Talk:Failure of imagination

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Critics of the Bush administration might easily argue that we are somehow being to believe that there is such a poverty of imagination in this country that we will stop asking questions and simply blindly vote for Bush in November. Perhaps, because of the abundance of tabloid type conspiracy theories that propagate over the Internet, by word of mouth, or in the media, most people should be rightly skeptical of any supposed numerlogic modus operandi. In the state of Missouri, they have a saying "Show Me." When the major system for translating phrases into numbers, or rather for memorizing numbers is applied to the phrase "Show Me", one obtains the number 63, which by a remarkable coincidence yields the flight number of the so called shoe bomber. In effect, ever since the so called shoe bomber incident, people have been asked by airport inspectors to "show me your shoes."

Three problems: 1. rather very NPOV, 2. there's two seperate ideas there that need to be seperated, 3. this really flies straight out of left field compared to the earlier points raised on the page - should have a better connection. Krupo 04:36, Aug 27, 2004 (UTC)


 * Bushco didn't invent the usage:
 * "The deepest failures identified in the Mersey Report (on the sinking of the Titanic) are, as so often in disaster inquiries, failures of imagination," said Prof McLean. ("Aberfan and Titanic twin tragedies" Western Mail 1998 Oct 21) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 142.177.170.67 (talk) 08:08, 19 September 2004 (UTC)

Link from newsletter
This article has been linked from the criptogram newsletter by Bruce Schneier. http://www.schneier.com/crypto-gram-0507.html#2 — Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.58.35.44 (talk) 18:15, 21 July 2005 (UTC)

Vote for Deletion
This article survived a Vote for Deletion. The discussion can be found here. -Splash 00:43, 23 July 2005 (UTC)

Pulling this out of the "Failure" Category
The article may have survived the VfD, but it has nothing to do with engineering or failure analysis. This is rather a pity, as actual generalized failures of imagination are a perfectly valid topic for engineering failure analysis, but apparently this article title is not to be used for that... Georgewilliamherbert 06:19, 17 August 2005 (UTC)

More usages of this term
"Failure of imagination" also shows up twice in an episode of Joan of Arcadia. I rather liked the usage and have incorporated it into how I look at failures of all sorts. BipolarBear 13:58, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

Also Franz Kafka would appear to be the first: "War is a monstrous failure of imagination." BipolarBear 14:17, 3 March 2007 (UTC)


 * Except it appears Kafka may have never said that; at least, I can't find reference to the quote in google books (except for an uncited quote in a book on parenting), and when I search the Kafka Project I get nothing, even trying in German for words like "Phantasie" (imagination), "Krieg" (war), and "Ausfall" (failure). But I don't read German so perhaps someone else can direct me to the proper origin of this quote, if it is for real? csloat 22:53, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

Graham Greene in The Power and the Glory (published 1940): “When you saw the lines at the corners of the eyes, the shape of the mouth, how the hair grew, it was impossible to hate. Hate was just a failure of imagination.” — Preceding unsigned comment added by VispaTeresa (talk • contribs) 06:22, 3 October 2016 (UTC)

Examples from fiction?
The Tom Clancy novel Debt of Honor includes specifically the use of a passenger plane to attack the Capitol Building. This and many other highack scenarios in fiction that were ignored could show that "failure of imagination" included "failure to access other people's imagination." Is there a link to fictional scenarios that predate 9-11 with just the same scenarios involved? CodeCarpenter 23:11, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

Intelligence failures of imagination and the 9/11 attacks
This whole section covered only information related to Intelligence failures concerning the 9/11 attacks, so I re-titled it. Also, the last sentence of this section said the failures constituted a lapse of duty by the National Security Advisor. I removed that uncited opinion and replaced it with information from the 9/11 Commission Final Report. To lay the blame for failure to imagine the 9/11 attacks on any single individual is grossly unfair and I wonder if it might have been libelous. It's also inconsistent with any credible reports. Dcs002 (talk) 03:53, 30 September 2009 (UTC)

Clark's laws
Failure of Imagination is discussed by Arthur C. Clarke in his essay "Hazards of Prophecy: The Failure of Imagination", first published in Profiles of the Future (1962). His first and second laws are relevant to the article. 203.96.84.33 (talk) 22:38, 13 June 2019 (UTC)