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In Stieg Larsson's Millennium Trilogy, Dragan Armansky has employed and worked with Lisbeth Salander whereas Inspector Bublanski has merely read her social welfare agency file. Consequently, their views of her aptitudes and personality are completely contradictory. Armansky comments:
"'Files are one thing. People are something else.'"
-Stieg Larsson, The Girl Who Played With Fire (London, 2010), CHAPTER 13, p. 225.
That reminded me of Everard's:
"'...reality never conforms very well to the textbooks...'"
- sufficiently well to prompt a late night comparative post. Tomorrow, probably, back to Holger Carlsen in the Carolingian universe.
Dig that pile of textbooks.
8 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
I would have thought a police inspector, of all people, would know the limitations of files, esp. "social agency" files. Meaning that he learned from mere files would need to be verified by actual, personal contact with the subjects of those reports.
Police officers have to interact with people who are either criminals or the victims of crimes. I would expect conscientious police officers to know, bone deep, of the limitations of files. And, despite that, the need for such records.
Ad astra! Sean
When the East German government collapsed, the Stasi, their secret police, were about four months behind on collating their files on political dissidents.
Not least because of their exhaustive nature. "Subject then left his apartment and walked south, buying a sausage and bun from a street vendor (mustard, no sauerkraut)..."
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
Such obsessively hyper detailed files will be fodder for both mockery and fascinated study by historians! They will take special note of the small, trivial every day details recorded by the Stasi.
Ad astra! Sean
Enormous historical value.
Kaor, Paul!
I agree.
Ad astra! Sean
Data is only useful if it's interpreted well. For example, Soviet intelligence usually collected a lot of data -- the KGB in its various incarnation was extremely good at intelligence and counter-intelligence.
But the Soviet leadership was often caught flat-footed because they interpreted the data through their own viewpoints -- for example, they usually assumed that some behind-the-scenes cabal was setting American policy. And they never understood how difficult it was for the US government to keep secrets from the press, or that it couldn't prevent the press from publishing things it didn't want known.
The concept was simply too alien for them to grasp -- they assumed explanations to the contrary were simply propaganda.
Mind you, we made the same sort of mistakes about them: but usually less badly, or at least less often.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
Because a relatively open society meant that it was harder for its leaders to persist in making blunders similar to those of the Soviets? I can see that!
Ad astra! Sean
Sean: partly that, and partly that our errors were usually due to a -combination- of interpreting other people in terms of ourselves (a universal human fault) and misplaced goodwill.
The Soviet system encouraged the normal human tendency to paranoia and conspiratorial thinking because to get to the top of it you more or less had to be paranoid and to engage in conspiracies.
Conversely, democracy encourages people to the misplaced assumption that other people are essentially like you and want what you want.
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