Strategic Intelligence Making Us Dumber

[Xyzse]

http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2012/04/peak-intel-how-so-called-strategic-intelligence-actually-makes-us-dumber/255413/?google_editors_picks=true

Peak Intel: How So-Called Strategic Intelligence Actually Makes Us Dumber
By Eric Garland
Apr 5 2012, 7:31 AM ET

An industry that once told hard truths to corporate and government clients now mostly just tells them what they want to hear, making it harder for us all to adapt to a changing world -- and that's why I'm leaving it.

---Found a few interesting insights on the article, particularly about how the focus on analytics has been replaced by trying to figure out whims of the political system in regards to corporations too big to fail.

[jakeXT]

1. I first thought it was about google replacing our brain

Google is great for looking up words, finding movie times or perusing recipes, but recent research out of Columbia University shows our dependence on Internet search may be hurting our memory.

The Internet has replaced our brain’s ability to remember information we could easily search for online, a study led by neuroscientist Betsy Sparrow shows. While we heavy Internet users remember where to search for information, we have forgotten information itself.
http://mashable.com/2012/01/26/google-memory-loss/

But it's more about fixing the intelligence, like it was done to go to war

The aide said that guys like me were "in what we call the reality-based community," which he defined as people who "believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality." I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. "That's not the way the world really works anymore." He continued "We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors ... and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do."

http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Karl_Rove

good times