Bryan Caplan whinges about F.A. Hayek's antique writing style:

Here's a random paragraph:

In particular, there can be little doubt that the manner in which during the last hundred years man has learned to organize the forces of nature has contributed a great deal toward the creation of the belief that a similar control of the forces of society would bring comparable improvements in human conditions. That, with the application of engineering techniques, the direction of all forms of human activity according to a single coherent plan should prove to be as successful in society as it has been in innumerable engineering tasks, is too plausible a conclusion not to seduce most of those who are elated by the achievement of the natural sciences. It must indeed be admitted both that it would require powerful arguments to counter the strong presumption in favor of such a conclusion and that these arguments have not yet been adequately stated. It is not sufficient to point out the defects of particular proposals based on this kind of reasoning. The argument will not lose its force until it has been conclusively shown why what has proved so eminently successful in producing advances in so many fields should have limits to its usefulness and become positively harmful if extended beyond these limits. This is a task which has not yet been satisfactorily performed and which will have to be achieved before this particular impulse toward socialism can be removed.

So here's a challenge for Hayek fans: Rewrite Hayek's paragraph to Orwell's standards. Does the exercise make Hayek look better, worse, or about the same?

I have no problem with Hayek's writing style. It's not mine, but we probably don't dance the same way either. It's perfectly intelligible, and it's the thought that counts most.

That thought brought to mind another writer who wrestled with some of the same ideas, and that I had quoted before:

People who are raised in the industrial world and who get enthused about systems thinking are likely to make a terrible mistake. They are likely to assume that here, in systems analysis, in interconnection and complication, in the power of the computer, here at last, is the key to prediction and control. This mistake is likely because the mindset of the industrial world assumes that there is a key to prediction and control.

I assumed that at first too. We all assumed it, as eager systems students at the great institution called MIT. More or less innocently, enchanted by what we could see through our new lens, we did what many discoverers do. We exaggerated our own ability to change the world. We did so not with any intent to deceive others, but in the expression of our own expectations and hopes. Systems thinking for us was more than subtle, complicated mindplay. It was going to Make Systems Work.

But self-organizing, nonlinear, feedback systems are inherently unpredictable. They are not controllable. They are understandable only in the most general way. The goal of foreseeing the future exactly and preparing for it perfectly is unrealizable. The idea of making a complex system do just what you want it to do can be achieved only temporarily, at best. We can never fully understand our world, not in the way our reductionistic science has led us to expect. Our science itself, from quantum theory to the mathematics of chaos, leads us into irreducible uncertainty. For any objective other than the most trivial, we can't optimize; we don't even know what to optimize. We can't keep track of everything. We can't find a proper, sustainable relationship to nature, each other, or the institutions we create, if we try to do it from the role of omniscient conqueror.

That writer, Donella Meadows, had been seduced by systems thinking (aka systems dynamics) but engineering is a more general description of the type of reductionist thinking she engaged in, and so resonates with Hayek's concerns. And she answers Hayek's challenge to explain "why what has proved so eminently successful in producing advances in so many fields should have limits to its usefulness and become positively harmful if extended beyond these limits".

This pleases me. It wasn't so much that socialism was a perverse notion as that it was naive. That has become increasingly clear with continued advances in the sciences and engineering that spawned that sort of thinking in the first place. It was an excess of youth, a naive enthusiasm, and we have matured since then.

There's a pattern I think. We are still naive youths. The things we are naive about have changed, but we haven't. It's good to keep a sense of humor about our current enthusiasms, to try to see them as our older, wiser selves will see them in future. If we knew now what we will know then . . .