Hesitation

I wonder if people look at it this way:

Someone says to you, if you don't press this button it is very likely millions of people will die. Then they take a sip of hot chocolate drink and resume reading a book.

You don't press the button. Millions of people die. They say, "Didn't I say so?" and indicate there is another button you should press if you want to prevent millions of people from dying. Repeat.

It makes me think of a scene from the end of the first season of the drama Liar Game. But I can't really say more.

"Why can't people understand that I have only the best intentions?" ...as someone once said.

Of course, it must be said that this works both ways—that it should be possible to say that anyone who has not endorsed (yay for thesaurus) this idea also has only good intentions.

(Over an hour later...) Now, it is possible that people wanted to avoid reaching certain conclusions if they acknowledged that the basic argument was correct. One of these might be that many middle-class voters secretly believe in "social Darwinism" and want the poor to die, or conversely that other people do not see any need for a mechanism in society that rewards high performance. This shadow or illusion was cleared away by the lack of support for the "nonviolent solution" that was posted on the Occupy Wall Street forum, and which of course could have easily lead to violence since the amount of welfare in the United States is not really enough to accomplish reasonable goals. If anyone who read that post had knowledge of middle-class attitudes that supported the line of argument, they should have agreed to that solution as the best way to fix economic problems without lowering GDP.

So the group of people who are the most visibly upset about inequality in society still trust the middle class despite that voters have allowed unemployment to continue at high levels. This goes back to the "taxes going to wasteful spending"/inflation/"lack of national wealth" nexus of ideas, which may seem like reasonable justifications for not wanting higher spending, especially if people assume that economists will have the same views about inflation as the general public does. If people trust economists to care about unemployment, it follows that there must be some reason unemployment is still high... oh, and "lack of education".

The above probably accounts for most of the lack of discussion or support. It does not explain why intelligent people with apparent desire to help society have not been vocal in support of this idea.

One reason might be that a more accurate 'system' can lead to problems for future generations due to assumptions about authority and so on. This would be valid to the extent that the arguments about how to fix this problem are incorrect, but all available evidence seems to confirm the initial analysis.

A second reason might be that there would be consequences from the use of this idea or from showing support for it that would negatively affect one or more persons to an important degree.

For example, if "overestimation of the value of the self" was no longer valid as an explanation for mistakes, some other explanation might need to be used, which might include a mismatch in the "strategies toward conflict" used by various people.

But this seems like just thinking too hard about the situation and consequently making mistakes as a result of losing perspective. At best, it would be a way to help someone 'lie' about their own capabilities by allowing them to think that the success or failure of a particular goal has a significant effect on their overall self-worth. For someone who does not make that assumption, the inaction resulting from this line of thought is just a waste of time.