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The message of this article (and the rest of the site) seems to be: Things you do will have unintended consequences; you cannot predict these consequences; they
by jimrandomh 8y ago
The message of this article (and the rest of the site) seems to be: Things you do will have unintended consequences; you cannot predict these consequences; they will be bad; therefore you shouldn't do anything.
This is a terrible position to take. The unintended bad consequences described, in this post and in the other posts on the site, are all reasonably predictable to anyone knowledgeable who's making a serious effort. And sometimes projects don't have unintended bad consequences, or the unintended bad consequences are worth it, or they would be manageable if only someone bothered to predict them.
- kurthr 8y agoTo be fair, they were talking about self-orgsnizing exponential growth, but I think that makes your point quite well too. Not many people here are going to lament Moore's law.
- manicdee 8y agoEveryone has 20/20 vision in hindsight. Many things that turned out to be disasters looked perfectly reasonable at the time. For example introducing the cane toad to control cane beetle, the larva which it was assumed the toad would dig up and eat despite the toad not having that kind of habit. It is possible that the desire to appear to be doing something overpowered the motivation to actually do something. It is also possible that the people involved simply didn’t realise how incompetent they were to make that decision.
- paulorlando 8y agoNice summary. I write these posts to better understand how complex the world is. Your statement that "many things that turned out to be disasters looked perfectly reasonable at the time" is why we've found it hard to improve at preventing these disasters. I think that's worthy of study. That's what this project is about. Glad you liked it!
- nkurz 8y agoThe message of this article (and the rest of the site) seems to be: Things you do will have unintended consequences; you cannot predict these consequences; they will be bad; therefore you shouldn't do anything. I think you might be bringing that interpretation to the site. At least, reading the linked article, I don't find it there explicitly. Maybe you are taking the "Don't Touch Anything" title too literally? The author speaks positively of the attempts to reintroduce beavers to Scotland, and seems cautiously optimistic about the attempts to eradicate the accidentally introduced brown tree snake from Guam. Looking at some of the other articles on the site, I see a message akin to your correction. For example, instead of saying "don't do anything", this article is about how "bounty" programs should be run differently to make them more effective: https://unintendedconsequenc.es/the-cobra-effect-redesigned/ https://unintendedconsequenc.es/the-cobra-effect-redesigned/. His recommendations sound about the same as your criticisms.
- paulorlando 8y agoThanks for reading through the other posts. I'm learning as I go on this project. Funnily enough I had earlier been criticized (especially in the Cobra Effect post) for daring to suggest that improvements could be made at all.
- inimino 8y ago> therefore you shouldn't do anything. No, it's actually: therefore you should exercise extreme caution before making any irrevocable change. Mother earth is checked into no revision control system, and every change is comitted live on the production system. Caution is advised in such circumstances.
- paulorlando 8y agoThat's it.
- nerpderp82 8y agoSome mistakes cannot be un-made.
- paulorlando 8y agoRight. Once out, you can't put the starlings back in their cage.