Did Kenneth Boulding predict our current political crisis?

Muddling through is the only realistic way to approach the future of anything

From "In Praise of Inefficiency", a speech delivered by Kenneth Boulding to the National Trustee Workshop of the Association of Governing Boards in Denver in 1977. Prof. Boulding was a distinguished professor in the economics department at the University of Colorado and a trustee of Haverford College in Pennsylvania.

One of the things I have learned from the biologists (some of my best friends are biologists) is that inefficiency is an extremely important element in survival. I have taken great satisfaction in watching squirrels. I rarely see them doing any work. They run around trees, and they twitch their tails, and they play hide-and-seek, and they have an awfully good time. And they survive. Dolphins may be almost as bright as we are (their brains are apparently as large), but perhaps they have decided just to enjoy themselves.

Efficiency Can Be Dangerous

On the other hand, a species which is highly efficient will expand to the limits of its environment, and then its environment worsens and its niche shrinks. There is a principle of the universe, that there is a very strong tendency for things to go from bad to worse. Then the efficient species may simply collapse into extinction....

The awful truth about the world is that the meek inherit the earth. In the long run it is the adaptable, which is another name for the meek, who survive, whereas the too-well-adapted get crowded out by changes in the environment.

[...]

Beware the Illusion of Certainty

I must confess that I worry a good deal about the rise of sophistication in decision-making, particularly when this is done with computers and flashing lights, wall charts and printouts, and neglects the delectable ambiguities of language. I have been involved recently with a committee of the National Academy of Sciences, which has involved some contact with the world of Washington, which, as a dyed-in-the-wool provincial, I usually avoid. In Washington I am continually appalled at the influence of think tanks and the scenario writers, people who come up with projections, numbers, and more numbers, in which the more dubious and the less dubious are hopelessly mixed.

We have to recognize that the overwhelming property of the future is irreducible uncertainty. Decisions under uncertainty are very different from those under certainty, if they ever existed. The worst possible decisions are those which are made under illusions of certainty. Sophisticated decision-making can easily produce these illusions. I wonder indeed when the history of the Vietnam War is written whether the development of political military gaming in the Pentagon will not be perceived as a major source of some very catastrophic decisions because it produced illusions of certainty....

One of the most awful truths about the real world is that it is a muddle. Anybody who is clear about it is under an illusion. However carefully we refine our techniques, we must never desert the great tradition of muddling through. This is the only realistic way to approach the future of anything.