“There is nowadays, I believe, far too much respect for the technical expert. A report of this kind, no matter how beautifully reproduced, should not be exempt from critical examination. The authors are indeed expert in certain fields and I would have no wish to dispute their views in these fields; but a critical reading of the whole report shows that perhaps 25% of technical expertise has been diluted with 75% of opinion, speculation, and crystal ball gazing; and the 75% then tends to be accorded the same degree of authority as the 25%.”
-Sir John Cowperthwaite, Financial Secretary of Hong Kong from 1961-1971, from Architect of Prosperity by Neil Monnery

“I believe that (they) are innocently guilty of the twentieth century fallacy that technology can be applied to human affairs. They cannot believe that anything can work efficiently unless it has been programmed by a computer and have lost faith in the forces of the market and human actions and reactions that make it up. But no computer has yet been devised which will produce accurate results from a diet of opinion and emotion. We suffer a great deal today from the bogus certainties of the pseudo-sciences which include all the social sciences including economics. Technology is admirable on the factory floor but largely irrelevant to human affairs.”
-Sir John Cowperthwaite, Financial Secretary of Hong Kong from 1961-1971, from Architect of Prosperity by Neil Monnery

HKO

Similarly stated, we have replaced a philosophical understanding of risk and human behavior with delusional mathematical certainty.

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