Blog - Page 8 of 13 - Unintended Consequences

2020-01-212021-01-14

Problems or Puzzles

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”

2019-12-032020-12-17

Autonomous Vehicles and Organ Donations

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.)

Continue reading “Autonomous Vehicles and Organ Donations”

2019-11-192020-12-17

Should We Reevaluate the Precautionary Principle?

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?”

2019-11-052020-10-06

Twitter Bans Political Ads

“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”

2019-10-292021-01-10

The Owl’s Right Eye (Protest Symbols)

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.

Continue reading “The Owl’s Right Eye (Protest Symbols)”

2019-10-152020-10-06

More on Mosquitoes (New Data)

I’ve returned to the question of mosquito eradication several times over the last year. My first post (Eradication’s Good Intentions) led to a TechCrunch article (What Would It Mean to Eradicate the Mosquito?) and you would think that I’d be done with the topic, especially in light of the long list of other topics that I have.

But that’s not the case. Mosquitoes are a story of second-order effects that keep coming up. As major carriers of disease, causing hundreds of thousands of deaths each year, mosquito eradication will be a topic that remains as long as the diseases remain. But unlike some other high-risk actions, the mosquito question draws a wide mix of people on both sides of the eradication argument. I return to the mosquito eradication question today because of new published data. Continue reading “More on Mosquitoes (New Data)”

2019-10-012020-10-06

The 70th anniversary of the PRC

“So it’s his fault?!”

That was what I heard a Taiwanese visitor say years ago in front of the statue of Koxinga, located in Tainan, Taiwan.

Koxinga was a Ming dynasty general who fled to Taiwan and established an Ming outpost there from 1662 to 1683. The Qing dynasty (which defeated the Ming) later defeated Koxinga’s new kingdom and wrapped Taiwan into the Qing dynasty.

The visitor’s complaint: that without Koxinga there would not be a struggle, going on even today, over the future of Taiwan.

This is a post about founding ceremonies. And today is the 70th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China.

Continue reading “The 70th anniversary of the PRC”

2019-09-242020-08-03

50 Essays on Unintended Consequences (What I Learned)

Last year a side interest started to nudge me. It has since happily taken over much of my free time.

The side interest was that I drawn to learn more about unintended consequences, systems, and complexity. But I wanted a different way to start. These topics are often ignored but I started to read historical examples, look at systems models, and take a closer look at why things often don’t work out the way people (with the best of intentions) thought.

To help me learn I started to write essays on this topic.

Over the last year my writing has been featured in media like TechCrunch, Exponential View, The Browser, Marginal Revolution, Human Risk Blog, as well as making it to the top page of Hacker News multiple times. I didn’t seek links or external coverage, figuring that I needed to do more work first. Still, people reached out to me about my writing. That plus comments and encouragement from friends kept me going.

Last week I finished my 50th post. I thought I’d share what I learned while writing these essays, both related to content and commitment. Continue reading “50 Essays on Unintended Consequences (What I Learned)”

2019-09-172020-10-06

Incentives

The story had paused for more than two thousand years and with a surprise discovery was then suddenly back in play. In the 1940s and 1950s a sad mismatch of incentives after the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls led to the destruction of parts of the ancient biblical documents. That destruction was something that no one wanted and yet, with these priceless historical items, it was logical. Why? Continue reading “Incentives”

2019-09-032020-10-06

Basic Values

With this post I have finally written about each of the five causes of unintended consequences that Robert Merton outlined in his 1936 paper “The Unanticipated Consequences of Purposive Social Action” (the other four being error, short-term vs long-term interests, ignorance, and the self-defeating prophecy).

Let’s look at what basic values are, why we have them (if we do), and how they impact us in unexpected ways to generate unintended consequences. Continue reading “Basic Values”