Funding the Future Why do professionals hate change?
Nov 17, 2025
Explore why top-tier professionals resist important changes and cling to outdated systems. Learn how fear, conformity, and institutional culture stifle innovation across fields like medicine and law. Discover the impact of peer reputation and how it often prioritizes belonging over truth. Delve into the troubling influence of Big Pharma on medical practices and the collective error that prevents progress. Ultimately, the discussion champions the need for courageous rebels willing to challenge the status quo for true reform.
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Identity Shapes Professional Conservatism
- Professionals define themselves by mastering existing systems and resist change to avoid personal failure.
- Richard Murphy argues this defensive identity makes them unable to imagine alternative solutions.
Institutions Reward Safety Over Truth
- Institutional incentives reward reassurance and conformity over creative dissent and truth.
- Murphy highlights that career advancement depends on never unsettling superiors, narrowing debate to what's safe.
Professions Become Self‑Reinforcing Bubbles
- Each profession builds a closed logic that reinforces its own standards and resists outside perspectives.
- Examples include accountants trusting big firms' standards and economists clinging to neoliberal models.