prompt vs. delayed feedback

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From the older book Out of Control: The New Biology of Machines, Social Systems, and the Economic World, Kevin Kelly (then executive editor of Wired), 1994:

http://books.google.com/books?id=Q_NTVO ... 22&f=false

An audience of 5,000 persons with wands red on one side and green on the other, who had the feedback of a large video map at the front of the room, could play the game Pong and could write numbers on the large video map with relative ease.

But they had a hard time landing an airplane on a flight simulator because the feedback was delayed.

And I think this applies to a number of real world situations, especially such economic goals as job creation, GNP growth, building a middle class.

Okay, that'll be another way to look at it, from the point of view of the individual business. Please remember, 80% of new businesses fail (8 out of 10). I bring that up because I think people should be aware of what they're getting into. Please think in terms of a service business which can be started relatively inexpensively and run out of the home or car.

I mainly had in mind politics and governmental policy. For example, following the economic crisis in 2008, a lot of people thought cutting government spending was the way to go. And they believed this strongly, even though I think mainstream economic thought comes down on the side of Keynesian economics.

So what I'm getting at, instead of big complex all-at-once theory, let's take a medium step, observe feedback, another medium step, observe more feedback, etc.