flawed mindsets?

[Roberto Verzola <rverzola@phil.gn.apc.org>]

So far, the following flaws behind the Y2K crisis have been suggested:

1. dominance of the gain-maximizing strategy (Verzola)
2. emphasis on "globalist" instead of "modular" strategy (Verzola)
3. short planning horizon (Bacon)
4. money, which in effect creates scarcity (Hanson)

#1 is being debated, but no responses yet on #2-#4.

It would also be interesting to explore whether these supposedly
deeper flaws which gave rise to the Millennium Bomb (if indeed they
did...), are also behind other looming global problems (global
warming, toxic chemical proliferation, mass extinctions, antibiotic
resistant pathogens, worsening disparity between rich and poor
countries, classes and individuals, etc.)

The following alternatives have so far been suggested:
1. risk-minimizing strategies and other non-gain-maximizing strategies
2. "modular", anti-globalist strategies
3. longer planning horizons (several generations?)
4. replace money with energy certificates

As far as alternatives are concerned, I would like to point to a
direction of research, as suggested by the emerging sciences that deal
with complexity and complex systems (Glenn Bacon who is an expert on
these matters, can perhaps help out):

Let me start with a simple example: the architectural wonder called an
anthill. How do ants create an anthill? Some may say that the master
plan exists in the "minds" of some (or a master) ant, who gives
instructions to the rest of the ants what to do. Others may say that
the master plan exists in every ant, but they perform only a specific
role vis-a-vis the master plan. Either way, the suggestion is that
there is at least one master ant who calls the shots, or a master plan
that everybody follows. Either suggestion also requires that somebody
has the complete picture of the anthill as it emerges under
construction to correct deviations from the plan. The recent (within
the past decade or so) idea says that there is no master plan. Every
ant simply contains a simple set of behavioral rules it follows when
interacting with its neighboring ants and its immediate environment.
The anthill *emerges* from the interaction. No ant needs to have a
complete picture, and a master plan is not necessary. The key is in
the behavioral ruleset (and of course the immediate environment where
the anthill is taking shape). The final anthill is the emergent
product of the interactions between the individual ants' building
ruleset, and the immediate environment.

I am inclined to believe that this is also how human societies work
(obviously based on a much more flexible and complicated set of
behavioral rules). If you think of it, many behavioral rules
(rulesets? mindsets?) are not so complicated: the Ten Commandments,
for instance (and note how they involve only interaction with
*neighbors*, not the whole world), or Robert Fulghum's "Everything I
Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten", which many people swear by.
It is a theoretical framework that by the way justifies democracy,
local action and grassroots initiative.

I am presuming that all of us work under such rulesets (explicitly
stated or instinctual). Indeed, this is how the market works, except
that perhaps its rulesets may need fine-tuning or may even contain a
fatal flaw (like the gain-maximizing ruleset I have suggested). I have
suggested that the fatal flaw is in a class of persons with a single
explicitly-stated ruleset of profit-maximization (the for-profit
corporations).

Some of the alternatives being proposed (Hanson's energy certificates,
for example) require the equivalent of either a "master plan" or an
all-knowing "master ant" and would therefore require a different
theoretical framework to justify them.

Roberto Verzola