Demagogues Also Lead

For the last several weeks, regular readers of "Future-Ready Leaders Now" have witnessed a kind of roll-out. I have made no secret of my fascination with the ideas presented in behavioral economist, Daniel Kahneman's book, Thinking, Fast and Slow.  I have shared them with weary colleagues and hapless strangers at every opportunity. Tonight is no exception.

Preparations for a lesson on causal-comparative and experiment research for students in my Master of Educational Leadership for School Executives class led me to reread part of a famous text, a single quote from which pretty much sums the reason for the course I am teaching and our need for Kahneman's book. Leaders would do well to commit it to memory. Here's the quote:

"Our predilection for premature acceptance and assertion, our aversion to suspended judgment, are signs that we tend naturally to cut short the process of testing. We are satisfied with superficial and immediate short-visioned applications. If these work out with moderate satisfactoriness, we are content to suppose that our assumptions have been confirmed.

Even in the case of failure, we are inclined to put the blame not on the inadequacy and incorrectness of our data and thoughts, but upon our hard luck and the hostility of circumstances. . . Science represents the safeguard of the [human] race against these propensities and the evils which flow from them. It consists of the special appliances and methods. . . slowly worked out in order to conduct reflection under conditions whereby its procedures and results are tested."

The quote is attributed to noted philosopher and University of Chicago professor, John Dewey, writing nearly a century ago in his landmark book, Democracy and Education.

As you will remember, Kahneman asserts that our "System One" brain is quick, associative, and often wrong in its conclusions because of its tendency to "cut short the process of testing" to borrow from Dewey. On the other hand, humans are alive today because of System One's thin-sliced responsiveness to fight or flight information. 

Consider now "System Two." Kahneman says this system of thinking is logical and methodical. In theory, it has the capacity to analyze all the data and seek more. Alas, System Two is lazy. To paraphrase Dewey, System Two is all too readily "satisfied with superficial and short-visioned application." If there is a way to merge both systems of thinking to a greater good than either one of them could have attained alone, it lies in the scientific method.

I think, for example, about the pseudo arguments to which our elected officials sometimes subject us, ignoring for political gain evidence produced by disciplined inquiry around issues ranging from climate change to the evolution of the species.

In my mind, our only defense against hogwash from demagogues who would purport to tell us "how it really is" is to demand empirical evidence to support their assertions, examine rigorously the evidence and how it was produced, and push back against error when it occurs.

Someone once wrote that we are always but a generation away from ignorance. If any leader reading this blog needs a reason for acquainting him or herself with the methods of science, remember that demagogues also lead.