Fact-finding missions

[nancylebov]

Obama is off to Iraq and Afghanistan, and both he and McCain are talking as though this is a crucial way for him to learn what's going on.

For tolerably obvious logistical reasons, almost all the information presidents get has to be reading (and, one hopes, thinking) and listening to people who come to where the president is. If they can't mostly learn without being on site, we have a problem. (A chorus repeats the last bit.)

Not only that, but much of what a president sees on a visit is going to be dressed up.

Note that there are legitimate reasons for presidents to travel-- negotiation makes sense, and so does showing that they care. But is there any evidence that they actually find facts?

Comments

[zenlizard]

Of course they find facts. Facts that are carefully dressed up, and presented in the way that the presenters want to filter the facts, but they are facts of some sort.

All information is biased, because it is pass through at least two (and probably more in most cases) filters: the presenter's filter, and then the receptor's filter.

Your point about people not being able to mostly learn if they're not on-site being a major problem is a letitimate complaint, though. No one can be at a particular site all the time, and there are many different problems vying for anyone's attention at any given point in time. When a person in a position of power can't learn (get information past his or her own personal filter) by being remote from a given location or problem, then the decision is almost always going to be based on erroneous information. Hence, a bad decision. But there are those rare cases when even a wild-ass guess turns otu to be the right thing to do. I want to emphasize the extreme rarity of this situation.

So, we have several competing influences here.

Overall, I'm not unhapy that Obama is visiting the war zones. It is at teh very least, a gesture that he's willing to try and sort out the situation and problems instead of trying to impose his preconceived world-view on the crisis.

[thespian.livejournal.com]

have you ever read Blink by Malcolm Gladwell? It starts with a story about a kouros (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kouros) that was being bought by the J. Paul Getty Museum. The Getty had PILES of information, binders and binders of stuff from lawyers and experts and scientists explaining why the statue was authentic. Three experts who were shown it, knowing all that information, still picked out that it was fake upon seeing it.

Despite having all the information in the world available, sometimes the way to find out truths that actually mean something is experiential. Even if it's all presented to him with a gloss on it, piles of papers and guides telling him what to think, there's a real reason for anyone to have working knowledge of the place that they gathered themselves.

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

I've read that section of Blink. It's interesting, but I'm not sure how relevent it is.

Is there history of people getting information (as distinct from making social contacts) from fact-finding missions that they can't get at home?

Perhaps the most useful thing about meeting people on their home ground is just the reminder that other people *have* home ground. (This might be more relevent for Americans.)