The fundamental fallacy, according to Brett Stevens, is to assume that we can change how we do things and achieve the the same results; that we monkey with cause and not screw up effect. Conservatives inherently realize this, and believe social change should be careful, measured, and incremental so that missteps can be rolled back. Liberals, like Barrack Obama, vow to "fundamentally transform the United States of America." They believe their radical agenda will eliminate real & imagined injustices which they use to leverage themselves into power, while not affecting the good aspects of American society, like economic success and peaceful transfers of power. They believe they can radically transform the cause and merely tweak result.
A second fundamental fallacy, if I might propose one, is the belief that things will not change. And, in particular, that our understanding of things will not change. Conservatives can fall prey to this, when they long for a past that isn't coming back. But liberals do too, in assuming that progress is linear and constant. Reactionaries differ from both in that they are more familiar with the cyclic nature of societies. They're somewhat more "big picture" kind of people. As society progresses, the constant linearity fallacy becomes more entrenched. Our society looks back at the ignorant rubes who came before major paradigm shifts of the past, all while assuming non lay before us.
The problem permeates our society. I will not struggle here in providing examples, but more in limiting myself in listing them. The worst can be found with the usual suspects: corporate media, government, and academia. Probably no better example can be found than the Fukuyama vs Huntington debate in the social sciences. Fukuyama fielded his End of History hypothesis, that liberal democracy was the culmination of human societal progress, and the rest of human existence would consist of clean up and consolidation. Huntington proposed the Clash of Civilizations, that conflicts would continue indefinitely at the world's civilizational fractures. By the turn of the century, when I was entering college, the radical progressives in the social science departments (where all students are forced to take electives) were quite pleased that Huntington was considered to have won over Fukuyama. My best guess as to why they aligned that way is that Fukuyama is a neoconservative, and back then liberals were as confused as we were that neoconservatives were a form of conservatism, rather than liberal imperialists. I don't know what they're teaching today, but the ironic thing is that liberals are actually fully in line with Fukuyama, believing that if they spread magical democracy and liberal values then the world will oscillate in perfect harmony. Even when gloating about it ("ha ha bigots, the neocon guy lost") they still haven't actually processed the paradigm shift that the Huntington thesis represents.
Another is the sciences. Do you think I was too harsh the other day? Here's an account from a researcher from particle physics, the field I credited with actually having some relative success. The analysis is grim. Tens of thousands of failures. Little theoretical work of merit. Which stands opposite a couple experimental successes regarding theories a half century and a full century in age. The problem with particle physics, she says, is stagnation. That should be expected. Like society, scientific progress is not linear. It is better described by punctuated equilibria, like evolution. Given that we've had so many major paradigm shifts in the last couple centuries, it is understandable why people might assume technological advancement is a linear game. Particle physics is stagnating because it has nearly wrung out the benefits of the previous paradigm shifts of quantum mechanics and the discovery of subatomic particles. It's likely that the big breakthroughs will coincide with a new paradigm shift. Academic researchers box themselves in by desiring great breakthroughs that will make them famous, yet also assuming that the current paradigm is the final answer. As long as the current orthodoxy holds, their progress will largely consist of confirmation exercises, which is really all that the CERN and LIGO results are, at best. (Personally, I have strong faith in the CERN results....less so for the LIGO. I don't think the evidence for general relativity is as strong as its purported to be.)
Today's scientists are endlessly amused when they look back at ancient paradigms like an Earth-centered cosmos, or a universal ether to provide a medium for electromagnetic propagation. And yet, dark matter is, if anything, more absurd than ether, and neutron stars are more fanciful than an Earth-centric cosmos, which at least had a working - if complicated - mathematical model. These are the kind of people that gawk at car wrecks and end up read-ending the people in front of them.
Today's absurdities will one day be seen not in isolation, but as amusing anecdotes from a forgone paradigm. I hope my grandchildren's textbooks warn about backwards nations that thought it would be a good idea to have open borders coupled with a welfare state while encouraging their own children to castrate themselves. Or a monetary system where states borrow their currency from semi-private central banks, which then route the profits back to the Treasury. A lender giving the profit back to the burrower? It's often those little things that no one thinks about, and no one really questions, that seem so obvious in hindsight.
[Here's another one, from physics. (Sorry, I've been on that kick lately.) Gravitational models of many-bodied systems are inherently unstable. How do they explain our nice, orderly, well-behaved solar system? They just say we must be in a stable period. "Why don't observations match the models? Oh, they don't now, but they will soon, believe me. Probably not until after I retire though...." Under general relativity, even two-bodied systems become unstable. It means that the Earth orbits the point the Sun was at 8 minutes ago, and the Sun orbits the point the galactic center was at 26,000 years ago. Another reason to be suspicious of that explanation, even if there aren't yet better alternatives.]
It's probably more appropriate to imagine our civilization as a dark ages than an enlightened era. There's a lot of hand waving going on. A lot of "don't look at the man behind the curtain." A lot of "how absolutely dare you zyr for questioning settled science." If the numbers don't add up, something is wrong. And if you take measure of what the absurdities are, you'll have a good feel for what the genuine paradigm shifts are when they occur. Become an early adopter and you might make a fortune. Or even make yourself into a sort of benevolent dictator for life. We're about due for one of those, you know.
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