J. B. Thompson

No one, unless he is making a mistake, thinks the Authorial Rabbit never makes mistakes. He does, even more than his friend M. A. Titmarsh. No coy wagging of a bunny ears and tail can disguise a blunder forever.

In his expansive leisure time, the AR has been listening and reading on the subject of incompetence.

All of us err. That can be our best feature: the admitting of it, the learning from it, the humility in recognizing no one of us is not perfect.

All sentient beings (as the Buddhists term it) make mistakes. Non-sentient beings, trees (even Ents), plants (such as carrots – AR note), viruses — they also make mistakes. The difference with the sentient being called homo sapiens is we often acquire awareness of ours and other beings’ mistakes. We can learn from them. Not always, but frequently.

Non-sentient beings just carry on in their mistake and sometimes go extinct. If we choose to ignore our mistakes (the exhortations of Dr. Randy of recent fame in these blogs notwithstanding) our time too may come.

The AR is again grateful to the cultured, compassionate and skilled radio journalist Michael Enright on Canada’s CBC Sunday mornings for recently revisiting the subject of incompetence. The timing is obvious in the corona virus era, when some homo sapiens — to wit, the most cretinous and cruel of the wealthy leadership class and their followers — are wielding their incompetence so magisterially that our existence is under threat.

One thinks — one cannot . . . should not say, wistfully — of the thick prideful heads destined for the chopping block in 1789 or the Rasputin/Alexandra alliance in 1916 or the Mussolini and mistress dance by the heals and bunker suicide in 1945. Sadly, these perfect non-makers of mistakes met their violent end only after millions had died and in one case before millions more were to die later.

Mr. Enright introduced an interview he conducted in 2019. For his introduction, he used the example of Richard Epstein, a law professor and Preposterous Pump favourite who predicted the COVID-19 would kill no more than 500 Americans. Professor Epstein ventured this prediction even though he has no expertise in viruses. Mr. Epstein’s hubris is described in the New York Intelligencer.

Mr. Enright’s 2019 interview subject had been Dr. Daving Dunning, professor of psychology at the University of Michigan and co-conceiver of the Dunning-Kruger Effect. Wikipedia defines the Dunning-Kruger Effect this way:

In the field of psychology, the Dunning-Kruger effect is a cognitive bias in which people with low ability at a task overestimate their ability. It is related to the cognitive bias of illusory superiority and comes from the inability of people to recognize their lack of ability.

In other words, the lowest-ability students think they did best on the last exam when they did not. The smart people with no expertise in a given subject think that because they are smart in something they know everything about everything. The garage mechanic who will remove your appendix. Law Professor Epstein will tell you confidently how many (how few) people will die in a pandemic.

We have the opportunity to witness the phenomenon writ now large as deaths increase in the United States and other countries, like Brazil, where cruelly incompetent leaders reign.

How do such leaders come to power? They are elected, after all. But have been many dictators — the bunker suicide being just one. Are electoral processes so flawed they select such creatures when other competent people are available?

Some electoral processes are flawed, they are corrupted. Or they can be corrupted.

However, there is another factor at work: the Dunning-Kruger Effect. The incumbent incompetents’ mistakes are obvious — except to themselves — before they arrive. Their mistakes are even more obvious once in power. Indeed, the mystery is not that they continue making mistakes, it is that their followers not only tolerate their mistakes, they often celebrate them. ‘He is a regular person, he speaks his mind, he is as stupid as I am, and therefore he cannot make mistakes,’ goes the reasoning. Or, ‘yes, he is a bad person and a bad leader but in the Bible God places such bad people on earth to produce good results.’ Dare one say it, that that reasoning was a mistake, inasmuch as bad leaders in the Bible tend to produce bad results? A third rationale is entirely cynical: ‘hold my hose and vote for those, because they will protect my money.’

In a previous career, the AR, ears tightly bound, tail covered, was unhappily privileged to witness a more innocent, less cynical type of victim after victim falling for the perfidy of financial con men and women, the victims insisting to others and themselves even as their life savings were stolen that they had made no mistake in trusting the tricksters.

In America a segment of the wealthy class, a cynical cohort, considers itself incapable of making a mistake. Only government and poor people make mistakes — or other equally confident business rivals — and therefore government should be severely limited and poor people told to stop whining. Business rivals can be happily eliminated.

A recent New Yorker article by Evan Osnos portrays this prideful and activist class, in a manifestation in Greenwich, Connecticut — close to Wall Street after all but without the   New York City taxes. The article’s author once lived there. It was also once home to the Bush dynasty progenitor, Prescott Bush.

In Prescott’s day, the wealthy did not display their wealth. Noblesse oblige satisfied them in their privileged station in life. They competed to wear the cheapest wristwatches. They spoke of helping the underclass, for as J. Paul Getty once mentioned regarding unions, business needs a middle class with money enough to buy its products.

That day is done. Now, not everyone on that community, of course, but an influential few, they compete at brandishing $17,000 wristwatches and destroying unions and extreme limiting of governments near and far, with the effect of extending income inequity to pre-French revolution levels and ruining the capacity of government to assist all citizens in all Americans’ dream for one nation indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. And to have adequate health care in a pandemic or any other time.

Another variant of the no-mistake set is described in Nobel prize economist Paul Krugman’s recent New York Times article on the Preposterous Pump’s advisors.

While friend Titmarsh has spoken of replacing the lid on sewers after returning the rats to their rightful homes, the AR has not used that language.

Why do we choose such leaders and their quislings? We make mistakes. We “overestimate our ability” as citizens. We delude ourselves that we know all there is to know about public policy and people and can always choose the best people to implement the best policy. Those who disagree we are so convinced are not only wrong but evil. We can hate them.

In the AR’s experience, the demonizing of other people as evil arises when the demonizers’ own project is tentative, weakly reasoned, easily disproved. The hate is necessary to force on others the indefensible. One thinks of George Orwell and the uses to which the words “democracy” and “religion,” have been put.

The solution, as the AR sees it? Acknowledge we are imperfect beings, question our own judgment frequently, be prepared to admit to ourselves and others our errors, respect expertise, do not lose sight of those who are less well-off, be generous in victory and defeat.