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Selecting the Scalable Snapshot

One of the themes of these posts is that we unintended consequences of a change come from the way it scales.

It is also superficially easier to judge events as at risk of unintended consequences (easier, not more accurate) when there is an image — a snapshot — that represents risk.

So what are causes of difficulty when we make judgments? I’ll go into some examples.

After two back-to-back mass shootings in the US, astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson tweeted something seemingly logical yet awful (shown later in post). Interestingly, people took offense and attacked him for the apparent logic (he later apologized). His offense: insensitively calling out and comparing the magnitude of different causes of death.

But the problem with Tyson’s tweet wasn’t that at all. Continue reading “Selecting the Scalable Snapshot”

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The Opioid Crisis (and addiction-based business models)

It’s common for scalable companies with good business models to involve addiction.

I mean addiction in a broad sense. This includes addiction to both physical products and digital goods and services. Addiction is a retention metric.

And retention (how long someone stays a paid customer or user) is what fuels many businesses. Let’s look at this with opioid addiction, focusing on Purdue Pharma’s product OxyContin. What second-order effects drive the opioid crisis?

Continue reading “The Opioid Crisis (and addiction-based business models)”

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The Emergence of Omniscience (Part 1 – Images)

We are in an early transition period of omniscience. We are transitioning from some personal actions that are recorded only through our memories to many events being recorded, re-playable, and shareable. By “personal actions” I mean anything from what content you consume to where you go to how you act. By “re-playable and shareable” I mean that some device or system collects data that can be stored for any length of time and then easily sent to others to observe.

Continue reading “The Emergence of Omniscience (Part 1 – Images)”

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The Cobra Effect (Part 2)

When I started this project to learn about unintended consequences, my first post to go viral (top page of Hacker News) was about the Cobra Effect. The Cobra Effect is another name for “perverse results,” or how when we want more (or less) of something, we sometimes instead create the conditions that produce the opposite of our intended outcomes. In that post I took three well-known examples of the cobra effect and invented antidotes for them.

Those well-known Cobra Effect examples all involved animals (cobras, rats, and pigs) and so my antidotes were based around the animals’ reproductive cycles. I made the claim that those animal examples had the solution built into the problem. Readers loved it (creative look at an old topic!) and readers hated it (you can’t stop the Cobra Effect!).

Since the Cobra Effect is a type of unintended consequence that keeps coming up, I decided to write part two. Continue reading “The Cobra Effect (Part 2)”

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Against the Natural Order of Things (Tech Change)

When it comes to changes, especially in technology, it’s common for people to have beliefs for what should and should not be. But where do these beliefs come from? How easy are they to change? What makes one person, or generation, or place, have a problem with something new, while another sees nothing wrong?

Where do these differences lead to second-order effects? How can we be aware of these effects and guard against them when we see new tech?

I believe that reflecting on these questions will help us figure out where there are opportunities to benefit. This is the start of exploration of this topic. Continue reading “Against the Natural Order of Things (Tech Change)”

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Autonomous Vehicles and Scaling Risk

I want to see mainstream autonomous vehicles (AVs), but I remain bearish about mainstream high-level autonomy.

My reasons for bearishness are not related to the technology that powers self-driving cars, or demand for AVs. Instead, it’s the systemic risk that wide-scale AV deployments create. What will change when we have numerous fully autonomous cars on the road?

Most of the commentary about AVs doesn’t consider second-order effects in their deployment so I’d like to start a discussion on that. (In this post I take high-level autonomy as a technological eventuality and assume a political climate that supports that.)

Continue reading “Autonomous Vehicles and Scaling Risk”

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Vultures and Ventures (Structure of Growth and Decline)

Vultures: Why are vultures dying in large numbers around the world? What else happens when the vultures decline? And let’s ask the question few are comfortable asking: How much is a species worth?

Ventures: Why do well-funded, fast-growing startups die? What else happens when they die? And let’s ask the question that is often ignored: Who wins in the process? Continue reading “Vultures and Ventures (Structure of Growth and Decline)”

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A City Too Familiar (the Spread of Disease)

The impact of diseases and epidemics on human life is as old as humanity. Disease is mentioned in texts thousands of years old, its presence changed political and economic history, cultural habits, and even morality. But often we think of disease as a stranger. It’s something that comes from somewhere else. But the systems that are in place affect how easily disease moves among us.

Let’s look into how disease impacts us with unintended consequences. First, a view from fiction.  Continue reading “A City Too Familiar (the Spread of Disease)”

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Categories of Unintended Consequences


There are many frameworks with which to evaluate unintended consequences. So far in my writing here I’ve looked at examples arranged around a theme (species introduction, food, government policy, human behavior etc) where there is a somewhat clear relationship between cause and effect (even if sometimes only in hindsight). I haven’t yet touched frameworks of complexity and won’t do so until I go deeper into more second-order effects.

This week I step back and look at basic categories of unintended consequences and call out potential new areas of exposure to second-order effects.

Unintended Consequences Categories
General categories of unintended consequences

Continue reading “Categories of Unintended Consequences”

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Anything at Scale

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”