What If Solutions That Worked in the Past No Longer Fix What's Broken?

You see the irony here: the more successful the old solutions were, the greater our compulsion to cling to them even as they fail.

Humans use inductive reasoning to solve problems. If a solution fixed a problem in the past, we assume it will solve the problem again. This is a rational expectation based on prior experience.

But if conditions change, the solution won't fix the problem. It might even make things worse.

The difficulty is what's changed isn't always visible or obvious. On…