systems | complexity | second-order effects
Is the Aswan Dam a perfect example of unintended consequences? No.
We innately love a just-so explanation for why things are the way they are. At the same time, we also know that the world is a complex place. That’s why when I saw the below quotation about second-level effects from Egypt’s Aswan Dam, I was both intrigued and skeptical.
Over the past two decades, American universities have created reasons to spend more and raise large donations, without end. What are the second-order effects of this increase in fundraising activity?
American universities remain highly sought after for both American and international students. The trends over the last few decades include a larger population now attending college (both in total numbers and percentage of population) with lower acceptance rates (partly driven by the increased number of applications per applicant). These two trends continue in spite of greatly increased tuition. Continue reading “The University Fundraising Arms Race”
What were unintended consequences of smoking bans and how can we use second-order thinking to decrease health effects of smoking tobacco?
Back in 2003 when the smoking laws changed in New York City, increasing the cigarette tax and eliminating indoor smoking sections in restaurants and bars, I noticed some other interesting effects. (Note: I am not a smoker.)
The first change was related to the increased local price of a pack of cigarettes, which went up to around $7 at the time (now $10.50 and above). The new $7 price was double the earlier local price. It was a big jump and immediately noticeable. An increased cigarette price had already been connected to fewer cigarettes being smoked. Continue reading “Smoking Bans. Smoking’s Back.”
Why study the below unintended consequence? When we seek to understand consequences of our actions and the hidden complexity that underlies them we can make better decisions. One set of decisions that everyone participates in throughout life is choice of diet. The impact of what we consume on a daily basis is often only felt many years later — and can be an accident of birth.
Life expectancy has increased in most of the world over the last century due to many factors, a big one being lower infant and child mortality. Accounting for that and other factors, as the percentage of a population that is “old” grows larger, some populations have a natural advantage in the way they age. Some of this advantage can be attributed to dietary traditions that were adopted before a significant percentage of the population was older (65+). Continue reading “Diet, Dying, and Demographics”
The “cobra effect” occurs when a solution actually worsens the problem it is trying to solve. Named for a bounty program that went awry in colonial India, there are many examples of incentives leading to more of the very thing that should be reduced. Interestingly, when you search, the other top examples all concern animals — an attempt to decrease the rat population in colonial Hanoi, Vietnam and an attempt to reduce the number of feral pigs in Georgia. This is strange because these animal-related problems all contain the solution within themselves.
If you read about these examples, you’ll learn a bit (and often just a bit) about the history of each time and place. But what you won’t read is how these incentives could have been aligned with their intended outcomes. In this post, I’m going to propose some changes that the makers of these incentives could have used so that they might have actually gotten the desired outcomes. Continue reading “The Cobra Effect Redesigned (Examples & Antidotes)”
What a time to be alive. I was inspired to write this based on seeing a friend’s work get some new attention (more on that below). And by the way, this is my first post on this new second-order thinking project so I’m diving in even before I had the chance to write a piece on why I’ve started the project itself.
Let’s discuss new opportunities with interactive voice AI.
If you haven’t seen it, here’s the Google Duplex demo from two days ago that has everyone fired up. Google Duplex is a voice AI that, at this point, can make a transactional phone call for you save you time by talking to the human on the other end. Continue reading “Voice AI, Telecom, Scams, and Co-evolution”
