Showing papers on "Commonsense reasoning published in 1966"

Priorities in Planning

Abstract: IF MR. DEAN (the previous speaker), is to be believed, what I am now talking to you about should be called : How to recognise an elephant when you see one. The trouble is that a lot of people have preconceived ideas about the kind of elephant that it is. If Mr. Enoch Powell is to be believed, I think he'd have you believe it's a white elephant. Some of my friends believe that at least it's a pink elephant, if not actually a red and Marxist one. The fact is of course, that what we are engaged on in Kenya is neither a white elephant nor a red elephant. It's a persuasive elephant. We are trying to carry out what is called 'persuasive planning'. It's not compulsive planning. You cannot direct people what they will do. As Mr. Dean told you, he has been planning in one country where nobody listened to what he had to say, with results which are now public knowledge. We are engaged on persuasive planning, where the real challenge to the planner is of course, to get his advice accepted. Now, what kind of an elephant is this ? What does the planner do ? How does he plan ? How does he form his priorities ? Is he doing anything other than merely speaking commonsense ? Couldn't any good administrator sitting in his office, do exactly the same things, and produce just the same amount of growth ? How do you measure the benefits of the planner's work, as one of the questioners asked the last speaker, who very wisely ducked the answer. What the planner does in practice is to take commonsense reasoning and test it out by using all available statistics, and applying economic theory. It is well known that a lot of so called commonsense merely consists of common fallacies, and it is the planner's job, where commonsense does consist of fallacies, or merely emotional views or emotional nonsense, to try and show this up. If a lot of popular fallacies are followed, commonsense can lead to