Adam Elkus has an excellent post on the fundamental reasons why analytical blogging and journalism are useful. Obviously, being the heir to Abu Muqawama, he’s talking about people who either come up with silly movie-plot threats or else want to invade Syria with an arse full of armies. The point, though, has very wide applicability, especially about the value of discussing limits.
Here’s a German word for you: Machbarkeitswahn, which translates as something like “feasibility-study delusions” and means the state of mind you get into when you do some basic sums and realise that yes! all you need to do is to drive a canal into the Qaatara Depression and the world’s problems are solved, or at least that it’s theoretically feasible to build a really big airport in the mouth of the Thames.
I don’t know yet if there’s a corresponding word for the delusional belief that certain things are impossible, which is probably just as important.
Isn’t the delusional belief that certain things are impossible called “Austrian Economics” – being the belief, at core, that civilization can’t have happened the way it actually did, because the information problem renders such central planning impossible?
There’s also Arthur C. Clarke’s first law on the technological side of this: “When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.”
Related to the positive-side delusion, there’s the “Green Lantern Theory of Geopolitics”, which is that if the US really, really want to win a war it always can.
all you need to do is to drive a canal into the Qaatara Depression and the world’s problems are solved, or at least that it’s theoretically feasible to build a really big airport in the mouth of the Thames
Add “with nukes!” to those two and you’ve basically got your American Machbarkeitswahn.
Apparently, I cannot close a tag.