THE VALUE IN BEING DISRUPTIVE.

Consider an American Conservative article in which Bill Rice suggests it's OK to break with conventional wisdom.

In the course of doing so, he's OK with current Jeopardy! phenomenon James Holzhauer's iconoclasm.  "Holzhauer, 'a professional sports gambler from Nevada,' may have shown the world what’s possible when a player template—never challenged or questioned over a half century—is blown up and replaced by another strategy that produces vastly superior results."

His approach was always available.  Wouldn't the Conservative Thing be to say "Well, I never?"

How could a strategy that really is “pretty simple”—one that on a per hour basis generates more income than any job in America—have been eschewed by approximately 25,000 previous contestants?

One is that most people are afraid to challenge the conventional wisdom. If something has been done the same way for decades by everyone, no one thinks that it can be done differently. That’s especially true if those who do challenge the status quo aren’t celebrated but excoriated.

"The objection to conforming to usages that have become dead to you is, that it scatters your force."

Mr Holzhauer has been resting in a secure location the past two weeks, while the teachers' tournament has been airing.  Everything you ever suspected about unimaginative pedants might be true.

Another depressing possibility is that the overwhelming percentage of Jeopardy contestants (and, symbolically, the population writ large) is incapable of contrarian analysis or of approaching a problem or puzzle in a unique way. Americans have either known for decades that the game was being played the wrong way but were too chicken to play it correctly, or James Holzhauer is the only American who’s figured the game out.

It’s too soon to tell whether future contestants will emulate Holzhauer’s strategy. For what it’s worth, over the past two weeks, 16 contestants have competed in Jeopardy’s “Teacher Tournament” and every contestant has reverted to the game’s normal style of play. Such is the enduring power of conformity, of conventional wisdom.

But what if the conventional wisdom is wrong? And how often is it wrong?

It's often prudent to note that better is the enemy of good enough, or to chant, "If it's not broke, don't fix it."

Sometimes, though, stuff is broken.

According to Washington Post columnist Robert Samuelson, the answer is “almost always.”

Samuelson wrote an important if largely overlooked book on this very subject in 2001. The book’s title: Untruth: How The Conventional Wisdom is (Almost Always) Wrong.

Samuelson’s thesis is that people and organizations with an “agenda” often create problems that are either exaggerated or not problems at all. And the solutions policymakers give us to resolve these “crises” typically make things worse.

One can take his premise and run with it. Examples of when conventional wisdom has been wrong are abundant in the fields of science, health, economics, and education. We see it in our aggressive war policies overseas. We see it in our approach to presidential politics, at least before Donald Trump “broke” it. At this level, disproving the postulate that there’s only one way to play Jeopardy! might not seem like a big deal. It could be, however, if it opens the floodgates of independent thought among Americans.

That's unlikely, though. "For your nonconformity the world whips you with its displeasure."  Even though, as Mr Rice notes, practitioners of the conventional wisdom have failed, repeatedly, in ways large and small.  They still can appeal to authority or popular opinion, or if that fails, hector, condescend, or deplorable-shame.  Too often, it works. The nail that sticks up gets hammered down. Until the breakthrough to some intractable problem comes.

It will be someone who looks at all the work that’s come before him and says, “This doesn’t make sense. There’s a better way to approach this.”

Over the last two months, Holzhauer has been trying to teach Americans that eye-opening accomplishments are possible if one ignores or rejects conventional wisdom. The more Americans who absorb that lesson, the better.

Perhaps so, although you have to have the chops to deliver, plus be slow to bruise and quick to heal, and willing to understand that when your ship comes in, it's going to be an icebreaker.  The ice is going to take the form of "we've always done it that way," and your response has to be "This is what it has gotten you, and here is why it is going to keep getting you this."