"An ethics of probability tends to crowd out an ethics of possibility."
"A technocratic approach can also be self-defeating in policy terms. Render the future too concrete and it becomes harder to think about far-reaching structural change. In the language of the anthropologist Arjun Appadurai, an ethics of probability tends to crowd out an ethics of possibility. Moreover, the precision of targets can make failures more glaring, as goals are missed and deadlines pass.This weakens commitment in adversity – a point made by sympathetic critics of a climate agenda centred on “hitting the carbon numbers”. Arguably one of the preconditions of radical politics is an element of imprecision. The anticolonial thinker and activist Frantz Fanon once warned of the “curious cult of detail” that could afflict the scientific mindset in politics, causing its bearer to lose sight of the bigger picture: “Thus, if a local defeat is inflicted, he may well be drawn into doubt, and from thence to despair.”" Jonathan White
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https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/feb/18/donald-trump-new-right-centre-left-technocratic
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