Fundamental Surprises Zvi Lanir Decision Research 1201 Oak ...

Fundamental thinking, which means tolerance towards contrasting tensions within
the system, is an obstacle of efficiency. As a result, technology may reduce the ability
of societies and organizations to cope with fundamental surprise. Along with Herbert
and Stuart Dryfus, 11 I believe that we are now facing a kind of social “agonosia,” a
neurological disorder exhibiting a total dependence upon rational understanding, where
everything must be decomposed before it can be understood.
2. The growing gap between fundamental changes and fundamental learning
The study revealed a growing gap between the paces of the fundamental changes,
which is increasing, and the ability of societies and organizations to adjust their
fundamental thinking, which has not improved and may have decreased.
I believe that we have already reached a stage where the rate of fundamental
changes in the environment is faster than our ability to change our assumptions about
ourselves in relation to this environment. In this case, “bounded rationality,” 12 “grooved
thingking,” 13 “muddling through,” 14 and “maze policy behavior” 15 not only represent
common behavior, but also become the only reasonable ones.
3. The tendency to hang on to old policies
The study emphasizes that, eve after a fundamental surprise becomes evident, and
it is difficult for politicians to learn from it. Decision makers not only tend to extract
only situational lessons from surprises, but also to “retreat to commitment” to the old
doctrine and policy. The literature of policy science has already documented and
explained this tendency. When the lessons of the surprise are not so clear, clinging to
the old is even stronger. By definition, fundamental surprises are not clear-cut. As a
result, the surprise is explained as an inevitable result of betraying the old doctrine or
policy.
Dror 13 justly points out that the barriers to “policy paradigm reconsideration” are
very strong because of the “tendency of past success to reinforce policy paradigms
while dismal failures result either in entrenchment and escalated commitment to policy
orthodoxies… or in panic learning, both of which inhibit policy reconsideration and the
debunking of policy orthodoxy, as needed for high-quality policymaking.”
To these arguments, this study adds another explanation. Politicians and decision
makers also tend to prevent fundamental learning simply because they do not have the