Summary
What do we really know about the policy choices confronting us? Covid-19 has been a brutal lesson in the extent of our ignorance. We face hard decisions, and argue about them ferociously, when in truth we’re often in the dark about their full consequences. But Covid is not unusual in this respect - and we could learn from it. Other areas of life and policy are similarly obscured. Not that we like to admit it. How well, for example, do we know what the economy is up to? Quite possibly not nearly as well as you might think - even to the extent that it’s recently been suggested the first estimates of GDP can’t be sure of telling the difference between boom and bust - the problem really can be that extreme. Some recessions have turned out to be illusions. In this programme Michael Blastland examines our collective ignorance and how it affects policy and debate, asking if public argument needs a lot more humility.
Producer Caroline Bayley Editor Jasper Corbett
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Just before this BBC podcast gets underway, here's something you may not know. |
| 0:04.6 | My name's Linda Davies and I Commission Podcasts for BBC Sounds. |
| 0:08.4 | As you'd expect, at the BBC we make podcasts of the very highest quality featuring the most knowledgeable |
| 0:14.3 | experts and genuinely engaging voices. What you may not know is that the BBC |
| 0:20.4 | makes podcasts about all kinds of things like pop stars, |
| 0:24.6 | poltergeist, cricket, and conspiracy theories and that's just a few examples. |
| 0:29.7 | If you'd like to discover something a little bit unexpected, find your next podcast over at BBC Sounds. |
| 0:37.0 | A new podcast series from BBC Radio 4. |
| 0:40.0 | In the first stage of a poltergeist haunting, the entity will confine itself to making noise, |
| 0:48.0 | as if it's testing its victims. |
| 0:51.0 | The Battersee Poltergeist. |
| 0:54.0 | My name is Shirley Hitchins. I'm 15 years old. |
| 0:57.0 | I live with my mom, dad, brother, grand, and Donald. Hello, thanks for listening to Analysis, the podcast which looks at ideas shaping our world. |
| 1:16.0 | I'm Michael Blasland. In this edition called Flying Blind, I ask where the public argument needs to discover some humility, big on grand claims about |
| 1:25.9 | COVID, the economy and much else, but painfully short of real knowledge, do we deny our limitations? |
| 1:35.0 | Analysis on radio fore, |
| 1:39.0 | smart program analysis likes to keep you informed. Not today. Today instead I'll suggest |
| 1:47.0 | that you might want to feel more, well, ignorant, frankly, less informed. Let me try to show you what I mean. Remember this. The public |
| 1:57.0 | can be assured that the whole of the UK is always well prepared for these types of |
| 2:01.7 | outbreaks. |
| 2:03.0 | You can hardly forget, but I'm not trying to make political capital here or here. |
| 2:08.0 | We have a growing confidence that we will have a test track and trace operation that will be |
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