This article first appeared in Forum, The Edge Malaysia Weekly on January 1, 2018 - January 7, 2018

Early last week, I had breakfast with my housemate from graduate school. Eventually, our conversation turned to the really hot topic of the day, which was the new Star Wars movie, The Last Jedi. He told me how he got his father — who had never watched a single Star Wars movie before — to watch the latest one. To do so, he and his father sat down to watch the previous movies in the so-called Machete Order — Episode IV, Episode V, Episode II, Episode III and then Episode VI.

As they re-watched Episodes IV and V, he and his father had a similar thought. “You know, this movie is not actually very good.” The acting was not great, the special effects were (understandably) nowhere near what we have today, the dialogue was rather rigid and the battle scenes were not terribly exciting.

Yet, Star Wars fans swear by the original trilogy — A New Hope, The Empire Strikes Back and The Return of the Jedi. The latest instalment, The Last Jedi, has seen wildly divisive opinions; critics love it, with a 92% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes, but fans are less enthused, with a 52% approval score.

Contrast this with the critics’ rating for The Empire Strikes Back at 94% and a fan score of 97%! Yet, if people watched The Empire Strikes Back for the very first time in 2017, would they feel the same way? On the one hand, they might, as one can argue that the plot is more interesting, the characters are more exciting and the movie contains arguably the single greatest plot twist in movie history. On the other hand, we also cannot deny that movie-making has advanced by leaps and bounds — better equipment, better acting skill ecosystems, better special effects, improved production techniques and editing, and so on.

Therefore, which is better? Are movies today better or are movies from the 1970s or 1980s better? Is Diego Maradona a better football player or is Lionel Messi better?

In thinking of these questions, I believe there is a common human fallacy at play here, which is that we tend to confuse the following two questions — “Which is a technically better movie?” and “Which is a more groundbreaking movie?” This point is most eloquently made by Bill Simmons, a basketball writer and founder of The Ringer, in his The Book of Basketball, where he states the following, “Take Steve Nash (a player from the 2000s) and Bob Cousy (a player from the 1950s to 1960s). Nash is a much better shooter, he is in better shape, he plays harder, he tries harder on defence, he is more technically sound … he’s just better. But he didn’t have anything close to Cousy’s career, nor did he match Cousy’s impact on his generation as a player, personality, winner and innovator. So, how do we judge which guy mattered more?

“Really, it’s like comparing a 2009 Porsche with a 1962 model: the 2009 would easily win a race between them, but the 1962 was a more groundbreaking car. So, the Nash model wins the ‘Who were the most talented players ever?’ question, but the Cousy model wins the ‘Who were the most groundbreaking players ever?’ question. And both matter.”

If basketball does not suit you, try replacing Nash with Messi and Cousy with Maradona. And, really, that is the broader point here — The Empire Strikes Back was groundbreaking but there is an argument that The Last Jedi (or at least Rogue One from last year) is a technically better movie. Therefore, when we compare things from different eras, especially when we answer the question, “Which is better?”, what we are really answering is, “Which is more groundbreaking?” Indeed, the more groundbreaking models are the most memorable because they shape industries, ideas, ambitions and, sometimes, even society.

On the Transformasi Nasional 2050 (TN50) website, there is a section called the TN50 Youth Canvas. In this section, the secretariat lists some ideas that have been developed in TN50 Circles and collected from youth all around the country on work, education, society, well-being, sustainability, governance and culture. In the work segment, the secretariat lists “Moonshot Industries creating new industries from national objectives” as an idea for Malaysia’s development heading towards 2050.

Creating new industries is part of industrial policy, which I have argued in favour of many times in this newspaper and, consequently, I am glad to see that industrial policy is part of the TN50 deliberations. The website writes, “This initiative proposes to develop new and cutting-edge industries that achieve meaningful TN50 ‘moonshot’ objectives.”

The term “moonshot” objective was made popular in the US during the 1960s, when the US — then in a battle with Russia to reach space, among other battles — announced its plans to put a man on the moon. An entire nation’s agenda was transfixed on that objective, guiding national policies on research, education, fiscal policy and even foreign policy. The US succeeded with Apollo 11, when Neil Armstrong became the first human being to walk on the moon.

It is heartening to see that Malaysia is also seeking its “moonshot”. In the website, some examples are a carbon-neutral nation by 2050, or full food self-sufficiency. These are ambitious but I wonder if we can try to be even more so. For instance, being a carbon-neutral nation is certainly a wonderful aspiration, and we may develop new and improved ways to reduce our carbon footprint — produce the best electric cars, or the most efficient solar panels, or the cleanest nuclear power plants. Yet, those, in my view, just answer the question, “What is the technically best thing we can produce?”

What I would be more interested in is answering the question, “What is the most groundbreaking thing we can produce?” Can we challenge ourselves — through all of society, from enhancing our education system to cultivating a societal mindset, to ensuring fiscal allocation for R&D to developing world-class backward and forward industry linkages — to create something for this planet that is truly groundbreaking?

Maybe our moonshot should not be a carbon-neutral nation by 2050. Maybe our moonshot should be to lead the world in totally cleaning our oceans by 2050, or in extending human life expectancy to 200 years by 2050. Simply being the “best” in an industry may only mean marginal improvements; “groundbreaking”, on the other hand, necessitates exponential ambitions.

Of course, it is also important to be “best in class” for whatever we choose to do by 2050. That is an altogether worthy aspiration and something we must strive for. Yet, if we are serious about moonshots, and therefore shifting a national ambition towards a particular goal, I would like that goal to be ambitious.

It would be great if we produced the world’s best LED, for instance (which, in fairness, was underway in Penang last year) but I would rather that instead of “Malaysia” being the answer to the question, “Which country produces the best stuff?”, “Malaysia” becomes the answer to the question, “Which country produces the most groundbreaking stuff?”

Nicholas Khaw is an economist with the Khazanah Research and Investment Strategy Division

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