Marcus, Your example of our weird faith people have in "trickle down" economics points to a specific instance of magical thinking, in the usual form, that we think our stereotypes have causal value in physical systems of the world. The data reads to me as that globally increasing investment generally had the claimed effect, prior to 1970, and then largely stopped. That somewhat coincides with the rise in fanatical belief in the principle just when it no longer worked.
The effect of believing your stereotypes means that changing the world is simply a matter of convincing others to have the other stereotypes... I think that's what I observe in most politics and why I'm nearly as disappointed in the level of insight into our problems by the republicans as by the democrats. They ALL have crazy fictions about how to change the complex systems of our world, that independently develop organization and behavior of their own almost no one happens to watch. We just give label with the latest news story stereotype and that settles it! I dont think education seems to fix that disease in the situation where everyone apparently has it. Phil Henshaw ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
