Media Mindfulness

Writing about the need to shift our economic paradigm, Adbuster’s Kalle Lasn has a good overview of how this kind of change happens in the real world. My only beef with the arguments in the extended article is his use of old paradigm activist tactics, i.e. disruption, protest, etc. Though I think those tactics are useful, I wonder if they are in keeping with emergent practices of networks and decentralized relationships. Is it possible to compost economics from within? Read “The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom” by Yochai Benkler and tell me what you think.

True Cost Economics : Paradigm Shift:

PARADIGM SHIFT

This is how scientific progress is supposed to happen: a theory, a paradigm, that has worked quite well for many years suddenly becomes problematic. Contradictions emerge; the theory no longer seems to predict reality. The scientific community senses the moment and rises to the occasion. A flurry of experiments is conducted, information shared, papers written and conferences held. Out of this intellectual turmoil, a hot new theory emerges. It is subjected to rigorous scrutiny and tested in myriad ways. Then, if it passes muster, it is finally accepted as the new norm, the new theoretical framework, the new “truth.” The scientists who came up with the breakthrough are nominated for the Nobel prize. The community settles back down, but now with a greater understanding of how things really are.

This is a myth, what the scientific community would like you to believe.
Thomas Kuhn, in his classic 1962 book, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, describes how paradigm shifts really happen. They are almost always protracted, ugly, messy affairs. They unfold like vindictive putsches. The old guard protects its turf jealously. The dissenters are ignored, stonewalled, refused publication and tenure, and ostracized in every way.

Kuhn’s most profound insight is that in the real world, contrary to the way scientific progress is supposed to happen, an old paradigm cannot be replaced by new evidence, or facts, or “the truth.” It can only be replaced by another paradigm. In other words, a scientific community will not change just because its forecasts are wrong, its policies no longer work, or its theories are proved unscientific. It will change only when a new generation of scientists grabs the old-school practitioners by the scruffs of their necks and throws them out of power.

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