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Seeing like a State

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An account of the logic behind the failure of some of the great utopian social engineering schemes of the twentieth century. Lessons: These, unsurprisingly, have heavy overlap with the design of software Created with Quartz v4.5.0 © 2025

Book by James C. Scott An account of the logic behind the failure of some of the great utopian social engineering schemes of the twentieth century. Lessons: Take small steps: In an experimental approach to social change, presume that we cannot know the consequences of our interventions in advance. Given this postulate of ignorance, prefer wherever possible to take a small step back, observe, and then plan the next small move (see also: Collingridge dilemma ) Favour reversibility: prefer interventions that can easily be undone if they turn out to be mistakes. Irreversible interventions have irr

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