Lynne Kiesling
Since we’re riffing off of Hayek today, I’ll take one of his most pithy and insightful quotes, from The Fatal Conceit:
The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design.
I want to use that quote to tee up a video I’ve been meaning to share for some time — philosopher Daniel Dennett discussing evolution, and how the attempt to infer “intelligent design” in evolutionary processes reveals just how deeply the design fallacy runs in human cognition.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TzN-uIVkfjg]
Why do humans have so much difficulty with emergence, with spontaneous/unplanned order? Why do so many people believe that ordered and coordinated outcomes must be intentionally designed?