Rather a lovely review about what I’m up to nowadays. From QZ.com in the US. Read here.
Present Tense
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Corona is not a Black Swan Event
There is a narrative slowly emerging that Corona (Covid-19) is a true Black swan event. For example, according to Fred Cleary, a portfolio manager at Pegasus Capital, quoted in the FT’s excellent Long View Column, “Covid-19 is a black swan”. I could be wrong, but from recollection of reading the book, a Black Swan event is something that people cannot possibly imagine and therefore cannot possibly predict.
9/11 was a Black Swan event. Corona virus is not. In scenario-speak it is a wild card event that breaks all scenarios, but this is most definately not something that has not been foreseen. I worked with an Australian bank back in 2005 and a pandemic was on the table so to speak. It was one of the main topics of a UK government risk workshop in 2015 (by main topic I mean it was one of the events considered most probable (when not if as they say), it featured in some strategic trends work with the UK Ministry of Defence too (again, as a strategic shock), in some library scenarios, some work for KPMG and finally some disruption cards created with Imperial College.
The problem, of course, is not predicting, forecasting or foreseeing, but in assigning probability to such events or ideas. If the probability is widely considered to be low it will be largely ignored. It also touches on not what, but whom, in the sense of who gets listened to, why and when. BTW, is this is all a bit doom and gloom, my view is that the current pandemic is quite mild in terms of mortality. This too will pass, although next time we may not be so lucky.
Quote of the week
“No plan of operations reaches with any certainty beyond the first encounter with the enemy’s main force” (Helmuth von Moltke, Prussina military commander, 1880).
Or another version….
“Everyone has a plan, until they get punched in the mouth” (Mike Tyson, former World Heavyweight boxing champion).
The scream (redux)
No touching
OK, two scenarios in light of Coronavirus and the current outbreak of anxiety.
Scenario one: Social distancing becomes the norm. People avoid people.
People don’t trust people. People trust machines and prefer their company. A
society-wide deletion of the human interface (currently to be seen emerging in
banks and supermarkets across the UK and elsewhere). People work from home,
consume at home and essentially keep their mental front doors closed to things
they don’t like. Contact with nature is lost, so too is curiosity about other
people. The triumph of the digitally empowered individual.
Scenario two: Self isolation turns out to be a blessing disguised in a face
mask. People re-discover the joys of solitude. The cult of productivity and
competitive busyness is called into question. People find joy in simple things. People slowly realise they need other people. People question what makes them truly happy and it turns out the answer is other people and especially helping strangers. There is an outbreak of empathy and kindness and a societal shift from ‘me’ to ‘we’. Civic responsibility and societal good trumps individual rights and freedoms.
Some things you can see coming…
i just remembere that i wrote this back in 2012 for a book called The Future: 50 Ideas you really need to know. Of course, if you write enough, and then wait long enough, almost anything can come true.
The text below is from the draft, so doesn’t exactly appear above.
41 Biohazards & Plagues
You might have noticed that some of the previous ideas where perhaps getting a little silly. Or perhaps I was. No drama. This next lot of ideas will soon sort us all out. Instead of intelligent machines, immortality and alien life how about a few mass extinctions, genetic terrorism or some good old-fashioned plagues?
Something, sometimes, strikes me as rather odd. Namely that we somehow assume that life will go on, more or less as it has always done. But ‘always’ is actually a rather contemporary concept. We compare the present to the relatively recent past. This we do not take into account, for example, world wars one and two (around 70 million men, women and children killed) or the great flu pandemic of 1918-19 (somewhere in the region of 20-40 million dead). Going much further back we had the Black Death, which killed something like 30-60% of Europe’s population.
We’ve been lucky. So, what other doomsday scenarios are there out there? Well it’s another long list. The problem is essentially two-fold. First more of us are living closer together in crowded cities and moving around in an interconnected world more easily thanks to various regulations and innovations in transport and infrastructure. We’ve even got our animals closer together – and closer to us some might argue – than previously. This means that when something nasty like a naturally occurring pathogen does break out it travels much faster – and has the potential to travel much faster and further between species too. This goes some way to explain recent outbreaks of H5N1 virus, SARS, dengue and Ebola, all of which initially originated in Animals and were then spread by humans.
The second problem is technology. New technologies are emerging faster, many are quite powerful and many can be used in bad ways as well as good. Genetics is a case in point. Genetics means that it is possible to create new and novel micro-organisms. Most of the time genetics will be for peaceful and products purposes. But there is no reason why some day someone (it’s Dr Evil again) won’t do something a little more sinister. As usual this has happened already in a sense. Smallpox and anthrax have been used as weapons before and more recently we’ve had the sarin gas attacks on the Tokyo subway system where the result of a few deranged minds. So how about someone creating a new deadly micro-organism which, for instance, is only lethal to a specific race or ethnicity? Stealth and deniability all rolled into one.
Consequences? Apart from an outbreak of fear there would be an initial issue relating to the mass disposal of bodies. Many of the ideas we cherish – like saying good bye to loved ones or being able to visit their graves, might vanish. We would be back to plague pits, at least in the early days. There are also the economic effects.
Work done by Warwick McKibbin at the Lowry Institute in Sydney (quoted in Alok Jha’s book, The Doomsday Handbook) suggest that a mild repeat of the 1918 flu pandemic would kill almost 1.5 million people and would reduce economic output by b$330 billion (in 2006 prices).
A large repeat might kill 142 million and shrink output in some economies by as much as 50%. Or maybe it’s more prosaic than that. Maybe the next plague is Type-2 Diabetes? Maybe millions will die simply because they eat too much and don’t go outside and walk around enough. As for biotech disasters, the potential is serious mishaps is significant. What if poor synthetic biology regulation leads to people taking short-cuts, which leads to the creation of a new form of bug that can’t be got rid of using any known techniques? The bug might not be a problem on its own, but if it destroyed the world’s wheat, maize or rice crop the result could be mass starvation within particular regions.
Or maybe problems will occur from a combination of factors. What if global demands for meat creates issues surrounding the disposal of animal carcasses? This could cause a growth in feral dogs in some parts of the world that could lead to massive increases in rabies. Or what if a global economic boom meant more pool building swimming pools, but the boom is followed by bust and the homes are repossessed leading to stagnant water in swimming polls, which in combination with warmer weather caused by climate change leads to outbreaks of malaria?
BTW, worth pointing out the 2012 entry on the timeline for this, which reads: “A typical year for the common flu (3,000-5,000 killed in the USA). ” Context people, context.
How to do nothing
I’ve got sod all on at the moment (thanks Coronavirus!) so I’ve started to read How to do nothing in the greenhouse by Jenny Odell. No…the book is called How to do Nothing… I’m reading it in the greenhouse…got it? I haven’t got very far, but it’s shaping up to be really good book. The quote at the start is fab too, especially in light of what’s going on right now.
Stop spreading the news
Given my ongoing experiments with what I call retrospective reading (i.e. reading ‘news’ when it’s several weeks, if not months, old) I thought this was interesting. I haven’t stopped reading newspapers altogether, but I have certainly cut down very significantly and switched towards periodicals and books. Top tip: If you can’t stop your addiction, at least get rid of newspapers during the week and focus on weekend editions, which are more reflective and analytical. Anyway, this is from Rolf Dobelli, who is well worth reading.
News is bad for your health.
Out of the 10,000 news stories you may have read in the last 12 months, did even one allow you to make a better decision about a serious matter in your life, asks Rolf Dobelli. Photograph: Guardian/Graphic
In the past few decades, the fortunate among us have recognised the hazards of living with an overabundance of food (obesity, diabetes) and have started to change our diets. But most of us do not yet understand that news is to the mind what sugar is to the body. News is easy to digest. The media feeds us small bites of trivial matter, tidbits that don’t really concern our lives and don’t require thinking. That’s why we experience almost no saturation. Unlike reading books and long magazine articles (which require thinking), we can swallow limitless quantities of news flashes, which are bright-coloured candies for the mind. Today, we have reached the same point in relation to information that we faced 20 years ago in regard to food. We are beginning to recognise how toxic news can be.
News misleads. Take the following event (borrowed from Nassim Taleb). A car drives over a bridge, and the bridge collapses. What does the news media focus on? The car. The person in the car. Where he came from. Where he planned to go. How he experienced the crash (if he survived). But that is all irrelevant. What’s relevant? The structural stability of the bridge. That’s the underlying risk that has been lurking, and could lurk in other bridges. But the car is flashy, it’s dramatic, it’s a person (non-abstract), and it’s news that’s cheap to produce. News leads us to walk around with the completely wrong risk map in our heads. So terrorism is over-rated. Chronic stress is under-rated. The collapse of Lehman Brothers is overrated. Fiscal irresponsibility is under-rated. Astronauts are over-rated. Nurses are under-rated.
We are not rational enough to be exposed to the press. Watching an airplane crash on television is going to change your attitude toward that risk, regardless of its real probability. If you think you can compensate with the strength of your own inner contemplation, you are wrong. Bankers and economists – who have powerful incentives to compensate for news-borne hazards – have shown that they cannot. The only solution: cut yourself off from news consumption entirely.
News is irrelevant. Out of the approximately 10,000 news stories you have read in the last 12 months, name one that – because you consumed it – allowed you to make a better decision about a serious matter affecting your life, your career or your business. The point is: the consumption of news is irrelevant to you. But people find it very difficult to recognise what’s relevant. It’s much easier to recognise what’s new. The relevant versus the new is the fundamental battle of the current age. Media organisations want you to believe that news offers you some sort of a competitive advantage. Many fall for that. We get anxious when we’re cut off from the flow of news. In reality, news consumption is a competitive disadvantage. The less news you consume, the bigger the advantage you have.
News has no explanatory power. News items are bubbles popping on the surface of a deeper world. Will accumulating facts help you understand the world? Sadly, no. The relationship is inverted. The important stories are non-stories: slow, powerful movements that develop below journalists’ radar but have a transforming effect. The more “news factoids” you digest, the less of the big picture you will understand. If more information leads to higher economic success, we’d expect journalists to be at the top of the pyramid. That’s not the case.
News is toxic to your body. It constantly triggers the limbic system. Panicky stories spur the release of cascades of glucocorticoid (cortisol). This deregulates your immune system and inhibits the release of growth hormones. In other words, your body finds itself in a state of chronic stress. High glucocorticoid levels cause impaired digestion, lack of growth (cell, hair, bone), nervousness and susceptibility to infections. The other potential side-effects include fear, aggression, tunnel-vision and desensitisation.
News increases cognitive errors. News feeds the mother of all cognitive errors: confirmation bias. In the words of Warren Buffett: “What the human being is best at doing is interpreting all new information so that their prior conclusions remain intact.” News exacerbates this flaw. We become prone to overconfidence, take stupid risks and misjudge opportunities. It also exacerbates another cognitive error: the story bias. Our brains crave stories that “make sense” – even if they don’t correspond to reality. Any journalist who writes, “The market moved because of X” or “the company went bankrupt because of Y” is an idiot. I am fed up with this cheap way of “explaining” the world.
News inhibits thinking. Thinking requires concentration. Concentration requires uninterrupted time. News pieces are specifically engineered to interrupt you. They are like viruses that steal attention for their own purposes. News makes us shallow thinkers. But it’s worse than that. News severely affects memory. There are two types of memory. Long-range memory’s capacity is nearly infinite, but working memory is limited to a certain amount of slippery data. The path from short-term to long-term memory is a choke-point in the brain, but anything you want to understand must pass through it. If this passageway is disrupted, nothing gets through. Because news disrupts concentration, it weakens comprehension. Online news has an even worse impact. In a 2001 study two scholars in Canada showed that comprehension declines as the number of hyperlinks in a document increases. Why? Because whenever a link appears, your brain has to at least make the choice not to click, which in itself is distracting. News is an intentional interruption system.
News works like a drug. As stories develop, we want to know how they continue. With hundreds of arbitrary storylines in our heads, this craving is increasingly compelling and hard to ignore. Scientists used to think that the dense connections formed among the 100 billion neurons inside our skulls were largely fixed by the time we reached adulthood. Today we know that this is not the case. Nerve cells routinely break old connections and form new ones. The more news we consume, the more we exercise the neural circuits devoted to skimming and multitasking while ignoring those used for reading deeply and thinking with profound focus. Most news consumers – even if they used to be avid book readers – have lost the ability to absorb lengthy articles or books. After four, five pages they get tired, their concentration vanishes, they become restless. It’s not because they got older or their schedules became more onerous. It’s because the physical structure of their brains has changed.
News wastes time. If you read the newspaper for 15 minutes each morning, then check the news for 15 minutes during lunch and 15 minutes before you go to bed, then add five minutes here and there when you’re at work, then count distraction and refocusing time, you will lose at least half a day every week. Information is no longer a scarce commodity. But attention is. You are not that irresponsible with your money, reputation or health. Why give away your mind?
News makes us passive. News stories are overwhelmingly about things you cannot influence. The daily repetition of news about things we can’t act upon makes us passive. It grinds us down until we adopt a worldview that is pessimistic, desensitised, sarcastic and fatalistic. The scientific term is “learned helplessness”. It’s a bit of a stretch, but I would not be surprised if news consumption, at least partially contributes to the widespread disease of depression.
News kills creativity. Finally, things we already know limit our creativity. This is one reason that mathematicians, novelists, composers and entrepreneurs often produce their most creative works at a young age. Their brains enjoy a wide, uninhabited space that emboldens them to come up with and pursue novel ideas. I don’t know a single truly creative mind who is a news junkie – not a writer, not a composer, mathematician, physician, scientist, musician, designer, architect or painter. On the other hand, I know a bunch of viciously uncreative minds who consume news like drugs. If you want to come up with old solutions, read news. If you are looking for new solutions, don’t.
Society needs journalism – but in a different way. Investigative journalism is always relevant. We need reporting that polices our institutions and uncovers truth. But important findings don’t have to arrive in the form of news. Long journal articles and in-depth books are good, too.
I have now gone without news for four years, so I can see, feel and report the effects of this freedom first-hand: less disruption, less anxiety, deeper thinking, more time, more insights. It’s not easy, but it’s worth it.
Scenarios for the impact of pandemics
A scenario matrix from my friend Nick Turner at Stratforma. His explanation below.
The framework is built on the axes of two critical uncertainties:
- The nature of global coordination; “slow and inadequate” vs. “fast and efficient”
- The nature of public response; “panicked” vs. “disciplined”
When placed in a 2×2 matrix, four scenarios unfold:
“Déjà Flu”: a world where despite national governments and multi national agencies responding in a responsible and coordinated fashion, feed “too much” information, the public over-react, resulting in irrational consumption and even xenophobic outrage.
“Keep Calm & Carry On”: a world where the virus spreads but effective quarantining and treatment contain the epidemic and the public display unexpected resilience, as the media behave in a more retrained way.
“Plus ça Change”: a world of disparity in response across the globe between developed and developing economies, the population of latter, despite experiencing high mortality rates, shrug off as just another one life’s challenges to be faced.
“Me First”: a world of delay, opacity, incompetence and unpreparedness, leading to public panic, overreaction and selfishness, the after effects of which linger for years.
More on this in Nick’s post here.
I’m supposed to be flying to Sydney, but…
