systems | complexity | second-order effects
We can learn a lot by studying the systems that led to the emergence of the novel coronavirus, its fast spread around the world, and remaining effects. The world will be different afterward.
How did we get here? And where might we go? Continue reading “Coronavirus Cocktail, Catalyst, and Closeout”
Long-time readers of this blog know that I wrote about how disease spreads several times well before the recent coronavirus news. And then I wrote three posts on that. I’m hardly alone in my interest on this topic.
But apart from what we’re going through now, infectious diseases generally don’t get as much attention as I think they deserve. In terms of unintended consequences, I’m interested in the impact of disease on human decision making and where things went wrong, or well, in the past. As for the potential impact of COVID-19 in the near-term, some minds are changing in the midst of political, business, social, and educational impact.
And then there is the look back in history. When I recently learned the story of a European plague year’s impact on Dutch “tulipmania,” the modern and historical protective images intrigued me as well.
I’ve already written two earlier posts (one and two) on second-order effects of the coronavirus (COVID-19). Let’s now take the coronavirus situation to think through unintended consequences in a different way. For this post, I’m focusing on disinformation as related to the spread of disease.
What are some of the tactics used to spread disinformation, what are some cases of disease-related disinformation in history, and how will things possibly change over time and place?
What are some of the second-order effects coming from the different ways we communicate today, information’s ability to spread widely and cheaply, and even the surprising longevity of digital information?
And unlike many of the other posts on this site, is there more benefit from centralized best practices than in keeping different healthcare practices? Continue reading “Disinformation and Disease (Coronavirus Edition)”
While I tend not to write about current events, in the last article I introduced a set of worldwide consequences from the spread of the novel Wuhan coronavirus. We are still learning a lot about this disease, its origins and how it spreads. But with another week of information, here are additions to the consequences that may come from this disease and the reaction to it.
What scares some people about the novel coronavirus is not only the mortality rate of 2% to 3% — or 20 – 50 times that of the influenza in a typical year. Rather, it’s that the systems for spreading this coronavirus are different, that the animal origination of the disease is another sign that species crossover may become more common in the future, and that there are other technological changes that we may also see.
On species crossover, we have this quote from a NY Times opinion piece by David Quammen, titled We Made the Coronavirus Epidemic: Continue reading “Coronavirus Consequences (Part 2)”
As a rule, I don’t cover breaking news on this site. Plenty of other sources do that. Instead, when I do write about current events I focus on looking at the effects that systems have generating unintended consequences. That’s why I’m only writing about the Wuhan novel coronavirus now, almost at the end of the declared 14-day lockdown period.
And what a story of systems.
While the novel coronavirus fatality rate is estimated at 2.2% versus 9.6% for SARS, some other qualities of this outbreak may make the illness more difficult to contain, namely the long period of incubation (14 day estimate) and the increased amount of travel, including international and domestic Lunar New Year travel shortly before the lockdown period.
If you want an example of how times have changed since earlier epidemics, watch this video from the English publication of China’s People’s Daily. Continue reading “Coronavirus Consequences”
On important matters, people often put more effort into figuring out the right decision. But the right decision is different depending on who puts in the effort. And what if right is defined as the option that won the experimental split test rather than what seems to be best for the overall system?
Part of product testing (and even product concept testing) depends on generating demand data by running variations in front of customers. Run lots of variations, find the ones that perform better based on the metrics you value, and repeat.
I recently read a description of large-scale product experimentation for a financial services company. The business’ product experimentation had direct financial outcomes — namely improved customer retention and customer lifetime value. But there were costs too. Continue reading “Problems or Puzzles”
Recently I decided to look into the potential impact of autonomous vehicles on organ donation and found that this is a subject that many others have covered — even years ago. Surprisingly early in the history of AV development. Why this topic resulted in so many articles I don’t know. I’ve written about systemic risk and autonomous vehicles before but barely mentioned the potential impact on organ donation. However, after looking into the topic I came to the opposite conclusion of the other authors.
All the articles I found pointed to a coming shortfall of transplantable organs due to AV safety. However, I do not think that the impact will be big or even noticeable. Note that I am using a range of data I found about this, much of which seems noisy. If you have better sources or work in related industries, let me know if there are more accurate inputs that I should use.
(Note that this is different way than I usually write. In this article I’m not identifying an unintended consequence as much as I am saying that a stated one does not exist. And also note that this is a macabre subject.)
In March 2011 a 9.0 magnitude earthquake triggered a tsunami which led to the automatic shutdown of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear reactor in Japan. While the reactor’s shutdown sequence started well, waves from the tsunami breached the nuclear plant’s seawall to flood and disable backup generators. Without the generators cooling the reactor’s nuclear core there was a meltdown and radioactive leakage. In this extreme series of events, what was the best way forward?
The Japanese government took action and required approximately 154,000 people to evacuate, the seemingly safe choice.
But was seemingly safe the right choice? Continue reading “Should We Reevaluate the Precautionary Principle?”
“Those viral Tweets you’ve seen? Chances are I’ve made some of them.”
That was an admission from an acquaintance who works in online distribution helping new products find customers.
That was also part of the reason I pondered Twitter’s decision to disallow political ads on their social media platform — a decision widely applauded yet one that seems ripe to generate its own unintended consequences.
Here’s the full text of Twitter CEO Dorsey’s explanation. Continue reading “Twitter Bans Political Ads”
Let’s come back, more directly, to a theme in my writing — what happens when something small becomes a tipping point for change. When the seemingly innocuous becomes unpredictable.
If you’ve only casually followed the Hong Kong protests and reaction from the Chinese mainland and overseas Chinese communities, you might wonder about the importance and meaning of the covered eye. Specifically, the right eye.
Hong Kong protesters found one of their many symbols (and there are many) when police shot and injured the right eye of a protesting woman in August. The injured eye is a more powerful symbol than even that of the man police shot on October 1 (Chinese National Day) in the chest (that is, the heart).
But since the now famous protester’s eye injury we’ve seen company ad campaign apologies and even an individual arrest all because of missing eyes.
But the eye I was reminded of was none of these. It was a different eye — also a right eye and in China — that over 40 years ago had results reminiscent to those eyes of today.