systems | complexity | second-order effects
There are times when unintended consequences spring from bottom-up group behavior and times when these effects spring from enforced, top-down policy. This post deals with a few examples of top-down decisions that changed food supplies (and more) in unexpected ways.
Results include mass starvation, possibly the plague, and warehouses of moldy cheese. Continue reading “Food from Thought (Production Policies)”
A unintended consequence pattern I’m watching that seems to determine which problems get attention and action: are they visible/simple or hidden/complex?
What is highly noticeable, and maybe in some sense bad, gets more blame than it deserves. But the bigger problems are unseen.
Further to this, people take actions on the noticeable things (or problems) when only one step is required to see an impact. People avoid other, perhaps more important, things that require multiple steps for there to be impact.
This is an evolving thought that I call “The Kudzu Effect” for some of the parallels to the vine’s history. Here are just a couple examples. I’ll return to this idea in the future.
I write these posts to call attention to common phenomena that make the world work differently than we might think. One less discussed type of unintended consequence is the “self-defeating prophecy,” or “self-negating prediction,” where the existence of a prediction or belief ultimately leads to the opposite of what is expected.
Continue reading “The Self-Defeating Prophecy (and How it Works)”
After last week’s post I became interested in the way acclimatization societies created unintended consequences from non-native species introduction around the world. Those societies sometimes introduced species without thought to impact on the local environment. More recently, governments developed environmental protection regulations to protect endangered species. These regulations have had Cobra Effect type second-order effects as well. Let’s look at why and what we could do instead. Continue reading “Importing Risk and Risky Regulations”
So far I’ve only written about human systems and the unintended consequences that arise from them. But the “natural world” is complex also. We are just beginning to understand the interconnections of living and non-living things. Environmental ecosystems can also be pushed in one direction or another by human intervention and other activity. That means plenty of second-order effects.
Ecosystems are often complex beyond our ability to appreciate them, but on the surface they can seem simple. Maybe this is why there have been so many attempts to alter ecosystems by adding to them or subtracting from them. The impact of those additions or subtractions can tough to know in advance, but the impact can be estimated and controlled. Beyond intentionally changing an ecosystem, there are also all of the non-human changes that occur.
Continue reading “Don’t Touch Anything (Species Introductions)”
Unintended consequences come about when a change, believed to improve the current situation, actually makes the situation worse. That these changes are often well-meaning only adds to the irony of second-order effects. One source of new problems is the substitutions made when replacing the status quo.
As I’ve started to research famous second-order effects, several of the famous historical claims (like the one that follows) seem to be “just so” stories. The claims are too simplistic. There is just one change and just one result. While these stories make for a memorable explanation, without more detail, we just miseducate ourselves on second-order effects. Continue reading “Substitutions – The Temperance Movement and Ether”
When two sides remain in battle for long, they co-evolve. This is seen in the natural world in everything from the toughening of grasses vs strengthening of herbivore teeth and stomachs to the changing shape of flowers and bird beaks or insect probosces.
In the man made world we see co-evolution in too many pair situations to count. Here are a few such “games,” each operating on the health of the players in a different way: Continue reading “Uncertainty Saves Lives – the Peltzman Effect”
While we usually talk about non-linear scale transformations in physical materials (radically different properties exhibited at nano scale, for example) there are also different scale effects driven by people and businesses. What will happen at scale is not always apparent, especially when our observations are biased toward single user or small group settings. Situations can grow less obvious or chaotic with growth.
Let’s look at effects of scale transformations in housing, fast wealth creation in a large population, transportation, and what happens when forces converge on places that are just too beautiful. Continue reading “Anything at Scale”
Costs work differently depending on who pays and when they pay. These questions of “who” and “when” and innovations that change them are second-order effects that impact what society gets more or less of.
Some products come with only a cost of production, paid first by the producer and then pushed on to the purchasing customer. This is in spite of the products themselves creating external costs that greater society or specific individuals must bear later on. Other products have these external costs built in at the point of production. In either case, the type and severity of the costs can vary. These costs may be unseen to the product’s end customer, but it is the difference in cost type that changes behavior and leads to unintended consequences. Continue reading “Visibility of Cost”
After 35 years, China’s One Child Policy has come to an end. Carried out with high compliance and across a large population (at scale a decision is at greater risk of second-order effects) the policy had unexpected outcomes.
The One Child Policy has been a common topic over the years (even the Economist published a recent article on “The Law of Unintended Consequences,” about changed attitudes in China toward family size). Let’s look at what happened over the last 35 years and why.