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What is Unity? (Post-Election Questions)

Now that the US presidential election is over (well, probably) we’ve seen calls for unity (at least from Biden’s side). But what is unity? What do you need in order to have it? And if we don’t have it now, why not?

This story of unintended consequences starts with business models that benefit from division. Always look for incentives in designed systems and in systems that emerge.

Old News, New News

News of all types – real, fake, stressed, ignored, and biased – was a big part of the last four years. Let’s look at the general change in the media industry from pre-Internet days to today.

If we don’t have unity today, but maybe did in the past, is some of that due to changing news industry business models?

Continue reading “What is Unity? (Post-Election Questions)”

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Reversible or Irreversible? (Voting)

At the beginning of WWI, French soldiers entered battle wearing red pants, carrying swords, and depending on rank, had plumes in their caps.

That attire suited previous wars where the technology and tactics used were more similar to the Battle of Waterloo a hundred years earlier than anything they were about to face in 1914.

A lot was to change in WWI, including the first mainstream uses of camouflage, airplanes, radio communication, long-range artillery, high-intensity shelling, submarines, tanks, poison gas, and more.

After WWI there was no return to what now seem like quaint military practices.

We make the same mistake when we look at some risks as being reversible when they are irreversible. How can we tell the difference? Continue reading “Reversible or Irreversible? (Voting)”

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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”