Everything Everywhere Daily Unintended Consequences
Jul 9, 2024
Discover how even the best-laid plans can lead to unexpected outcomes in history and today, from disastrous decisions like the Cobra Effect and the SS Eastland disaster to ecological disruptions caused by invasive species in Australia and Macquarie Island. Explore the complexity of unintended consequences and the surprising results that can arise from well-intentioned actions.
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Small Causes, Big Effects
- Small changes can cascade into large, unexpected outcomes via the butterfly effect.
- These cascades often produce unintended consequences beyond simple prediction.
Bounties Backfired In Delhi
- The Cobra Effect began when Delhi paid bounties for dead cobras to reduce their numbers.
- People bred cobras to collect bounties and then released them, increasing cobra numbers.
When Metrics Become The Target
- Goodhart's Law warns that metrics become targets and then fail as measures.
- People will game chosen indicators, producing outcomes that satisfy the metric but not the goal.