#47 - Progress Creeps
Why don’t we see bigger changes on the obvious problems like poverty, pollution, wars, pesticides, mental health, and metabolic disease?
Because these are not simple issues.
The world is a complex place full of interrelated variables.
This is a broad concept, but loosely explained, there are three types of systems.
Simply Systems - Single input, single output. Pull trigger - gun shoots.
Complicated Systems - Multiple inputs, single output. Food digestion - ATP creation.
Complex Systems - Multiple inputs, multiple outputs. Climate change. The economy.
The problem is that we like to make decisions about solving the problems of a complex system as though it were a simple system.
Challenging issues are easy to understand if you only look at one side.
But when you take into consideration the possible downstream effects of any “solution”, it’s not so clear.
Nutrition and food documentaries are possibly the worst at this.
They pick an oversimplified enemy then go to work with editing, emotional manipulation, and cherrypicked narratives to make you hate it.
By the end, you’re left with a rose-colored view of the world and no real skills to back it up. Years ago I vowed to never watch another one.
Complex systems like climate, economy, and geopolitics have no simple fixes.
They may have objectively direct operations, but their interaction with our individual experience muddies things...
Every decisions will have impossible-to-predict externalities that harm people.
The old saying that “If you’re not a liberal in your 20’s, you have no heart. If you’re not a conservative by your 40’s, you have no brain” is accurate.
It’s a representation of the fact that when we see the world in a limited perspective, we make emotionally driven choices.
But as unanticipated consequences pile up, we become more conservative.
This is a natural maturation.
A wisdom afforded as experience tempers our knowledge.
Everything exists for a reason.
It doesn’t have to be a good reason, but there is rationale. Even crazy people think their world view makes sense.
If you can’t present the best case for the reasoning behind both sides in an argument, then you aught not be making proclamations on how to fix it.
Sufficient pain breaks all and gives way to the truth.
It’s excruciating to watch the slow pace of progress at the individual level.
But when you are filled with doubt about the state of things, you can look back at the long view of history to see where we’ve come from.
Progress creeps.