[lit-ideas] Re: Salt Grains
- From: "John McCreery" <john.mccreery@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sat, 18 Feb 2006 13:37:26 +0900
On 2/18/06, Eric Yost <mr.eric.yost@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> Eric: Could you explain what you mean by that?
> "Grain of salt" usually means to view a statement
> with a skeptical attitude. What are you skeptical
> about? My personal feelings or the undefined
> notion of technological destiny?
>
The undefined notion of technological destiny. From Cold War science
fiction to the "New Economy/DotCom" bubble to the tales I spin to help
ad agencies sell campaigns to their clients, my whole life's
experience (bit over six decades now) suggests that predicting what
will happen is, outside of the harder sciences, mostly a fool's game.
How, then, do we deal with life? To me one compelling model is Spenser
in the Robert Parker novel in which he meets and rescues Paul Giacomin
(probably mispelled the name) from his abusive, mob-connected parents.
As they head for a cabin in Maine where Spenser plans to hide out for
a while, Paul asks if he thinks that the mobsters will pursue them
there. Spenser replies that he can't predict whether the mob will come
after them or not; he only worries about what he will do if the mob
does come after them.
Another possibly useful approach is scenario planning that
incorporates systems thinking. The trick here is that you have to get
a bunch of people with radically diverse views to cooperate by sitting
down to work out in detail a variety of possible scenarios based on
various assumptions. If enough diverse views are taken into account,
the consensus that emerges will be relatively solid: not 100%
predictive--that never happens--but solid enough to coordinate action
based on shared understanding. Given that the understanding in
question includes several possible futures, it is possible to respond
more quickly and still somewhat effectively if incoming evidence shows
that one or more are off the table.
In the case at hand, the most likely outcome it seems to me is that,
no surprise, the Iranians will get their nuclear bomb. Once they have
it, they will find themselves in the same position as the Russians,
Chinese, Indians and Pakistanis before them. They will be one of the
big boys now and less inclined to risk their new position by doing
something crazy. If they do, that will be a disaster. If others do
something crazy in an effort to stop them from getting their bomb,
that, too, will be a disaster. Best case the world will muddle along.
For my daughter and soon-to-be-born grandchild's sake, I hope that the
muddle is the most likely scenario. But, hey, what do I know?
I take some comfort from the fact that, worst case, they now live in
an area unlikely to be a target in anything short of the total nuclear
holocaust we worried about when I was a kid, and since both the
grandkid's parents did well in SERE school, their and the grandkid's
chances of survival in a nuclear winter world are probably a bit
better than most.
--
John McCreery
The Word Works, Ltd.
55-13-202 Miyagaya, Nishi-ku
Yokohama 220-0006, JAPAN
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