How about a Psychological Moon Shot?
Says the Alchemist Rory Sutherland:
“Making a train journey 20% fast might cause $100M but making it 20% more enjoyable, might cost almost nothing.
Biggest progress in the next 50 years:
May come not from advancements in technology, but in psychology and design thinking.
Put simply:
It is easy to achieve massive improvements in perception at a fraction of the cost of equivalent improvements in reality.
Logic tends to ruin out magical improvements of its kind, but psychologic doesn’t.
We are wrong about psychology to a far greater extent than we are about Physics.
There is much more scope for improvement here.
Also, we have a culture that prizes measuring things over understanding people.
Hence, it is disproportionally weak in both seeking and recognizing psychological answers.”
Big data all comes from the same place. The past. The slightest thing can throw the most perfectly calibrated model into chaos. Could the reliance on logic have been the cause of their defeats: Trump, Clinton. The blame was pinned to anyone, from Russians to FaceBook. No one spent enough time asking if their over-reliance on mathematical models of decision making might be to blame for the fact that in either case, the clear favorite blew it. In theory, you cannot be too logical. In practice, you can.
Narrow, conventional logic becomes the natural mode of thinking the risk-adverse, bureaucratic or executive. There is a simple reason for this. You can never be fired for being logical. If your reasoning is sound and unimaginative. Even if you fail. It is unlikely you will attract much blame. It is much easier to be fired for being illogical than it is for being unimaginative. The fatal issue is that logic always gets you to exactly the same place as your competitors.