thank you today I want to talk to you
about something I’ve come to know as
uncanny wisdom but before we get there
I’d like to point out that human beings
are the most intelligent creatures on
earth with accomplishments and science
and engineering medicine and the arts
beyond the pale of any individual to
understand it all we have the ability to
reason and create and attain the retain
the knowledge that we create in culture
this clearly sets us apart from all
other living beings on the world on the
on the planet and yet we fail to reach a
sustainable outcome Jim’ll it kovitch in
salmon without rivers casually remarks
that sustainability is not difficult
it’s it’s not rocket science it’s a lot
harder and the truth is that we kind of
know that what we have to do but the
difficult decisions often do us in these
decisions lead to catastrophic events
like global warming deforestation
massive pollution urban sprawl and many
many more on the road to making these
decisions these these rational decisions
that we have to make are a number of
obstacles that keep us from being
effective the first among them is
rational behavior Herbert Simon in 1882
got the Nobel Prize for his work on
limited the limitations of rational
behavior he told us that we need to one
know all the possible outcomes in
advance
and to consider the consider all of the
consequences of those outcomes and then
choose the outcome that has the best
possible value 20 years later in 2002
Daniel Kahneman won the Nobel Prize for
his work on human judgment and
rationality along with Amos Tversky and
a number of other people he conducted
some experiments that basically show
that humans make errors that are bounded
in cognitive heuristics and biases these
cognitive heuristics and biases run
completely counter to the rational model
that’s underlies economic behavior and
many of the decisions that we’re talking
about the illusion of control was is
talked about in terms of when we give a
success the chances of our success to be
higher than what we would anticipate
given objective facts Elaine Langer at
Harvard did a whole series of
experiments where she put people in
conditions of completely random outcomes
and watched them attribute skill to
their outcome this is this is what
exactly one of these cases like blowing
on dice to get a particular number
finally the father of modern sociology
Robert Merton basically came to the
conclusion many years ago that there was
sustained colm anticipated consequences
in it there were three things that led
to us getting these unanticipated
consequences the first was that we don’t
have all the knowledge we need the
second was that we fail to do the right
analysis or reach the right behavior or
selection and the third is that we fail
to
we misjudge the the interest in the
outcomes so some people will get really
anxious and and make it come out their
way and the final final problem I’m
going to talk about today with this is
that sustainable problems are very messy
and so they we end up defining them as
abstractions of the real thing and that
means there that basically they don’t
fall out of the sky and Punk us on the
head like a an eighth-grade math problem
okay that everybody ends up defining it
in their own way based on their own
value system and as we get more and more
complex in these sustainable problems
the value systems get muddled together
and we don’t have a clear picture of
what’s going to what the solution might
be uncanny wisdom sits on the foundation
of this human behavior this human
decision-making this shaky platform on
which we’re trying to make things happen
uncanny wisdom occurs when humans make
what seem to be rational decisions and
then it turns out that over time they
start to slip away they’re less rational
than they appeared they have unintended
consequences so to speak that makes it
impossible for them to be as rational as
they appeared and in the end society
steps in with social institutions to
make this things a lot better in the
form of licenses building permits
insurance mortgages are given and even
example
flooding is one of the most intense
problems in the United States today
Houston has had a long long history of
flooding with over 16 major floods prior
to 1936 and in 1935 there was a huge
rainfall of 16 inches of rain it flooded
25 pound pound downtown blocks and over
a hundred residential blocks it was the
worst flood of its time it was so bad
that the citizens of Houston’s went to
the legislature and petitioned them to
to create the Harris County Flood
Control District can you even imagine
it’s hard for me to even imagine
independent minded Texans asking for the
government to come and help them but
they did it must have been really and it
worked to a certain degree that have
flood the Flood Control District was put
into place in about 1937 and ended by
the 40s they were building retention
reservoirs around the around the region
and and channelizing the streams into
the reservoirs and it works so well that
there was up until 1972 there was not
another flood of equal magnitude to the
one in 35 but in 1972 there was a vast
difference between it instead of 16
inches of rain falling it was just 6
inches of rain you see a few channels
and some reservoirs were no match for
the intense population growth and
development going on in the area urban
development clearly outstripped what was
going on and after 1970 development
continued and the population growth
continued and this sets the stage for
the hundred and twenty five billion
dollar hurricane Harvey last fall with
its 40-plus inches of rain on another
subject the first automobiles must have
been a bit of an odd thing to show up on
the scene with their fumes spewing out
their the exhaust pipes with their noise
with the fuel that they were burning and
then along comes Henry Ford and mass
produces it so that everyone could do it
and suddenly this stage is set for it to
be anywhere it was about this time that
my grandfather brought home his first
vehicle he pulled it pulled back on the
steering wheel said oh boy and Christ
right into the barn no one was hurt but
this was just the beginning there were a
number of things that had to be worked
out like the roads need to be improved
licenses started to be issued rules of
conduct of who drove on what side of the
road and so forth all had to be
developed and by the 20s the the dangers
involved but we’re beginning to show up
with between ten and twenty thousand
deaths a year on the highway and over
the last hundred years we’ve seen the
improvement in safety twenty four fold
improvement in safety from just around
twenty four deaths per hundred million
vehicle miles traveled to just one in
1920 in 2016 a huge improvement which
also gives rise and underscores that
this is the right activity that we
should continue to do it but as more and
more problems come about it becomes more
and more clear that we need to change as
I’ve talked about the deaths toward the
end of the toward the end of the century
you can see right here that there
about 40,000 deaths a year but later on
other things come start to show up like
the environmental pollution is not even
in there okay and the obesity that leads
though the act lack of activity that
leads to obesity and heart disease
and other problems isn’t in there these
are huge problems that aren’t yet solved
it’s taken most of a hundred years to
make the shift from combustion engines
to it motors to electrical motors and
now just now we’re beginning to do that
interestingly enough as more and more
people start driving electric cars where
are we going to get our money to rebuild
our roads because that comes from a
gasoline tax when I was a boy my father
told me over and over and over again
never never never tell anybody where you
catch your best fish but I was a kid
come on I blabbed
I couldn’t resist telling my best friend
where not only where I’d caught the fish
but what bait I had used and how to fish
it as well the next time I went to my
honey hole there was a small herd of
people standing there waiting to fish it
as well so much for that that was gone
this is just one part of the story about
fisheries fishery decline starts with
plenty of fish we have lots of fish here
easy catching predictable catch and for
over a hundred years no quotas
commercial fishermen could catch all
they wanted in the early eighteen 1860s
okay 1860s the the decline of fisheries
began to show up and too
handle it fish hatcheries were developed
okay and for a while it seemed to work
put more put more fish into the stream
how could you go wrong but the fish
hatcheries alone were not enough to
overcome the other problems logging
mining agricultural industries all of
which destroyed the habitat for the fish
including the river itself fish
hatcheries could not overcome that fish
hatcheries they would take fish from one
river and put it into another river
where it had no genetic understanding of
what was going on and expect it to work
of course it didn’t and for over a
hundred years fish hatcheries were the
solution if we put enough fish in there
it’s bound to curb the decline but then
in the late 1900s they commissioned some
studies to look at the efficacy of
fisheries and they discovered that not
only were they not always helpful
when we move to a new place we have a
new place to get to it’s usually and we
start developing in that place it’s
usually a place that’s full of nature
plenty of peace and quiet and lots of
ease all around plenty of fresh air for
example and then more people come and it
turns into a less and less desirable
place to be the traffic goes up the
noise goes up and pretty soon it’s it’s
pretty traffic and then they build
commercial districts around that
district and make it and close in on it
until it gets even more just like the
place that they were trying to get out
of in the first place and every single
house that is
built has assurances from society that
this is the right thing to do they get a
mortgage they get a building permit
first then they get a mortgage and they
get insurance for that house so this is
the right thing to do and more and more
people do it and then along comes the
traffic gets a little bit bad traffic’s
usually one of the first things that
happens and then what happens is the
local community steps in to help maybe
your employer supplies you parking or
the community why does the roads or
maybe they get really inventive and they
construct all new routes to two key
destinations all of which basically
ensures that this is the right thing to
do and gets people to continue to do it
which means more and more people move in
until finally you get to a place where
you have to have an eight-foot privacy
fence in order to feel safe in your own
backyard but the privacy fence cuts you
off from all your neighbors and isolates
you so that the the can’t create a
community okay you may have to walk a
mile to get to your neighbor’s house
where you can hear your children playing
in the backyard from your back porch but
you can’t get there from here you have
to walk all the way around all of the
fences to get to those kids so instead
of walking of course you drive okay so
more automobile dependence so as you can
see uncanny wisdom has led us to some
pretty unsustainable outcomes for the
built and natural environment and our
responses often make make the problem
even worse than it was before what we
need to be doing is considering our the
impacts of the responses the impacts of
the
decisions before before we actually make
them and by doing that then revisit it
from time to time to make sure that
things don’t get out of hand before we
correct them sustainable uncanny wisdom
understanding about uncanny wisdom may
help us reach the idea that we know what
to do and we need to take responsibility
understand the uncanny wisdom may hey
may help us shape the world in which we
live in sustainable ways thank you [Applause]
about something I’ve come to know as
uncanny wisdom but before we get there
I’d like to point out that human beings
are the most intelligent creatures on
earth with accomplishments and science
and engineering medicine and the arts
beyond the pale of any individual to
understand it all we have the ability to
reason and create and attain the retain
the knowledge that we create in culture
this clearly sets us apart from all
other living beings on the world on the
on the planet and yet we fail to reach a
sustainable outcome Jim’ll it kovitch in
salmon without rivers casually remarks
that sustainability is not difficult
it’s it’s not rocket science it’s a lot
harder and the truth is that we kind of
know that what we have to do but the
difficult decisions often do us in these
decisions lead to catastrophic events
like global warming deforestation
massive pollution urban sprawl and many
many more on the road to making these
decisions these these rational decisions
that we have to make are a number of
obstacles that keep us from being
effective the first among them is
rational behavior Herbert Simon in 1882
got the Nobel Prize for his work on
limited the limitations of rational
behavior he told us that we need to one
know all the possible outcomes in
advance
and to consider the consider all of the
consequences of those outcomes and then
choose the outcome that has the best
possible value 20 years later in 2002
Daniel Kahneman won the Nobel Prize for
his work on human judgment and
rationality along with Amos Tversky and
a number of other people he conducted
some experiments that basically show
that humans make errors that are bounded
in cognitive heuristics and biases these
cognitive heuristics and biases run
completely counter to the rational model
that’s underlies economic behavior and
many of the decisions that we’re talking
about the illusion of control was is
talked about in terms of when we give a
success the chances of our success to be
higher than what we would anticipate
given objective facts Elaine Langer at
Harvard did a whole series of
experiments where she put people in
conditions of completely random outcomes
and watched them attribute skill to
their outcome this is this is what
exactly one of these cases like blowing
on dice to get a particular number
finally the father of modern sociology
Robert Merton basically came to the
conclusion many years ago that there was
sustained colm anticipated consequences
in it there were three things that led
to us getting these unanticipated
consequences the first was that we don’t
have all the knowledge we need the
second was that we fail to do the right
analysis or reach the right behavior or
selection and the third is that we fail
to
we misjudge the the interest in the
outcomes so some people will get really
anxious and and make it come out their
way and the final final problem I’m
going to talk about today with this is
that sustainable problems are very messy
and so they we end up defining them as
abstractions of the real thing and that
means there that basically they don’t
fall out of the sky and Punk us on the
head like a an eighth-grade math problem
okay that everybody ends up defining it
in their own way based on their own
value system and as we get more and more
complex in these sustainable problems
the value systems get muddled together
and we don’t have a clear picture of
what’s going to what the solution might
be uncanny wisdom sits on the foundation
of this human behavior this human
decision-making this shaky platform on
which we’re trying to make things happen
uncanny wisdom occurs when humans make
what seem to be rational decisions and
then it turns out that over time they
start to slip away they’re less rational
than they appeared they have unintended
consequences so to speak that makes it
impossible for them to be as rational as
they appeared and in the end society
steps in with social institutions to
make this things a lot better in the
form of licenses building permits
insurance mortgages are given and even
example
flooding is one of the most intense
problems in the United States today
Houston has had a long long history of
flooding with over 16 major floods prior
to 1936 and in 1935 there was a huge
rainfall of 16 inches of rain it flooded
25 pound pound downtown blocks and over
a hundred residential blocks it was the
worst flood of its time it was so bad
that the citizens of Houston’s went to
the legislature and petitioned them to
to create the Harris County Flood
Control District can you even imagine
it’s hard for me to even imagine
independent minded Texans asking for the
government to come and help them but
they did it must have been really and it
worked to a certain degree that have
flood the Flood Control District was put
into place in about 1937 and ended by
the 40s they were building retention
reservoirs around the around the region
and and channelizing the streams into
the reservoirs and it works so well that
there was up until 1972 there was not
another flood of equal magnitude to the
one in 35 but in 1972 there was a vast
difference between it instead of 16
inches of rain falling it was just 6
inches of rain you see a few channels
and some reservoirs were no match for
the intense population growth and
development going on in the area urban
development clearly outstripped what was
going on and after 1970 development
continued and the population growth
continued and this sets the stage for
the hundred and twenty five billion
dollar hurricane Harvey last fall with
its 40-plus inches of rain on another
subject the first automobiles must have
been a bit of an odd thing to show up on
the scene with their fumes spewing out
their the exhaust pipes with their noise
with the fuel that they were burning and
then along comes Henry Ford and mass
produces it so that everyone could do it
and suddenly this stage is set for it to
be anywhere it was about this time that
my grandfather brought home his first
vehicle he pulled it pulled back on the
steering wheel said oh boy and Christ
right into the barn no one was hurt but
this was just the beginning there were a
number of things that had to be worked
out like the roads need to be improved
licenses started to be issued rules of
conduct of who drove on what side of the
road and so forth all had to be
developed and by the 20s the the dangers
involved but we’re beginning to show up
with between ten and twenty thousand
deaths a year on the highway and over
the last hundred years we’ve seen the
improvement in safety twenty four fold
improvement in safety from just around
twenty four deaths per hundred million
vehicle miles traveled to just one in
1920 in 2016 a huge improvement which
also gives rise and underscores that
this is the right activity that we
should continue to do it but as more and
more problems come about it becomes more
and more clear that we need to change as
I’ve talked about the deaths toward the
end of the toward the end of the century
you can see right here that there
about 40,000 deaths a year but later on
other things come start to show up like
the environmental pollution is not even
in there okay and the obesity that leads
though the act lack of activity that
leads to obesity and heart disease
and other problems isn’t in there these
are huge problems that aren’t yet solved
it’s taken most of a hundred years to
make the shift from combustion engines
to it motors to electrical motors and
now just now we’re beginning to do that
interestingly enough as more and more
people start driving electric cars where
are we going to get our money to rebuild
our roads because that comes from a
gasoline tax when I was a boy my father
told me over and over and over again
never never never tell anybody where you
catch your best fish but I was a kid
come on I blabbed
I couldn’t resist telling my best friend
where not only where I’d caught the fish
but what bait I had used and how to fish
it as well the next time I went to my
honey hole there was a small herd of
people standing there waiting to fish it
as well so much for that that was gone
this is just one part of the story about
fisheries fishery decline starts with
plenty of fish we have lots of fish here
easy catching predictable catch and for
over a hundred years no quotas
commercial fishermen could catch all
they wanted in the early eighteen 1860s
okay 1860s the the decline of fisheries
began to show up and too
handle it fish hatcheries were developed
okay and for a while it seemed to work
put more put more fish into the stream
how could you go wrong but the fish
hatcheries alone were not enough to
overcome the other problems logging
mining agricultural industries all of
which destroyed the habitat for the fish
including the river itself fish
hatcheries could not overcome that fish
hatcheries they would take fish from one
river and put it into another river
where it had no genetic understanding of
what was going on and expect it to work
of course it didn’t and for over a
hundred years fish hatcheries were the
solution if we put enough fish in there
it’s bound to curb the decline but then
in the late 1900s they commissioned some
studies to look at the efficacy of
fisheries and they discovered that not
only were they not always helpful
when we move to a new place we have a
new place to get to it’s usually and we
start developing in that place it’s
usually a place that’s full of nature
plenty of peace and quiet and lots of
ease all around plenty of fresh air for
example and then more people come and it
turns into a less and less desirable
place to be the traffic goes up the
noise goes up and pretty soon it’s it’s
pretty traffic and then they build
commercial districts around that
district and make it and close in on it
until it gets even more just like the
place that they were trying to get out
of in the first place and every single
house that is
built has assurances from society that
this is the right thing to do they get a
mortgage they get a building permit
first then they get a mortgage and they
get insurance for that house so this is
the right thing to do and more and more
people do it and then along comes the
traffic gets a little bit bad traffic’s
usually one of the first things that
happens and then what happens is the
local community steps in to help maybe
your employer supplies you parking or
the community why does the roads or
maybe they get really inventive and they
construct all new routes to two key
destinations all of which basically
ensures that this is the right thing to
do and gets people to continue to do it
which means more and more people move in
until finally you get to a place where
you have to have an eight-foot privacy
fence in order to feel safe in your own
backyard but the privacy fence cuts you
off from all your neighbors and isolates
you so that the the can’t create a
community okay you may have to walk a
mile to get to your neighbor’s house
where you can hear your children playing
in the backyard from your back porch but
you can’t get there from here you have
to walk all the way around all of the
fences to get to those kids so instead
of walking of course you drive okay so
more automobile dependence so as you can
see uncanny wisdom has led us to some
pretty unsustainable outcomes for the
built and natural environment and our
responses often make make the problem
even worse than it was before what we
need to be doing is considering our the
impacts of the responses the impacts of
the
decisions before before we actually make
them and by doing that then revisit it
from time to time to make sure that
things don’t get out of hand before we
correct them sustainable uncanny wisdom
understanding about uncanny wisdom may
help us reach the idea that we know what
to do and we need to take responsibility
understand the uncanny wisdom may hey
may help us shape the world in which we
live in sustainable ways thank you [Applause]
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