I was telling wifey yesterday on our way to work when we heard on the radio that the PM is taking the place of LKY at the Nikkei conference, this is the perfect opportunity to compare the son's performance against his father. Experience told me not to expect too much and I am not demanding him to his father equal.
Here is what CNA reported of his speech.
Already at the beginning of his speech I could tell he drew much from what his scenario planning outfit gave him. Scenario planning is no longer useful. It is a tool for the 70s to the 90s. Things happen too quickly now and there are far too many linkages creating many Black Swans. We don't know how to think of it well enough but in dealing with complex systems, you can't get the behavior of a system by aggregating its components. The system emerges, it is not built up form layering all sorts of bricks.
One critical component that ought not to be missing in his scenarios was race and religion, especially the growing role of Islam. If you leave that out all the scenarios are no longer valid because Islam orthodox or revisionist will impact and shape every factor he had enumerated.
The man had no conceptual thread to tie the factors he shared into some coherence which we can then play with mentally and make thought experiments. To him it is one chaotic mess of some items he like, some he feared and plenty of not sure or critical uncertainties.
With him as PM and he knows it too, life for us would be hard and stressful because he simply do not know what is ahead. We cannot take the huge bets that can materially change our environment to make life better by quantum than incrementally.
In the next PM, we desperately need a leader with good foresight. I remained impressed with LKY's thoughts of the future at the turn of the century published in the Economist. That is the standard to shoot for.
I think scenario planning is still relevant. The issue now the planner is stupid. They are disconnected. They neglect people behaviour, social impact. Their only concern are numbers. That's the reason they're unable to spot social trends such as religion, and mentality that might affect their plan. The issue is the plan is not good enough, and the planner unable to see it. Ask why?
ReplyDeleteIs there such thing as black swan event? I dont think so. It just that people normally neglect the issue such that it become black swan event for them. Is financial crisis a black swan event? no, it's a process, the proof some people able to profit from it. Is eartquake black swan event? yes on some level, but the impact can be minimize if the system is robust from the beginning. Is coup a black swan event? no, people feeling doesnt change overnight. So black swan event is very rare but neglecting people is a lot.