On the virtues of deliberate inaction

I’ve thought a lot over the past few years about people’s aversion to “doing nothing,” specifically as the concept relates to thinking about, addressing, or planning for problematic social and political issues. The most recent incident that made me think of it was a discussion on LinkedIn where I commented:

I think the issues that genuinely compel explanation and action are very few and far between. We certainly feel like we need to do something about all of them, but we don’t really know that. In most cases, it seems the most appropriate response to a pressing issue that involves large populations would be to first admit that we haven’t got a clue about what is really influencing them, then take steps to systematically collect as much information about the actual behaviors as we can, and focus our efforts on preparing our own organizations/governments/societies for the event that the pressing issues will develop into something that directly impacts us.

Yes, all models are wrong…that totally misses the point

The LinkedIn discussion (mentioned here) that started in response to my post on theory raised some interesting issues that I want to explore a little more. (I’d give a hyperlink to the LinkedIn discussion itself, but it’s unfortunately in a members-only group. I like that LinkedIn connects people interested in discussing common interests, but I really wish people would comment here, in public. Why use a social media tool to stovepipe communication? Oh, well.) Here’s the comment that got me thinking:

Give data collection the respect it deserves

I attended a presentation on “a framework of corruption” the other day. Perhaps this is true for other areas of research as well, but researchers and analysts who look at corruption love to talk about frameworks and maps and indices and typologies. In a sense you can’t blame them. Corruption is about as vague a term in social research as is possible. To make talking and thinking about it useful you have to first break it into pieces. What kinds of corruption are there? Unfortunately, the typologies usually just involve other terms and ideas that are nearly as vague as the original word.

Why the best ideas sometimes don’t seem very good

I came across this the other day:

The Pentagon’s new “strategic guidance” document, issued last month in the wake of Mr. Obama’s pledge to cut $485 billion from the defense budget over the coming decade…states, “In the aftermath of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the United States will emphasize nonmilitary means and military-to-military cooperation to address instability and reduce the demand for significant U.S. force commitments to stability operations.” It goes on to note that “U.S. forces will no longer be sized to conduct large-scale, prolonged stability operations.’”

With this paragraph military planners signaled an abrupt end to the post-9/11 era of intervention. Only a few years ago the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan — wars of occupation, nation-building and counterinsurgency — looked like the face of modern conflict. Now they don’t. Americans don’t believe in them and can’t afford them anymore.

A numerical heuristic is still just a heuristic

The marketing and business research literature has kind of impressed me. I’m used to conflict research. Marketing research seems to be just a prone to unfounded assumptions and unwarranted conclusions as the studies of Afghan insurgencies or Mexican counter-narcotics operations – the low points of each kind of research seem to be about the same. It’s the high points that are different. I’ve seen a lot of three-anecdotes-equal-a-trend and trust-me-I’m-an-expert arguments in the marketing research, but I’ve also seen a whole lot of really rigorous methods and, in many cases, a refreshing attention to research design.