of public TV and Radio stations becoming conveners in their cities has taken hold and 25 more will be involved in the next stage of this exploration - this is a great example of using the value of Trust to activate a local community.
6.30 - 10pm Dinner at Sirenella one of Rob’s favorite Italian restaurants. Map and more information here.
Sunday December 7 - Day 2
8.30 - 9.00am Continental Breakfast
9am - 10am - The Price of not having an The Interconnected, Distributed and Networked Organization in Action - The US Military today. Col Chet Richards will outline an paradox that faces America today - that never has the US spent so much and got so little on its defence. Why is this happening - what is the extent of the problem and what has to happen? What are the risks to America and the world if this challenge is not met?
10.00 - 10.45 Resolving or Winning in Conflict - The lessons of Sun Tzu - James Gimian and Barry Boyce. The Art of War is the timeless wisdom text for any person seeking to deal well with the inevitable part of all human life - that there is conflict. Jim and Barry are part of an extraordinary group, the Denma Translation Group that has been deepening our understanding of the lesson of SunTzu. They will help us see how this text can assist us in all the conflict that we face - not the least in resolving the shift between two mindsets that are opposites.
10.45 - 11.00 Break
11.00 - 2.00pm Open Space and Lunch 9 Lunch will be (Beef Stroganoff) 3 concurrent sessions
2pm - 4pm Looking to the Future - Harvesting the Conference - Rob Paterson will facilitate an open session where we can speak to the group about our hopes for the future and where we can seek help from each other in pursuing this.
4pm Formal Farewell - We go our own ways
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Now is the time that all enterprises will seek to get "more for less". For most people this merely means cuts.
But effective use of networks is where I think the true value lies. I predict that at the heart of the crisis will be the failure of the machine model and the rise of the Network.
My regular readers know that I think the world of one of my clients - the PEI Bio Alliance. This is one of the most effective Chaords in existence today - where a "Facilitating Structure" works to enhance the connections between a diverse group of partners - Government, Academia and Business in the field of Bio Science.
Here is a link to a quick story of who why what and how.
But what I really wanted to share with you today are the results. PEI, with a population of 140,000, is punching way above its weight.
Between 1996 and 2005, expenditures on research and development in the Maritimes increased by 80 percent to $770 million from $424 million. Expenditures increased $63 million from 2004.
Of the $770 million, Nova Scotia at $464 million accounted for nearly 60 percent of that total, followed by New Brunswick at $243 million then Prince Edward Island at $63 million. Research and development funding in Prince Edward Island increased nearly 54 percent between 2004 and 2005. This increase appears to be largely due to an investment in bioresources by the National Research Council. During the same period, funding increased by 8 percent in Nova Scotia and 5 percent in New Brunswick.
Up 54% vs the rest at an average of 9%.
Before the Bio Alliance, each part of the research sector on PEI was both separate, under scale and saw itself as competing with the others. Sound familiar? There was no way that there could be sustained and real growth. But as a network - now look at what can be done.
I offer up this story in the hope that you may also be part of a potential Chaordic Network.
Could public radio and TV reconfigure themselves along these lines?
Could each station create a chaord in their state? At KETC in St Louis, we are doing just that as we work with more than 20 NGO's to help St Louis cope with the mortgage crisis.
How about you? Could your enterprise do better by going down this road?
The PEI Bio Alliance and KETC will be speaking at the Boyd Conference on PEI on Dec 6-7 as we grapple with how to empower the small and the local.
We will be webcasting their talks.
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At some point it became clear in the Soviet Union that in spite of a charismatic new leader, that the SYSTEM, could not be saved. At some point in the 5th century, it was clear that Rome, as a SYSTEM, could not be saved. It is now clear that the GM business model, as a SYSTEM, can not be saved.
I have to admit that I cannot imagine a set of actions that the new president could take that would preserve THE SYSTEM. An economy based on credit fueled consumption with the most important parts of life, food, energy and credit all dependent on fragile over-centralized systems that themselves depend on a credit system that is broken.
What if we cannot be saved? Can the shopping society be saved? Can the US defense costs be sustained? In the Soviet Union, the cost of competeing with Nato, overwhelmed the ability of the state to pay. Is the US now faced with the same defense/cost/value issue?
Let's look at what happens when the SYSTEM fails.
When the centralized distribution systems fail, all the nodes get cut off and isolated. Food, energy, money and security all collapse back to the local. If you cannot feed yourself, heat your homes, exchange goods and look after your security you are in deep trouble. In highly centralized states, the nodes are helpless. They cannot deliver the basics for life. Imagine New York with no oil and no food with intermittent electricity. Imagine this happening for only a 2 week period. Then imagine being cut off semi permanently. You think I exaggerate? This happened in 1989 - 95 in cities like Moscow and Kiev.
In the Soviet Union there was a history of dealing with famine and the people immediately went back to local gardens. But the big shift was in the power of the mob. The mob became the owners of all else and as the economy came back, they have become the central players.
In Cuba, the state held on to security and gave the power to the people to find the best way to set up a local food and power system.
Food in Rome was not just food but also Oil. This was a world where muscles, human and animal did the work. So when the "tankers" from Africa no longer came to Ostia, the system had to collapse. Rome's population fell from 700,000 in 400 ad to 30,000 in 500 ad. When we see how helpless we are to stop a few men in motor boats from sealing the Gulf, we can see the risk to our own energy/food system. For recall, our food system depends on oil.
The failure of the food/energy delivery system forced the end.
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In the 1930's many thought that Capitalism was the problem. Many looked to Communism as an answer.
As the economy crashes around us some are questioning Capitalism again. We also know that Communism did not work either.
So what to do?
Walking the dogs today - my main process for thinking - I had a bit of an aha.
Was not communism not really an extreme form of what Capitalism has evolved into?
Communism wrapped itself in the language of the People and the Public Good. Large companies tell us that they serve us. They tell us that they are good stewards. If they are pushed, they tell us that they act for their shareholders.
Communism made all the key decisions in huge central bureaucracies. No power was allowed to escape to the edge or to the local. Planning and power control at the centre was everything. Is this not the same for large companies today.
Communism was in effect Bureaucratism. Decisions were divorced from the reality of life as it is lived and were taken only in the context of what is right for the bureaucracy - that it that all must defend the institution and its top leaders. Is this not the same for large companies today.
While communism used the language of community, comrade and the patronym, the elite lived a completely different life from the people. In large companies the same us true. The CEO maybe called Fred or Bill but he is an autocrat and he lives like a king.
The Soviet Union collapsed in 1989 because such a system could no longer cope with the complexity of the modern world - it could not deal with its energy needs and keeping up with the military spending of the west. The disparity between the rhetoric and the performance of the elite became too much for the people to accept any more.
Is this not ironic - we have become them!
I think we are close to that point now in the west. The disconnect is just too great.
Worse it is now clear that the large businesses control most of our political processes. The bailout helps whom?
So now what? In 1989, the answer was clear - democracy and capitlaism. But now we can see that these ideas have been captured by a Soviet of large companies.
So what would be a legitimate alternative?
This is what we will be talking about at the Boyd Conference on PEI on Dec 6-7.
The big idea - that a networked and decentralized alternative is possible as an economy where most of what we need, we produce locally and that we cut our dependence on the Central/Soviet system.
That we can use a new model based on networks for the core organizing principle.
A model close to the model of the Founding Fathers of the US!
That a place like PEI could be largely self sustaining in energy and food. That working to be that will create real jobs that can stay here and that can be taken by regular folks.
That a local energy and food system will be the foundation of an entirely new way of living that will reconnect our natural resources to us again and put many back to work. That all sorts of local activity will grow from this.
That we might build out from the strong credit union base where most of our savings are used locally.
That the big business in cars and trucks can be their service. Most dealers make all their money here already. Maybe the new new car model will be more like Ikea flat packs with the assembly localized and a standard chassis offering up a platform for mass customization? The Open Source Car?
That our media will be based on a truly local model without a central corporation sucking the cash flow out of it. Public Media in the US is just catching a glimpse of this.
That our health system will focus more on health than fixing. That our educational focus will shift from the institution of the school to the family.
That PEI will be connected to all the other communities via the web making up a rich and diverse continent.
That the national government will limit itself to that that serves the nation. That we redefine Defense to fit the challenge of the world as it is rather than try and be ready to re fight WWII.
That our taxes be reversed. That where we live gets the most and that the state gets the least.
That our governments and our organizations be as transparent and particpative as we can make them.
In the 1500's, a group of rebels could see that that the ethos of Chritianity had been captured by a self serving bureaucracy. The heart of the Reformation was a return to the original words of the Gospel.
I wonder - is this our work today? Is it to look back at the response of a group of people to a government system that served not the people but a disconnected elite?
The ideas of the Founding Fathers are waiting for us.
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It is only a few weeks away now and we have assembled a great group of people and I think a great agenda.
Not in our lifetime has it been so important to be able to make sense of what is going on - why what is happening is happening and what may yet come.
Our goal is to find the patterns and to explore the mindsets of both the reason why we cannot see the problems and the mindsets of where the solutions will be found. For simply trying the old harder will not work as we are starting to see.
We have got a wide range of people from many sectors of society - my hope is that we can help each other "see" more clearly. The Wisdom of a thoughtful and diverse crowd?
Here is the Agenda - built on conversation and story
Here are the attendees so far - from all parts
If this interests you there is room for a handful more - but not more than a handful - here is where you can find out more.
We will be webcasting the formal speakers - so if you can't come - you can still get involved
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Next week I will publish a draft agenda - but as I work on this - I wanted to share with you how the Conference (Colloquium) is building.
While the group is small - 25 people - it is very diverse - Boyd breaks out to the rest of society.
The key aspects of Boyd that seem to be central to all are these:
The big idea behind the conference is this. That the Nation State itself is a model that is past its due date and that in this highly connected world, we can only get at some control by returning to a decentralized model. That all the centralized machine models are now part of the problem - Energy, food, security, education, health, business and government.
A key reason for having the conference on PEI is that PEI is a living example of how a society can be put at risk if it lives on the edge of a state and a market place - and a living example of what a society has to do to become self sufficient again. We are like Darwins' Finches on the Galapagos - the larger theory of what we all have to do is found in the small example.
Attendees include decision makers and principals from:
Most involved have been struggling to find the new in their field. All have been working to find the alternative to top down. Many have been attacked by their own part of the system. This is a group of true warriors in the Boyd tradition of being true rather than being correct.
I am hopeful that with so many perspectives, with so much commitment that we can help each other see the road ahead more clearly and help each other as the road itself becomes more dangerous personally.
On Monday I will publish the draft agenda
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How is the new President going to find the money that he needs to fix America?
The new President is going to have to look at the defense budget.
But won't taking money from Defense weaken America's security? Many see that the US is already weak and can barely keep up with the existing missions. They fear that cuts would make America impotent.
But, just as few could "see" what was really going on in our financial system, most today don't look beyond the surface to see what is really going on with our defense dollars.
The reality is that America spends more in real and absolute terms today on defense than ever before. The reality is that America spends more than all other powers added together on defense today.
The reality is that with all this spending the US is all but impotent already today. Most of its current equipment has been worn out by the conflicts of the last decade and most of its front line officers and NCO's have also been worn out. The equipment in the pipeline is exponentially more expensive than what it will replace. It is even less suited to the mission that what is in inventory now. The recruitment, training and evaluation system is still focused on WWII and so much of the leadership remains disconnected as well.
The US military is organized to fight WWII - it looks to face a major continental power that does not have nuclear weapons.
This "enemy" will never appear - for as we learned in the Cold War - you don't have a conventional WWII war with a nuclear power.
Like most institutions, health, education, finance, the military is locked into the Institutional Mindset. Now the more money you give them, the worse they perform. The problem is that the world they operate in is now driven by social forces not by direct cause and effect.
What America does confront are "people's wars". Our "enemies" are not states at all. Aircraft carriers are impotent when facing a guerrilla movement. So are high tech bombers and high tech fighters - so are high tech main battle tanks - so are conventional infantry. The battle field is in the minds of people. The more you use direct force, the more you lose. As it is the US has not won a single people's conflict since 1945 but it keeps on trying.
America's defense planning an defense spending is all based on a an assessment of risk that is not real.
How can I make this accusation?
Well, just as in the financial world, there are people who are not prisoners of conventional wisdom. In the finance world many have been influenced by Benoit Mandelbrot. In the military world, they have been influenced by the late Col John Boyd.
Just in time for the new President, this group, who represent every field of the military have come together and written what I think may be one of the most important books of our time.
"America's Defense Meltdown", edited by Winslow Wheeler, is a comprehensive explanation for a situation not well known by most Americans. Never has the US spent more in real or relative terms on defense. Not since the 1930's has America had so little real capability to meet the real threats that confront it. Never has there been such an opportunity for reform. (See the follow on for an executive summary)The book will be available in mid November.
America spends more than all it possible enemies combined and then some.
But now has an inventory of equipment that is worn out and a pipeline of new equipment that is too expensive, too complex and in most cases totally unsuited to the threat that America can face.
There is something wrong with this picture - the budget is sky high and operational potential is way down.
Same picture for the Navy
It is the same for the airforce.
What's the problem and why should anyone not in the services care? The problem appears to be the same as the problem that has just delivered the financial crisis. The leadership of the system has gamed it by using the procurement process and by using the personnel process to focus on the needs of the leadership itself versus the needs of the nation.
Big men in the pentagon have big procurement programs. Big men in the field drive carrier groups, armored divisions and fleets of bombers. The fact that all of these have no value in people's wars, means nothing.
But what about the Chinese? What about the Russians? Just have a look at the charts again. Also recall the key lesson of the Nuclear reality - you don't have conventional wars with nuclear opponents. The procurement system makes a bad situation worse. The new equipment is so expensive and so complex that only tiny numbers can be purchased. We forget the lesson of WWII that in conventional war - if such a thing is possible today - numbers count. 60,000 Sherman tanks beat the handfull of superior Tigers and Panther
Why should you care about this anyway? Because over spending on the wrong thing in defense is how societies fail. Overspending on linear defense was a cancer for the late Roman Empire bleeding resources for an idea that did not work. This is what lead to the collapse of the Soviet Union.
America, fully costed, spends close to $800 billion a year on defense. This already does not make America safe or nor does it allow it to project its power. At the same time, America is spending trillions to prop up its financial system. At the same time, millions are losing their jobs. At the same time America's infrastructure is falling apart form lack of investment. At the same time, America has to create a non oil economy.
If we cannot re conceive the mission and hence create a new context for spending, then the defense budget will tip us over.
So what then is the new? Well the authors of the book have not only told us what is wrong, they have offered up a new vision.
It's all here. Except of course the hard part. How do we change the model? For this is the same issue that faces media, education, health etc. The system is controlled by the in group who will do all in their power to keep the old going.
God knows it is hard enough in my own little fields of media and early child development - the power of the old has such a grip.
Chet Richards will be talking to this book and these ideas at the Boyd Conference on Dec 6-7.
Here is a summary of the book
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Cynthia Dunsford, my fave politician, has this picture on her office wall - it is the 5th Solvay Conference on Physics - where the post Netwonian world was discussed.
Perhaps the most famous conference was the October 1927 Fifth Solvay International Conference on Electrons and Photons,
where the world's most notable physicists met to discuss the newly
formulated quantum theory. The leading figures were Albert Einstein and
Niels Bohr. Einstein, disenchanted with Heisenberg's "Uncertainty Principle," remarked "God does not play dice." Bohr replied, "Einstein, stop telling God what to do." (See Bohr-Einstein debates.) Seventeen of the twenty-nine attendees were or became Nobel Prize winners, including Marie Curie, who alone among them, had won Nobel Prizes in two separate scientific disciplines. Wikipedia
Cyn has this picture on her wall because of the lone woman there - the 2 times Nobel winner, Marie Curie.
The irony for me is that we meet in the same context as the 1927 conference met in the field of Physics - a revolution in world view that has lead to Boyd's use of this idea to face problems in the social and physical world - credit crisis etc.
The other irony is that this will be by design a small meeting too - where conversation will be the centre
Here is a short film of the Solvay meeting - we plan to video as much content as possible at the Boyd Conference and to make it available to all
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Boyd for me has two messages - The first is about how to cope with big problems, like the ones we confront right now - it is how you "see" the world that is the key to understanding and hence right action The second is how to behave as a person: he always put the work ahead of himself.
At the Boyd "Unconference" on Dec 6-7 we will use this "lens"
Present will be people from the military, from government, from education, from business, from media, from science, from technology and from NGO's.
We all share this desire to "see" what is going on in a better way. We intuit that such a wide range of viewpoints may help us all "see" better.
Here is David Brooks in full today in the NYT - reinforcing this point - that it is how we have seen the world that may be the source of our crisis:
The Behavioral Revolution
Roughly speaking, there are four steps to every decision. First, you perceive a situation. Then you think of possible courses of action. Then you calculate which course is in your best interest. Then you take the action.
Over the past few centuries, public policy analysts have assumed that step three is the most important. Economic models and entire social science disciplines are premised on the assumption that people are mostly engaged in rationally calculating and maximizing their self-interest.
But during this financial crisis, that way of thinking has failed spectacularly. As Alan Greenspan noted in his Congressional testimony last week, he was “shocked” that markets did not work as anticipated. “I made a mistake in presuming that the self-interests of organizations, specifically banks and others, were such as that they were best capable of protecting their own shareholders and their equity in the firms.”
So perhaps this will be the moment when we alter our view of decision-making. Perhaps this will be the moment when we shift our focus from step three, rational calculation, to step one, perception.
Perceiving a situation seems, at first glimpse, like a remarkably simple operation. You just look and see what’s around. But the operation that seems most simple is actually the most complex, it’s just that most of the action takes place below the level of awareness. Looking at and perceiving the world is an active process of meaning-making that shapes and biases the rest of the decision-making chain.
Economists and psychologists have been exploring our perceptual biases for four decades now, with the work of Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman, and also with work by people like Richard Thaler, Robert Shiller, John Bargh and Dan Ariely.
My sense is that this financial crisis is going to amount to a coming-out party for behavioral economists and others who are bringing sophisticated psychology to the realm of public policy. At least these folks have plausible explanations for why so many people could have been so gigantically wrong about the risks they were taking.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb has been deeply influenced by this stream of research. Taleb not only has an explanation for what’s happening, he saw it coming. His popular books “Fooled by Randomness” and “The Back Swan” were broadsides at the risk-management models used in the financial world and beyond.
In “The Black Swan,” Taleb wrote, “The government-sponsored institution Fannie Mae, when I look at its risks, seems to be sitting on a barrel of dynamite, vulnerable to the slightest hiccup.” Globalization, he noted, “creates interlocking fragility.” He warned that while the growth of giant banks gives the appearance of stability, in reality, it raises the risk of a systemic collapse — “when one fails, they all fail.”
Taleb believes that our brains evolved to suit a world much simpler than the one we now face. His writing is idiosyncratic, but he does touch on many of the perceptual biases that distort our thinking: our tendency to see data that confirm our prejudices more vividly than data that contradict them; our tendency to overvalue recent events when anticipating future possibilities; our tendency to spin concurring facts into a single causal narrative; our tendency to applaud our own supposed skill in circumstances when we’ve actually benefited from dumb luck.
And looking at the financial crisis, it is easy to see dozens of errors of perception. Traders misperceived the possibility of rare events. They got caught in social contagions and reinforced each other’s risk assessments. They failed to perceive how tightly linked global networks can transform small events into big disasters.
Taleb is characteristically vituperative about the quantitative risk models, which try to model something that defies modelization. He subscribes to what he calls the tragic vision of humankind, which “believes in the existence of inherent limitations and flaws in the way we think and act and requires an acknowledgement of this fact as a basis for any individual and collective action.” If recent events don’t underline this worldview, nothing will.
If you start thinking about our faulty perceptions, the first thing you realize is that markets are not perfectly efficient, people are not always good guardians of their own self-interest and there might be limited circumstances when government could usefully slant the decision-making architecture (see “Nudge” by Thaler and Cass Sunstein for proposals). But the second thing you realize is that government officials are probably going to be even worse perceivers of reality than private business types. Their information feedback mechanism is more limited, and, being deeply politicized, they’re even more likely to filter inconvenient facts.
This meltdown is not just a financial event, but also a cultural one. It’s a big, whopping reminder that the human mind is continually trying to perceive things that aren’t true, and not perceiving them takes enormous effort.
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