_^29/07/2023

Unforeseen Consequences

The road to hell is paved with good intentions. ¹

Unforeseen consequences are not always bad but when they are, to me, they are the most interesting. Originally I planned writing about the original Cobra Effect, Peltzman effect, the American suburbia and the war on drugs but I decided to go with something more original. Also, check out this fellow. :^)

In his video, The Paradox of Documentation, Luke Smith talks about how he wanted to make an installer for his own software so that it would be easier for people to install it -and don’t ask him newbie questions-.

While initially it seemed like it worked, it actually backfired with more people asking him questions about the installer than the software itself. According to him, the sudden influx of questions was due to the fact that people were now able to install the software and therefore they were able to use it.

Before, they couldn’t use it and therefore they couldn’t ask questions about it. While documenting and increasing the ease of use of any software is a good thing, it may also have unforeseen consequences.

Our next example will take us to the years of Great Leap Forward, Mao’s China.

The year is 1958, the wheat and rice production is booming! “Only if there were no pests!”, Mao thought -propably-. “Let’s extarminate the sparrows.” he said. And so they did. The sparrows were killed and the wheat and rice production skyrocketed.

But then, the locusts came. The sparrows were the natural predators of the locusts and without them, the locusts were able to eat all the crops. Boom! A famine that killed 20 million people. People tend to group Four Pests Campaign with the Cobra Effect but I think it’s more of a Peltzman effect.

Speaking of ahem, regimes, let’s talk about the time Idi Amin came to power.

He was a dictator and a bad one at that. If I’m not mistaken, he came to power promising to expel foreigners from Uganda. And so he did. In short, Amin convinced the people of Uganda that Indians were the reason for their problems. After all, they were the ones who were running the economy but the vast majority of the population was in poverty, according to them.

Welp, they proved themselves right because after the Indians were expelled, the economy collapsed. I don’t think their intentions were pure but it’s still a good example of the Cobra Effect.

_{Side note; Amin was a cannibal and later a fruitarianist, go figure.}

_{Side side note; the word “cannibal” and Carribeans are etymologically related. More interestingly, the Turkish word for cannibal, “yamyam”, comes from the Azande (Niam Niam) ethnic group, which is onomatopoeic but pejorative. Explains this meme. :^)}

Lessons learned:

• Don’t mess with complex systems unless you know what you’re doing (most of the time you don’t).
• Plan for the worst, hope for the best.
• Don’t be a dictator.