What we think we know is wrong
The point, and the problem is that a lot of what we think we know is wrong or out of date. Knowledge has exploded so fast we struggle to keep up with it. A broad generalisation, I already observed that multi-disciplinary approaches are now common in science, many educated and scientifically minded people are on top of recent developments, but that knowledge is not yet part of the mainstream. It is the rest of us and those with power in politics and business who need to start joining the dots. On this site I go further than that, there is a great deal of implicit (apparent) knowledge and assumptions that, consciously and unconsciously support and outdated world view. I might summarise that world view as a bundle of assumptions, norms and beliefs that roughly encompass the following; we have a right to the products of the earth, modern competitive economics is an analogue for the competition we find in nature, we cannot plan but the sum total of individual behaviour will create good outcomes, reductionism and point solutions will give us quick fixes, we can rely on leaders who know what to do and will doing for us. Wrong, wrong, wrong, these are the mindsets that prop up an increasingly dysfunctional status quo.
There are many reasons for this, some of which are;
- There is always a time lag for ideas to move out of science and into the mainstream – when they do they are often simplified and sometimes just plain wrong
- The discovery rate is increasing (possibly exponentially) which means we have difficulty in keeping up anyway even with life time learning – and not everyone has that
- We cherish some ideas and cling on to them even when they are out of date
- We use ideas to tell a story that become part of and supports our culture, even in science where the nature of the endeavour is to challenge and research old ideas often die hard Hands Ch23
- We seem to like bad news so we do not see the improvements that have been made or the ones that are still taking place