Thought problem

[kengr]

We need to stop just pulling people out of the river.
We need to go upstream and find out why they're falling in.

- Desmond Tutu

Saw the above online. And one of the comments was "No, we need to fence the river *first*."

This is an all too common thought problem.

It *assumes* a solution before having investigated to see what the actual *problem* is.

If people are being *thrown* in the river, it won't help. If they are *jumping* in the river to escape something, well you'll have stopped them getting in the river, but your "solution" likely made things worse...

You see this a *lot* in politics and public policy. People see a "problem" and jump to a conclusion and try to "fix" things based on the assumption.

I forget who said it but "Every complex problem has a simple, easy to understand *wrong* answer."

Classic examples are drug policy, ant-poverty measures and crime.

The crime one is a doozy. Extensive studies show that severity of punishment has no effect on crime. What does is *certainty of being caught*!.

That is, the more likely you are to be caught, the less likely you are to do the crime.

Of course, there's the problem of folks who don't think they are likely to be caught, but are wrong about that (most bank robbers, for example).

Similar failure to analyze affects poverty and drug addiction.