It seems common to assume that if someone correctly describes the current state of reality, then they can also correctly predict how it can be changed. Yet, this is often untrue.

A simple example would be of a doctor who correctly diagnoses a patient. And prescribes a medication that doesn’t work. Or of someone correctly identifying their food habits as the source of a certain health issue, but then choosing wrong diet to fix it. Or trying to fix a broken speaker in a phone and destroying the phone instead by frying its circuits.

Similarly, someone saying “Here’s a significant problem of our country: … . And here’s what needs to be done about it: … .” can be spot on about the problem and completely miss that the proposed solution will only make the problem worse.

But it seems that just stating an issue in a way which really hits home for others, is often enough to earn a credit of trust to proceed with a solution. In the end, that’s how populists get elected: they often understand the feelings of voters very well. And then they advocate for simple policies which won’t work, while seeming very easy to achieve. It also helps to blame the predecessors for not doing anything to fix the problem. Which is often true too, and yet doesn’t mean that the populists won’t be doing even worse.

Oftentimes, it isn’t easy to directly pinpoint what went wrong in such cases. If a certain action was taken to deal with a problem and made it worse, we can’t go back in time and try a different one to check if it would have yielded a different result. And sometimes it’s too late to fix that worsened problem. While those who proposed the failed solution would keep arguing they did the best that could possibly have been done.

However, I wouldn’t put the responsibility for the outcome squarely on the “hired specialist”. Those who suffer from a problem often themselves seek only immediate relief from the symptoms. Once it is achieved, the former sufferers might not persuade a full investigation into the original cause of their suffering. Similarly to how someone could come to a doctor with chronic pain and leave satisfied with a painkiller prescription. After which the chronic disease keeps progressing obscured by desensitization. Even if the doctor has prescribed a follow-up, relief from pain might push it to the bottom of urgent priorities for the patient. Then that critical X-Ray just never gets done because there are now other, seemingly more immediate things to do.

Here are a few more general examples, which I personally would consider as matching the described pattern:

  • When democracy starts failing to represent the voters, it might be tempting to blame democracy itself as the problem. However, replacing it with authoritarian rule doesn’t increase representation of voters and instead coerces them to the will of the ruling elite, no matter how benevolent. Fixing specific problems in a democracy is difficult to do and sometimes even to articulate, yet that route at least has the potential of improving the situation.
  • When more and more people start getting addicted to psychoactive substances, the easy solution is to punish them with fines and prison sentences. But the source of addiction usually can be traced to preceding struggling and mental health issues, which punishment rarely fixes. Treating such issues, revealing underlying societal causes and educating about coping techniques is a more difficult solution, but it might actually both reduce suffering of the people and decrease the number of those who become addicted.
  • When someone voices an unpopular opinion, a common knee-jerk reaction is to silence or insult them. Which usually leads to hidden undertows of repressed thinking which explode as protests and election outcomes that defy the polls. Trying to understand why someone thinks differently and finding common ground is way more difficult than shushing, but in the end it might result in mutually beneficial decisions.