All talk and no listening is an epistemic disaster

From The Coldest Winter by David Halberstam.  Page 105.

Given the unofficial rules of the Dai Ichi [MacArthur's command headquarters in Tokyo]—he talked, you listened—no one dared challenge his grandiose statements, his role as a kind of self-proclaimed prophet of what was happening in the world, of what Russia and China were doing and what was happening in America, a country he had largely lost touch with and never entirely understood. There was, sadly, one vital quality for any successful general that he lacked—he did not know how to listen. Nor did he want to. Nothing had revealed that quite so clearly as the moment in 1948 when George Kennan had been sent out from Washington to work on issues of political reform and economic rehabilitation in Japan. At that moment most senior commanders or high-ranking diplomats, especially those operating on the edge of the Soviet Union, would have been thrilled to have Kennan around for even a short period of time, even if they did not always agree with him. He was at the height of his own new fame. He was considered the leading expert in the government on the subject of the Soviet Union and its intentions. Of Kennan’s intellect and clarity of mind there could be no doubt. That his knowledge of Russia, the Soviet Union, and China, their histories and their politics, was superb there could also be no doubt. He might still be relatively young, just starting the middle part of his career, but he was obviously a towering figure—with the most practical kind of intellect. But Kennan could never get across the moat with MacArthur—he was too close to people MacArthur loathed. There was to be no give-and-take. In fact Kennan was shocked by what he found in Tokyo. MacArthur, he noted, was “so distant and full of mistrust” toward the incumbent administration that Kennan’s own job was “like nothing more than that of an envoy charged with opening up communications and arranging the establishment of diplomatic relations with a hostile and suspicious foreign government.”

Halberstam is very strong on detailing how MacArthur was essentially operating as his own government within a government.  

When all complex systems are dependent on data acquisition, comprehension and dissemination; and when consequences of actions and decisions is one of the most important forms of data, the MacArthur rule that he talks and everyone else listens is an epistemic disaster waiting to happen.  As it did.