I have this discussion periodically with a couple of folks on the list from California and abroad. They think these folks are smart, I think they are stupid, banal and entitled. There are some smart people in that business but in the forty years I've lived here and dealt with them, this attitude in the video is "conventional wisdom." Like people fighting over "victimhood" these folks can't stand poor people, (who say that they are entitled to a safety net), in such a opulent Wall Street economy. They are actually in competition with these poor people who have NO capital at all for victimhood. They use terms like "get what they deserve in the greatest free country in the world" or worse, the problem is that "the poor have NO Culture." I've had millionaires speak of their poverty to get a cheaper lesson fee and people with houses in mid-Manhattan speak of how they are poorer than the Indian people who have no home and live in Single Room Occupancy hotels. There are some amazing paradoxes here. Some very intelligent people who understand but who at heart come from a set of inherited conservative assumptions that undermines the thrust of the accomplishments of their whole lives. I came across this last night in some reading I'm doing for a management book group. The text we are studying is John N. Warfield's "A Science of Generic Design." Warfield was an engineer and systems expert but I find him the most insightful observer into these human systems that I would call pedagogy and he called "Design." This section below not only applies to economics but to the underlying assumptions about Climate Control and why we are in such a impotent quandary.
"Nothing is more devastating to the credibility of a science than lack of agreement upon (a) what constitutes its fundamentals and (b) the interpretation of them. It has been argued that the most basic criterion for a science is that it should have Referential Transparency. A science with this attribute first of all is to be seen as an organized body of knowledge. And a part of the organizing principle has to do with the inferential structure of the science. Structure means relationship, and inferential structure means inferred relationship. When fragments of information are connected by inference, a normal connotation is that one piece of information is more fundamental than another. To say that one piece of information A is more fundamental than another B is to say also that B is dependent upon A for its interpretation. And if pieces of information are strung out in a chain of inference, pieces deeper or further back in the chain are critical to the interpretation of their successors. While infinite chains are conceivable intellectually, practical considerations (the finiteness of language, the finiteness of human observational capacity) tell us that finite chains are the focus of our interpretations, and will be the basis for representation of our beliefs. Thus there will always be a deepest set of concepts upon which all that are connected to it will be dependent for interpretation. But more than this, there will be a shallowest one whose interpretation depends upon all of its predecessors including, but not limited to the deepest set. The capacity to trace the reasoning in both directions through the structure is a key aspect of Referential Transparency. Yet the structure of science remains invisible or implicit for all of the sciences! If a deepest set of ideas is found for a science, it will have to enjoy the special property that it has been subjected over time to the most careful consideration, and has been found acceptable to the vast majority of the relevant community, in order for the science itself to enjoy scientific consensus. In the absence of such a demarcated set, other bases for decision-making will find openings. To illustrate the point consider "nuclear science". A U. S. Congressman (Morris Udall) stated to a group of technical people that, in striving to determine whether nuclear energy was safe, a Congressional Committee invited two groups of Nobel prize-winning scientists to testify on the subject. One of the groups testified to Congress that nuclear energy is safe. The next day the other group testified that nuclear energy is not safe. As the Congressman pointed out, in issues that involve science, but upon which respected scientists do not agree, the issues cease to be scientific and become political. When the issues become political, the reference point for decision-making is not the fundamentals of the science, but rather the fundamentals of politics and economics -- reelection and business income. It is even in the interests of some to promote the idea that sciences cannot have foundations. An alternative posture is to suggest that science is a collection of disconnected patterns, with freedom for anyone to choose which pattern will fit which preconceived idea of what is valid." >From "A Science of Generic Design, Managing Complexity Through System's Design" John N. Warfield, 1994, Iowa State U. Press REH -----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Sally Lerner Sent: Sunday, July 10, 2011 9:05 AM To: RE-DESIGNING WORK, INCOME DISTRIBUTION, EDUCATION; [email protected] Subject: Re: [Futurework] 1 minute video - Morgan Stanley Surely, surely this is meant as satire...? Sally ________________________________________ From: [email protected] [[email protected]] on behalf of michael gurstein [[email protected]] Sent: Saturday, July 09, 2011 2:22 PM To: 'RE-DESIGNING WORK, INCOME DISTRIBUTION, EDUCATION'; [email protected] Subject: [Futurework] 1 minute video - Morgan Stanley http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=19SDI8PksXU&NR=1 _______________________________________________ Futurework mailing list [email protected] https://lists.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework _______________________________________________ Futurework mailing list [email protected] https://lists.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
