Ways And Means Department

"The Sensitive Man."

Psychotechnics misused:

"'We haven't published all of our findings because of the uses to which they could be put. If you know exactly how to go about it, you can shape world society into almost any image you want - in fifty years or less!'" (IV, p. 125)

Psychotechnics (maybe) used better:

Dalgetty explains that the Institute tries both to create citizens intelligent, alert and tough enough to preserve liberty:

"'...and simultaneously to build up a society which itself produces men of that kind and reinforces those traits in them. It can be done, given time. Under ideal conditions, we estimate it would take about three hundred years for the whole world. Actually, it'll take longer.'" (VI, p. 137)

So:

no results with a single individual in less than "'...months or years...'" (11, p. 114);
bad results with society in fifty years;
good results (maybe) with society in over three hundred years.

Too long. We need social action to address immediate problems now, not gradual action by an informed group on the rest of society over that much time.

"...her intelligence might be enough for her to learn...
"Will I have to kill her?
"He drove the thought from him. He could overcome his own conditioning about anything, including murder, if he wanted to, but he'd never want to." (VI, p. 135)

Olaf Stapledon's Odd John and Isaac Asimov's Second Foundation assume a higher morality by which it is right for superior beings to kill innocent witnesses or bystanders in pursuit of higher ends. Although Dalgetty does want to do this, it sounds as if the Institute accepts that morality.