Thinking traps

With ID cards and their data retention proposals and many others related to the information society, the UK government has been acting deliberately not only against the interests of the nation but against their own interests. As soon as the real life affects of these policies start hitting people (e.g. the £500 cost of an ID card) Tony Blair and co are going to be on the receiving end of general public disgruntlement, probably sufficient to vote them out of office. So why in the face of sensible, clear minded exposition of the real problems of these ideas, by folks like those at the LSE, do decision makers persist with wrong-headed and completely counter-productive policies?

John's right when he says prime ministers exist inside a bubble which insulates them from reality. But acting, demonstrably against reason and even enlightened self interest, according to an absolute, pre-conceived, unshakable belief in the rightness of some scheme like ID cards, has got to reflect more than sheer folly and the desire to "act" and be seen to be acting (in the absence of any serious diagnosis of the complex problems allegedly targetted)?

The thinking trap is certainly one contributory explanation. Geoffrey Vickers described it thus:

Lobster pots are designed to catch lobsters. A man entering a lobster pot would become suspicious of the narrowing tunnel, he would shrink from the drop at the end; and if he fell in he would recognise the entrance as a possible exit and climb out again – even if he were the shape of a lobster.

A trap is a trap only for creatures who cannot solve the problem it sets. Man traps are dangerous only in relation to the limitations of what men can see and value and do. The nature of the trap is a function of the nature of the trapped...

We the trapped tend to take our own state of mind for granted – which is partly why we are trapped.

He goes on to note that we can only start to climb out of our self made thinking traps when we recognise that we are in a trap and start questioning our own limitations and the assumptions that led us there.

The government trap in this instance is their focus on selling the rightness (or righteousness) of their solutions, whilst wholly avoiding addressing the complexity of the underlying problems.

And the solutions are neat, simple (or certainly sold as such, even though they are anything but simple) and wrong.