And the thing is we all know that people are this dumb, we meet people like this in our jobs all the time. But only a comedy show can be realistic about this. So, he suggests an episode where Jack Bauer phones control 'The terrorists are on a plane to Vienna', 'What's Vienna?'. It would never happen in a 'realistic' drama series. Realism is fantasy, reality is comedy.
It’s like 24 meets The Office, but you don’t play it for big laughs. More of a Coen brothers screwball tragedy; where you realize that the problem with the plan isn’t that some one crucial bit of clockwork won’t tick; rather the problem is that the whole clock is a lurid, Daliesque mess.
I think modern people are over-confident about their competence because we have found one method that works pretty reliably (within its parameters): the scientific method. It works because it tends to accumulate its successes (like Evolution does) however rare they may be. But it seems to me that in most areas of life we don't have a good method yet. In almost every other sphere of activity we are still in the dark ages - we don't have a clue, we don't know how to pick out and empower the competent, most of our traditions are probably counter-productive. But we have really cool technology.
