Democracy And The Human Brain
Why they are fundamentally incompatible
The British military has long been plagued by the UK Ministry of Defence’s inability to manage even the simplest procurement program. Billions of UK Pounds are spent and either nothing comes out the other end or something emerges that is utterly unfit for purpose. The British then self-soothe by repeating their fantasy that they have “the greatest military in the world.” One out of literally hundreds of examples will suffice: the Shorts Blowpipe man-portable anti-aircraft system. Whereas the US Stinger was designed to be soldier-proof (e.g. extremely simple to operate) the UK Blowpipe assumed the user had two heads and three arms. Naturally this made it a “great” weapon with high efficacy. In the 1982 Falklands conflict where the British fought to eject Argentine troops from the Falkland islands, more than 100 Blowpipe missiles were fired at Argentine aircraft. Precisely none hit anything at all. Conversely, the single US-supplied Stinger that was fired successfully brought down its target.
This is a very simple demonstration of an obvious fact: if you don’t design a system that humans can successfully operate then the outcome is not going to be what you want.
One would imagine that this notion is so blindingly obvious that no one would tolerate systems so poorly designed that…
