How do you guide your children to have a successful career? What’s good advice? In Laura Ingalls Wilder’s book Little House on the Prairie we learn about her experience growing up in a small cabin as her family homesteaded on the American frontier. Wilder also wrote a less known, but to me, even more interesting … Continue reading "Should Almanzo Become a Wheelwright?"| Unintended Consequences
When physicist Richard Feynman returned from college his father asked him something, as he later recounted: “‘When an atom makes a transition from one state to another it emits a particle of light called a photon… Well is the photon in the atom ahead of time? Or if there is no photon there to start … Continue reading "Popping the Bag"| Unintended Consequences
A quote from Peter Drucker’s book Adventures of a Bystander always struck me: “I once, as a boy, looked at the suits my grandfather had left behind — he had died in 1899 when my mother was fourteen. There was not one pocket in them except for the waistcoat fob pocket for the watch. ‘Your … Continue reading "How You’re Being Served"| Unintended Consequences
“As soon as a coin in the coffer rings, a soul from purgatory springs.” Or, in German and with a similar rhyme, “Wenn die Münze im Kästlein klingt, die Seele in den Himmel springt.” A friar named Johann Tetzel may or may not have said those words in the early 1500s, but the money he … Continue reading "Secular Indulgences"| Unintended Consequences
In the early 2000s while in Mexico City I ended up on the campus of the National Autonomous University of Mexico. This is an enormous university, by any of the standards I know. The university had 370,000 students (as of 2023, but I believe a similar number 20 years ago). Walking around I met some … Continue reading "The Youth"| Unintended Consequences
Even if we’re not good at dealing with them, we tend to see a lot of systems surprises that arise from expansionism – the situations where something grows faster than expected, dangerous positive feedback loops, or good intentions with bad outcomes that negate the original good intentions. So I was surprised when I recently learned … Continue reading "Borrowing an Arrow" The post Borrowing an Arrow appeared first on Unintended Consequences.| Unintended Consequences
Between the Current Thing and the Great American Safety Valve is another pathway to guiding desired social change. That of designing a grand new outcome, in its entirety, top-down, in one attempt. To decree a deity. Has it ever worked? Or, to quote from Christopher Alexander, on “unselfconscious” and “selfconscious” cultures, why does it fail? … Continue reading "Decreeing the Deity"| Unintended Consequences
If you were plonked down in an unknown society, how would you identify their most remembered historical figures? One guess would be to look at the notable physical memorials. Statues, plaques, and names on buildings. These are the most noticeable, prominent names, and figures. But as someone who reads the plaques, I usually find they’re … Continue reading "Dead Poet Societies"| Unintended Consequences
A phrase in the recent Economist obituary about Ebrahim Raisi, the president of Iran, immediately struck me. According to the obituary, in the moments before his helicopter crashed, Raisi “stared sombrely” out of the window. And at the end of the obituary, “the president stared out of the window, unsmiling, as the fog closed in.” … Continue reading "What People Think"| Unintended Consequences
Well, is it? In his book The Mansions of Philosophy, historian Will Durant has a chapter titled “Is Socialism Dead?” He wrote the book in 1929 but I think we could still seriously ask the question in 2024. And for that matter, Durant had another chapter titled “The Breakdown of Marriage.” How long has it … Continue reading "Is Progress a Delusion?"| Unintended Consequences
Are some things inevitable? And if something is inevitable, what do you do if you don’t like it? You could fight it indirectly and delay how fast the change happens. In that case, you will quietly subvert the system. You could fight it directly, even though you will probably lose. In that case, you are … Continue reading "Ghost Shirts, Guilds, and Generative AI"| Unintended Consequences
The spark for this post was an article published in The Century Magazine in 1892. In it the author explains to a foreign visitor the odd way that Americans keep the peace. I couldn’t improve upon the article’s title, “The Great American Safety Valve,” so I stole it for my title. It’s a short, informal … Continue reading "The Great American Safety Valve"| Unintended Consequences
If you pay attention online you might have heard of “The Current Thing.” What’s The Current Thing? The Current Thing is any concept that grabs hold of public attention, sometimes out of nowhere, and which demands an answer: are you for or against? I also like Marc Andreessen’s explanation. If not supporting it gets you … Continue reading "Engineering the Current Thing"| Unintended Consequences
New Zealand's incoming coalition government says it will reverse tobacco 'endgame' legislation. That will allow New Zealand to pursue better policies based on consent rather than coercion. It is an advance, not a reversal.| The Counterfactual
