4.8 Limitations of the “Crystal Ball”
75
dangerous to suggest that a crystal ball could be built that might reliably predict the
future. As a consequence, any real-world application of Big Data requires critical
assessment and particular care.
4.9 Limitations of the “Magic Wand”
If the crystal ball is “cloudy”, it doesn’t augur well for the magic wand that depends on
it. Therefore, using the magic wand would often have unintended consequences.
45 It
is questionable, whether we would ever learn to use it well. In fact, top-down control
is still very ineffective, as the abundance of problems in our world shows. To control
our complex world, i.e. to make it change in the desired ways, we would need to
understand it much better than today. In many cases, attempts to control a complex
dynamical system in a top-down way will miserably fail, as this tends to undermine
the normal functionality of the system (for example, the guidance of our behavior
by socio-cultural cues
46 ). The result may be a “broken” system, for example, an
instability or crisis. An example of the failure of top-down control is the fact that the
greatest improvement of airplane flight safety was not reached by technical control
mechanisms but by introducing a non-hierarchical culture of collaboration in the
cockpit, where co-pilots were encouraged to question the decisions and actions of
the pilot. In another example, the Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan, the official
investigation report stresses that it was not primarily the earthquake and tsunami that
were responsible for the nuclear meltdowns, but
“our reflexive obedience; our reluctance to question authority; our devotion
to ‘sticking with the program’; our groupism.”
Unfortunately, there are many more examples that illustrate the failure of topdown control. In spite of 45 million arrests, the US “war on drugs” was largely
ineffective. Similarly, many attempts to enforce “law and order” in the world after
September 11, 2001 failed. The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq didn’t reach the goal of
stabilizing the geopolitical region. Instead, the world is faced with a chaotic situation
in the aftermath of the Arab Spring and the war of the Islamic State. Torture that was
45 Johann Wolfgang von Goethe articulates this problem in his poem “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice”, see https://web.archive.org/web/20130620035237/https://germanstories.vcu.edu/goethe/zau
ber_dual.html.
46 In other words, nudging may “overwrite” the guiding effects of culture, while it is not able to
replace it by a sufficiently sophisticated kind of top-down control. I would not be surprised if this
created social chaos in the long run.
75
dangerous to suggest that a crystal ball could be built that might reliably predict the
future. As a consequence, any real-world application of Big Data requires critical
assessment and particular care.
4.9 Limitations of the “Magic Wand”
If the crystal ball is “cloudy”, it doesn’t augur well for the magic wand that depends on
it. Therefore, using the magic wand would often have unintended consequences.
45 It
is questionable, whether we would ever learn to use it well. In fact, top-down control
is still very ineffective, as the abundance of problems in our world shows. To control
our complex world, i.e. to make it change in the desired ways, we would need to
understand it much better than today. In many cases, attempts to control a complex
dynamical system in a top-down way will miserably fail, as this tends to undermine
the normal functionality of the system (for example, the guidance of our behavior
by socio-cultural cues
46 ). The result may be a “broken” system, for example, an
instability or crisis. An example of the failure of top-down control is the fact that the
greatest improvement of airplane flight safety was not reached by technical control
mechanisms but by introducing a non-hierarchical culture of collaboration in the
cockpit, where co-pilots were encouraged to question the decisions and actions of
the pilot. In another example, the Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan, the official
investigation report stresses that it was not primarily the earthquake and tsunami that
were responsible for the nuclear meltdowns, but
“our reflexive obedience; our reluctance to question authority; our devotion
to ‘sticking with the program’; our groupism.”
Unfortunately, there are many more examples that illustrate the failure of topdown control. In spite of 45 million arrests, the US “war on drugs” was largely
ineffective. Similarly, many attempts to enforce “law and order” in the world after
September 11, 2001 failed. The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq didn’t reach the goal of
stabilizing the geopolitical region. Instead, the world is faced with a chaotic situation
in the aftermath of the Arab Spring and the war of the Islamic State. Torture that was
45 Johann Wolfgang von Goethe articulates this problem in his poem “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice”, see https://web.archive.org/web/20130620035237/https://germanstories.vcu.edu/goethe/zau
ber_dual.html.
46 In other words, nudging may “overwrite” the guiding effects of culture, while it is not able to
replace it by a sufficiently sophisticated kind of top-down control. I would not be surprised if this
created social chaos in the long run.