The cobra effect and millions of : unintended consequences

[Fridgemagnetman]

This is a blog I keep going back to :
The Law of Unintended Consequences: Shakespeare, Cobra Breeding, and a Tower in Pisa

It mainly talks about unintended comsequences and second order thinking

Excerpt,
Some additional examples:

• Suspending problematic children from school worsens their behavior, as they are more likely to engage in criminal behavior when outside school.
• Damage-control lawsuits can lead to negative media attention and cause more harm (as occurred in the notorious McLibel case).
• Banning alcohol has, time and time again, led to higher consumption and the formation of criminal gangs, resulting in violent deaths.
• Abstinence-based education invariably causes a rise in teenage pregnancies.
• Many people who experience a rodent infestation will stop feeding their cats, assuming that this will encourage them to hunt more. The opposite occurs: well-fed cats are better hunters than hungry ones.
• When the British government offered financial rewards for people who killed and turned in cobras in India, people, reacting to incentives, began breeding the snakes. Once the reward program was scrapped, the population of cobras in India rose as people released the ones they had raised. The same thing occurred in Vietnam with rats.

 

[LucyPurrs]

This is a blog I keep going back to :
The Law of Unintended Consequences: Shakespeare, Cobra Breeding, and a Tower in Pisa

It mainly talks about unintended comsequences and second order thinking

Excerpt,
Some additional examples:

• Suspending problematic children from school worsens their behavior, as they are more likely to engage in criminal behavior when outside school.
• Damage-control lawsuits can lead to negative media attention and cause more harm (as occurred in the notorious McLibel case).
• Banning alcohol has, time and time again, led to higher consumption and the formation of criminal gangs, resulting in violent deaths.
• Abstinence-based education invariably causes a rise in teenage pregnancies.
• Many people who experience a rodent infestation will stop feeding their cats, assuming that this will encourage them to hunt more. The opposite occurs: well-fed cats are better hunters than hungry ones.
• When the British government offered financial rewards for people who killed and turned in cobras in India, people, reacting to incentives, began breeding the snakes. Once the reward program was scrapped, the population of cobras in India rose as people released the ones they had raised. The same thing occurred in Vietnam with rats.

Now we need an icon that means "makes sense."

 

[tree]

Now we need an icon that means "makes sense."

Seems like "Informative" means the same sort of thing.

 

[Streetwise]

got to disagree about abstinence I think it depends on who is teaching it and the same for alcohol.

 

[LucyPurrs]

Well, I guess it's similar although "informative" doesn't have the same sense of judgment to it in my mind. However was mainly just kidding.

 

[Progster]

Scratching a mosquito bite to relieve itchiness makes it itch even more.

 

[Mia]

Schieffelin in retrospect, should have also consulted botanists before he released the starlings. Plants have a history of proliferation and adaptation in many averse conditions and the study of them duplicates a great deal of the history of flora and fauna's survival in non-native climates.

Starlings in great numbers survive through the winter in minus twenty celsius, they roost on top of chimneys and heating pipes to stay warm. On occasion they fall down inside chimney pipes, have freed six of them unharmed, covered in cold wood ash in the years I've lived in this area.

So much of what we do, has unknown and variable consequences. That we can't know unless we consider things from many points of view, and even then we can't know all. Perhaps predictive models would be more relevant if we first look in back of us and then forward. Yet few situations in decision-making account for all the ramifications. Engrossing treatise of unpredictability. One that will require a change in future considerations, even taking into account chaos theory.

 

[Gritches]

Prohibition doesn't work in a democratic society because prohibition isn't in line with Governance by Consent [of the people]. It imposes will from the top-down rather than will being imposed from the bottom-up, and in a free society it's the people who really have the power, moreso than they may even realize.

 

[Full Steam]

Prohibition extends to drugs also.

Why else do we now have large criminal gangs and enormous drug problems? I don't know of a single case of prohibition being positive, apart from with guns.

With gun prohibition , I think it's different since prohibition protects me from you, not me from myself.

The state has no right to assume I need protecting from myself, and it's ethically wrong to punish me for life choices I make that don't affect others.

Interesting thread.

 

[Full Steam]

Australia is a case study of unintended consequences.

"we'll release cane toads into the sugar cane fields, that'll control the native bugs that eat our crops."

Except cane toads can't jump, so they can't reach the bugs.

They are now killing and poisoning native wild life in extreme numbers. Whole populations are crashing as they spread and there's no known way to eradicate them.

Whoops.


An english major realised that Australia was a bit boring, and not English enough, so he released rabbits so he could hunt them.

They permanently changed the flora of Australia, leading Australia to deliberatly use miximatosis to kill millions. It didn't kill them all though and numbers are increasing again.

Whoops.

 

[Fridgemagnetman]

Australia is a case study of unintended consequences.

"we'll release cane toads into the sugar cane fields, that'll control the native bugs that eat our crops."

Except cane toads can't jump, so they can't reach the bugs.

They are now killing and poisoning native wild life in extreme numbers. Whole populations are crashing as the spread and there's no known way to eradicate them.

Whoops.


An english major realised that Australia was a bit boring, and no English enough, so he released rabbits so he could hunt them.

The permanently changed the flora of Australia, leading Australia to deliberated use miximatosis to kill millions. It didn't kills them all though and numbers are increasing again.

Whoops.

Yes, the rabbit one was in my head but cpuldnt remember when or where just rabbits.

 

[Full Steam]

We have rabbit proof fences, one of which is the longest fence in the world.

Rabbit-proof fence - Wikipedia

, "The introduction of a few rabbits could do little harm and might provide a touch of home, in addition to a spot of hunting", a prediction which has not aged well.
Rabbits in Australia - Wikipedia

 

[Fridgemagnetman]

So much of what we do, has unknown and variable consequences. That we can't know unless we consider things from many points of view, and even then we can't know all. Pe

The old biblical saying 'take the plank out of your own eye before taking out the speck in anothers'
The blog has many articles about this and how it is almost impossible for people to make a reasonable decision as they have so many cognitive biases they are not aware of.
An aspie advantage is decisions are not as socially based.
For me,the starlings are being released everyday, only metaphorically as a thoughtless new mistake. The older you get the more you realise there doesnt seem to be a learnimg process in the way decisions are made.
Although,it may be, in terms of group decisions :
A camel is always a horse designed by committee.
Starlings released,new camels made.

I did think I should really start a blog and pull together all the disparate things I read and my interests at the time.
Then I found farnam street - saved me a job. It was liked he'd pulled half my brain out and organised it properly.

 

[Full Steam]

Mri scans have proven that desicions are made emotionally.

It's the emotional part of the brain that makes desicions, we only justify those desicions with facts and logic.

We work on that in marketing by talking about benefits to the buyer, and emotion based language before mentioning features.

Great TED talk here about it; How great leaders inspire action

 

[Full Steam]

Even more interesting, there was an mri experiment done on desicions where they got people to make a simple choice and studied brain activity before and during the desicion process.

Outcome was that they were able to predict the choice 7 seconds before the person was aware of having made one.

Where now is your freedom of choice?

 

[Full Steam]

Brain Scanners Can See Your Decisions Before You Make Them

 

[Fridgemagnetman]

Mri scans have proven that desicions are made emotionally.

It's the emotional part of the brain that makes desicions, we only justify those desicions with facts and logic.

We work on that in marketing by talking about benefits to the buyer, and emotion based language before mentioning features.

Great TED talk here about it; How great leaders inspire action

The cart leading the horse.

The thing I always think about :

You ask someone a question.
They generally have an answer, even if the subject matter is difficult.

They then proceed to justify said answer. - this is where straw men,put downs etc can make an appearance.

I try to get the habit,if someone asks me a question, that :

My initial response is 'my first thought'
There's a lof of work before an opinion can be reached.

Often your first thought is the unexamined thing from media or something youve read.
A biased little meme thats not even your thought at all!

 

[Fridgemagnetman]

Even more interesting, there was an mri experiment done on desicions where they got people to make a simple choice and studied brain activity before and during the desicion process.

Outcome was that they were able to predict the choice 7 seconds before the person was aware of having made one.

Where now is your freedom of choice?

Lol, I can see that choice on peoples faces! I can almost 'see' them going through that mental process and I can sometimes tell when the decision is made. Then I wait to hear it.
Nice one.

 

[Full Steam]

The cart leading the horse.

The thing I always think about :

You ask someone a question.
They generally have an answer, even if the subject matter is difficult.

They then proceed to justify said answer. - this is where straw men,put downs etc can make an appearance.

I try to get the habit,if someone asks me a question, that :

My initial response is 'my first thought'
There's a lof of work before an opinion can be reached.

Often your first thought is the unexamined thing from media or something youve read.
A biased little meme thats not even your thought at all!

Also possible that the first answer comes from the quiet voice, and then you talk yourself out of the truth

Fascinating to consider where thoughts and ideas come from.

Are they yours?

Did you think that thought, or did that thought happen TO you?

Or did it happen IN you.

A favourite sage of mine said this;

Consider the question, would you like tea or coffee?

Watch the thought arise "I want tea".

You didn't choose tea, the thought just arose. If the thought " I want coffee" had arisen, you would have had coffee.

 

[Fridgemagnetman]

Also possible that the first answer comes from the quiet voice, and then you talk yourself out of the truth

Fascinating to consider where thoughts and ideas come from.

Are they yours?

Did you think that thought, or did that thought happen TO you?

Or did it happen IN you.

A favourite sage of mine said this;

Consider the question, would you like tea or coffee?

Watch the thought arise "I want tea".

You didn't choose tea, the thought just arose. If the thought " I want coffee" had arisen, you would have had coffee.

My thought is more that thought is a virus.
Vilely passed on through language and social interaction infecting us with moribund ideas of self

I blame the guy that first related a sound to a thing.
He got away scott free, and now look at us.