The Knowledge Problem (Part 3)
The Law of Unintended Consequences
"There always are"
Mostly hidden from view
Google: "The law of unintended consequences is a frequently-observed phenomenon in which any action has results that are not part of the actor's purpose. The superfluous consequences may or may not be foreseeable or even immediately observable and they may be beneficial, harmful or neutral in their impact."
The Rand Gap
"Gaps" are common in Geopolitics; some of the more famous are the Darien Gap or the Fulda Gap; whether they are seen as beneficial or detrimental depends on your point of view.
The so-named (by me) "Ayn Rand Gap" (or "Ayn Rand Trap") in decision making,
[Remember that was not her real name, which (I suppose) is also why she did not want to have her philosophy of objectivism called ‘Randism’]
which consist of
a) ignoring contradictions in your assumptions and
b) ignoring the consequences of ignoring reality
leads to the following, somewhat playful, scheme of a decision gap or trap:
The Rock (the wall of the cave)
↓
Vague (mis-) representation of reality:
↓
Unconscious bias:
(unknown assumptions)
AKA "belief system"
leads to:
Wishfulness & magical thinking
(Fairies & evil forces)
↓
Your decision
↓
Intended Consequences:
Wishfulness & magical thinking
(Pixie dust & appeasement)
leads to:
Ignoring contradictions
↓
Unintended Consequences:
Reality awaits you at
the bottom of the cliff
↓
The Hard Place
The question of time
People make the mistake of trying to "win the argument" by falsifying their own assumptions and logic, overcrowding the market with a mass of irrelevant and rotten arguments, and more; this - especially if it is successful - gives them a good feeling of triumph and complacency for the time being.
'The time being' being the time before the consequences set in.
That could be two seconds, it could be thirty years, it could be beyond the other's life span or beyond one's own; which usually what the aim is:
Kicking the can ever further down the road for their own profit and "out of sight, out of mind", where it is joined by other cans being kicked down the road by others, until the cans start bouncing off each other and result in a trash heap of problems no-one can solve by further kicking, and everyone must do the picking, resulting in a standstill.
The trouble is, they will win the argument. But ONLY the argument. Reality will hit them nonetheless; them and anyone else who listened - or who didn't.
The Hard Place will come, argument or no argument, debate of no debate, fight won or fight lost.
Imagine passengers on a pilotless plane heading into the mountains getting won over by the ‘professional’ argument of someone of unprovable qualifications talking of the ability of modern autopilots, stopping those willing to take over the controls:
The mountains will tell them if he was right or wrong, and perhaps using Jacobowsky's razor to decide what happens if the soothsayer is either right or wrong is safer than simply hoping that the argument just won was based on an unbelievable amount of, indeed, sound assumptions, which no-one can test in time.
Why would you stop at a red traffic light?
1. Because I react to signals (Absolutely powerless)
2. To appease the Gods of Traffic (Powerless, but with agency)
3. Because now the others have the right of way (In control / the driver's seat)
All three arguments are valid; all three show the same results: You don't get hit from the side (but it doesn't stop you from getting hit from the back, for instance)
Time for a story:
In the dead of night, a passenger calls a taxi, climbs in and gasps:
"To the airport, and fast! Can you make it in twenty minutes?!"
"Sure," says the cabby, "at this time, the streets are empty."
And go they off, tearing through the town at reckless speed, slamming through three road crossing with red lights on without even slowing down on sight, when the driver suddenly smashes the breaks and comes skidding to a halt in front of a bright green traffic light.
"What's wrong!?!" exclaims the irritated passenger, "Don't you see?? The lights are green!"
"Yup!" says the cabby. "Here come my colleagues from the right and left!"