This is Dembski at his best. Rarely have I read such a carefully worded critique of such a huge variety of topics that directly or indirectly impact his life and mine.
I found this article very enlightening but a bit depressing. I would add the Democrat Party and it's control of most big cities over the past half century or more as another example of systemic incompetence. It goes along with the teachers' unions, which was on the list.
I never cease to be amazed at how so many people can keep voting in the same party that is ruining their standard of living -- and then blame their problems on the party that has been out of power in their city for 60 years!
Maybe. Or perhaps this was like David and Joab's treatment of Uriah the Hittite, with incompetence merely being an excuse for something more nefarious.
In Human Nature, David Berlinski puts the escalations that led to WWI down to so many incompetencies that it might as well be systemic cross culturally.
As with wokeness (which both reinforces and is reinforced by systemic incompetence), I believe that systemic incompetence is ultimately rooted in naturalism.
There is both a moral component and an intellectual component driving it. Many people understand the moral component, but I think the intellectual component is actually the more destructive of the two. Not that it's a competition: They are two sides of the same coin.
The moral component is that naturalism leaves you with no moral obligation to tell the truth when you can profit from a lie, no obligation to your employers to work diligently when you can get away with phoning it in, no obligation to customers not to swindle them, no obligation to debate honestly and rationally when you can get your way through sophistry, no obligation to future generations not to leave them a hellish ruin so long as you never face the consequences personally.
The intellectual component is that given naturalism, *there is no such thing as objective truth or reason in the first place*. "True" and "false" are not material properties, so given naturalism, they don't objectively exist. We cannot possibly have beliefs that are objectively "about" abstract propositions that objectively have values of "true" or "false." It cannot objectively be the case that there are abstract and universal "laws of logic" that we can "grasp" in our intellects and use to reason, or that there are objectively "right" ways to reason in concordance with the laws of logic and "wrong" ways to reason in violation of them.
In short, given naturalism, there is no objective, ontological distinction between truth and falsehood, between intellectual honesty and sophistry, between excellence and mediocrity. And even if there were, there would be no moral obligation to care about such things.
Since liberalism promotes materialist secularism and directly attacks the foundations of natural law, systemic incompetence and grift are the inevitable, inescapable results of it. Before long it will collapse in on itself, having extracted all the value left to take, and bring down most of our civilization with it.
It can be said that if any government puts ideology before pragmatic decisions, it is doomed to crash and burn. That is because the feelings of ideology are not strong enough to sustain the realities of day-to-day governance. It reveals itself in the placement of idealogues in positions of power and in the policies that harm wide swaths of the people, usually from the other side of the debate. Here in Canada, we have an ideological government and the frays around the edges are becoming great holes in the fabric of the nation, not warming anyone from the chill of the Truth.
Actually, I don't quite agree with that. The problem is not ideology per se but rather bogus ideology. The ideology of the US Founding Fathers is fine as far as I am concerned, but socialist ideology is not.
I am not American but I have heard of your founding fathers. It seems from the outside that they set up the governing systems to allow for a plurality of points of view. The dominant one was Christian but it was not for everyone. As we shift away from Christian values, we are being inundated with worldviews that do not allow plurality.
The “progressive” worldview is the most insistent that they are the only way. It will either crash and burn in its irrationality or mellow in its demands.
This is Dembski at his best. Rarely have I read such a carefully worded critique of such a huge variety of topics that directly or indirectly impact his life and mine.
I found this article very enlightening but a bit depressing. I would add the Democrat Party and it's control of most big cities over the past half century or more as another example of systemic incompetence. It goes along with the teachers' unions, which was on the list.
I never cease to be amazed at how so many people can keep voting in the same party that is ruining their standard of living -- and then blame their problems on the party that has been out of power in their city for 60 years!
Excellent post!
As I get older, I believe more and more what Alexandre Dumas said about “Stupidity.” is valid for incompetence:
“One thing that humbles me deeply is to see that human genius has its limits while human stupidity does not,”
It looks like we can add the Secret Service to this list.
Maybe. Or perhaps this was like David and Joab's treatment of Uriah the Hittite, with incompetence merely being an excuse for something more nefarious.
In Human Nature, David Berlinski puts the escalations that led to WWI down to so many incompetencies that it might as well be systemic cross culturally.
As with wokeness (which both reinforces and is reinforced by systemic incompetence), I believe that systemic incompetence is ultimately rooted in naturalism.
There is both a moral component and an intellectual component driving it. Many people understand the moral component, but I think the intellectual component is actually the more destructive of the two. Not that it's a competition: They are two sides of the same coin.
The moral component is that naturalism leaves you with no moral obligation to tell the truth when you can profit from a lie, no obligation to your employers to work diligently when you can get away with phoning it in, no obligation to customers not to swindle them, no obligation to debate honestly and rationally when you can get your way through sophistry, no obligation to future generations not to leave them a hellish ruin so long as you never face the consequences personally.
The intellectual component is that given naturalism, *there is no such thing as objective truth or reason in the first place*. "True" and "false" are not material properties, so given naturalism, they don't objectively exist. We cannot possibly have beliefs that are objectively "about" abstract propositions that objectively have values of "true" or "false." It cannot objectively be the case that there are abstract and universal "laws of logic" that we can "grasp" in our intellects and use to reason, or that there are objectively "right" ways to reason in concordance with the laws of logic and "wrong" ways to reason in violation of them.
In short, given naturalism, there is no objective, ontological distinction between truth and falsehood, between intellectual honesty and sophistry, between excellence and mediocrity. And even if there were, there would be no moral obligation to care about such things.
Since liberalism promotes materialist secularism and directly attacks the foundations of natural law, systemic incompetence and grift are the inevitable, inescapable results of it. Before long it will collapse in on itself, having extracted all the value left to take, and bring down most of our civilization with it.
Great article Bill. The only DEI the world needs to see is the IMAGO DEI.
To be fair - systemic incompetence is an equal opportunity parasite.
The Trump administration had more than its fair share of ghastly guffaws.
I'd hazard a guess that it's been around longer than we'd imagine.
Heck - just look at what John Harrison had to do to convince the NYT-carrying meritocracy of his time that he was right!
Thanks to our friend Duverger, we have more dueling in competencies than dueling facts.
It can be said that if any government puts ideology before pragmatic decisions, it is doomed to crash and burn. That is because the feelings of ideology are not strong enough to sustain the realities of day-to-day governance. It reveals itself in the placement of idealogues in positions of power and in the policies that harm wide swaths of the people, usually from the other side of the debate. Here in Canada, we have an ideological government and the frays around the edges are becoming great holes in the fabric of the nation, not warming anyone from the chill of the Truth.
Actually, I don't quite agree with that. The problem is not ideology per se but rather bogus ideology. The ideology of the US Founding Fathers is fine as far as I am concerned, but socialist ideology is not.
I am not American but I have heard of your founding fathers. It seems from the outside that they set up the governing systems to allow for a plurality of points of view. The dominant one was Christian but it was not for everyone. As we shift away from Christian values, we are being inundated with worldviews that do not allow plurality.
The “progressive” worldview is the most insistent that they are the only way. It will either crash and burn in its irrationality or mellow in its demands.