Laws and Lockdowns are Making Australians Dull and Dumb

What Australia’s lockdowns say about its culture and people.

Freedom of expression, movement, and the free exchange of ideas. Such liberties underpin a progressive, innovative, and economically prosperous society.

The free exchange of ideas is fundamental to charting the best path forward. As Nobel prize winner Daniel Kahneman observed in his book Noise: A Flaw in Human Judgment, you can improve decisions by aggregating multiple independent judgments.

Associational thinking or connecting the dots between disparate ideas and disciplines fosters innovation — something Steve Jobs noted in his famous Reed College commencement speech. Frans Johansson too observed this phenomenon in his book, The Medici Effect: What Elephants and Epidemics Can Teach Us About Innovation.

At the same time, freedom of expression, movement, and the freedom to act empower us to experiment, to fail, and to learn — hallmarks of the scientific method and innovation.

As the late Harvard Business School professor and author of The Innovator’s DNA Clayton Christensen noted, challenging the status quo, taking risks, and questioning are vital attributes that underpin innovative thinking and entrepreneurship.