Wednesday, July 20, 2011

The God complex & politicians

TED has an important talk from Tim Harford: Trial, error and the God Complex.





Over simplifying, the God complex is the belief that we can know everything about complex systems,

This is an important concept to keep in mind when listening to politicians drop sound bites and one liners.  For example, a typical party line is that lowering taxes (always) creates jobs.  There is logic to this statement, and I would generally agree that lower taxes are better than higher taxes.  But, the tax code is too complex for one person to fully understand.  Combined with the amazingly complex system of "the economy," I don't believe it is possible to make such broad (and often times) absolute statements like "doing X always leads to action Y"

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