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The comments here are disappointingly one-sided. Nowhere did Brooks suggest that he wanted to return to the good ol' days with all its warts. Incremental evolut

by ellyagg 18y ago

The comments here are disappointingly one-sided. Nowhere did Brooks suggest that he wanted to return to the good ol' days with all its warts. Incremental evolution of systems is a known good strategy. There's no reason whatever to believe that that doesn't apply to institutions, too. If you find yourself unable to see how tradition can transmit useful information through a society made up of people of varying critical thinking abilities, you may be letting your politics unreasonably bias your analysis. Considering what value traditions and institutions may serve can be an intellectual exercise. It doesn't mean you suddenly want to rescind female voting and return to slavery. It seems impossible to have interesting discussions with about 99.5% of the population, because they show not even the remotest ability to avoid emotional reactions to words.

alexandros 18y ago
"Incremental evolution of systems is a known good strategy." Not always. Evolution keeps multiple branches around and sometimes discards the most prominent one. There is something to be said for admitting failure and starting from scratch rather than continiously patching a non-working solution.
- anamax 18y ago
  >> "Incremental evolution of systems is a known good strategy." > >Not always. That's why he wrote "good" instead of "optimum". Besides, keeping around several branches and discarding one, even the current "most prominent", is incremental. (The system in question consists of all branches.) FWIW, evolution is almost entirely incremental. Note that advocates of the new often overstate the failings of the old, which frequently did handle many cases. Sometimes those cases are no longer important, other times they're less important than new cases, but even when both are true, a given new system may not be better. Advocates of the new also tend to forget that the fact that there are possible new systems that are better than the status quo does not imply that the new system being pushed is better. New can be more fun. That's both an advantage and a disadvantage.

by ellyagg 18y ago

alexandros 18y ago

"Incremental evolution of systems is a known good strategy." Not always. Evolution keeps multiple branches around and sometimes discards the most prominent one. There is something to be said for admitting failure and starting from scratch rather than continiously patching a non-working solution.

anamax 18y ago
>> "Incremental evolution of systems is a known good strategy." > >Not always. That's why he wrote "good" instead of "optimum". Besides, keeping around several branches and discarding one, even the current "most prominent", is incremental. (The system in question consists of all branches.) FWIW, evolution is almost entirely incremental. Note that advocates of the new often overstate the failings of the old, which frequently did handle many cases. Sometimes those cases are no longer important, other times they're less important than new cases, but even when both are true, a given new system may not be better. Advocates of the new also tend to forget that the fact that there are possible new systems that are better than the status quo does not imply that the new system being pushed is better. New can be more fun. That's both an advantage and a disadvantage.