by david allan van nostrand | Aug 23, 2021 | Items in the News, Unintended Consequences
People in a hurry to solve a problem rarely take the time to look around the corner and down the road to consider what other things may be affected by their solutions. Take for example the installation of all those plexiglass shields we see in stores today. They were...
by david allan van nostrand | Jul 19, 2021 | Human Behavior, Unintended Consequences
A woman named Liza asks a man named Henry to fetch a pail of water. Henry says he cannot because there’s a hole in the bucket. Liza, a practical woman, tells Henry to fix the hole. Henry asks what he is supposed to fix the hole with. Please click on the link here to...
by david allan van nostrand | Mar 22, 2021 | Artificial Intelligence, Technology, Unintended Consequences
Robots are machines that respond automatically and unthinkingly to the commands of others. They perform routine mechanical tasks that have been pre-programmed by humans. They are not sentient beings and are not capable of conscious thought. Robots are best at...
by david allan van nostrand | Oct 19, 2020 | Misinformation traps, Organizational Behavior, Unintended Consequences
When interviewing study subjects, researchers hear many of the same themes and comments repeated, as you can easily imagine. No one liked how cassette tapes snarled, for example, and everyone hates long wait times. The temptation for impatient researchers and study...
by david allan van nostrand | Oct 5, 2020 | The Myopia of Experts, Unintended Consequences
Asymmetry is when two sides of a thing are out of whack, like the male Fiddler Crab’s pincers. They eat with the tiny one and use the big one to wave at females. There are two types of imbalance we hear about among humans. The most obvious one is that most of us...
by david allan van nostrand | Aug 24, 2020 | Organizational Behavior, Unintended Consequences
Most of us know brainstorming is the technique of stimulating creative thinking by unrestrained and spontaneous participation in group discussion. That’s what advertising executive Alex Osborn of Batten, Barton, Durstine & Osborn had in mind when he coined the...
