We shall not grow wiser before we learn that much that we have done was very foolish.
-- F. A. Hayek
Hayek has explored much foolishness, especially when it applies to people who believe they can make "simple" changes in essential complex systems (such as the economy, the environment, or human society) and foolishly think this change will not have secondary and tertiary effects. Many of those effects are unpredictable, and can turn out harmful or defeat the original intentions. In political science they speak of "law of unintended consequences."
This necessary "epistemological modesty" has been practiced by few great thinkers, like Edmund Burke or James Madison. It is indeed a very humbling and difficult approach, to assert that world is too complex for us to know well; our ignorance and frequent foolish mistakes should be the most important design feature of any "solution".
Law professor Richard Epstein in Chicago spoke of the "best and the brightest" from our best universities that go to Washington DC to "fix" things:
[they] are very smart, but the problem is these high-I.Q. guys always think they can square the circle; they always believe they can beat the system with a cleverer system, and they always fail.
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