#6 - Imagining The Post-Pandemic World
On Scenario Planning, Modelling, Moral Sanctions, Leadership Skills for the future and Cultural Parasitism!
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The first edition of the Curious Cat was based on the theme of building the post-pandemic world. It has been a month since that edition was launched and we continue to grapple with the coronavirus pandemic. This week, we continue on the theme of imagining the post pandemic world through some interesting articles.
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We make an attempt in this issue to give you a sense of what lies ahead and how we can prepare ourselves for the multiple possibilities that exist in the future.
In this issue, we explore -
The emergence of a new social order
Scenario Planning
How the pandemic can address the problem in tech
A manifesto for mathematical models
The power of moral sanctions on human behavior
Leadership skills for the future
Let us dive in straight into the first piece.
A New World Order Post Covid - 19
Read the article here
Pratap Bhanu Mehta writes that the uncertainty caused by the pandemic is the biggest psychological challenge to all individuals. However, contrary to expectations, such cataclysms do not readily alter us. Human nature remains recognizably human: our prejudices and antipathies, generosities and allegiances still govern us. This essay explores potential drivers of change that this crisis might unleash and describes the unintended emergence of a new social order.
On Science: Science will become our morning prayer and help us to focus on the deficiencies in our form of mastery, the failure of human institutions to gather and act on the knowledge that would have allowed to anticipate and defuse this threat. The challenge is to incentivize our knowledge systems.
On a radical social shift: Burkean conservatism acknowledged the imperfection of our world and told us to put up with it. It demanded a certain humility towards our own power, especially in relation to the social world. The necessity imposed on us was the necessity of our limited knowledge. Large features of our social order, from inequality to privatization, were legitimized on the grounds of their optimality and efficiency. COVID -19 has altered this perception of what we considered to be a stable society by exposing the flaws of globalization.
On the five shaky pillars of current economic order: The current economic order was built on five organizing social principles whose vulnerabilities have been exposed by the crisis: Exit, Invisibility, Inequality, Insecurity and Privatization.
Exit - The current economic order was largely premised on the ability of elites to exit and insulate themselves somewhat from the societies around them. The first lesson of this crisis is that exit is no longer an option.
Invisibility - Invisibility is often the most pressing indignity associated with poverty. There are other forms of invisibility as well: the lack of recognition of just how much we depend on the labour of others; the lack of recognition of frontline workers and citizens who make the economy tick. This crisis has, in a small way, confronted us with what that labour means; it has made both its condition and the value of its work more visible to us.
Inequality - The struggle between those who have and those who do not, has been a perennial theme of politics. The spectre of unemployment and the catastrophic failure of large businesses, will create the conditions for thinking that large degrees of inequality in societies can be catastrophic.
Insecurity - Income security would diminish incentives; job security would distort labour markets; social security would be a drag on efficient expenditure. In a sense, the idolisation of the gig economy—short-term contracts, incentive-driven payment structures, no security against economic fluctuations—was the symbol of insecurity becoming almost a reigning necessity.
Privatization - The positioning of all goods that make for a sustainable society as private goods—security, environment, health, education, research, the arts, critical infrastructure—has had damaging consequences.
On the return of the state: This crisis has highlighted that state capacity matters in mobilizing knowledge, people and resources. It has forced all governments to keep aside traditional economic pieties leading to the possible birth of a new social contract where the move towards at least three elements is likely: more regular cash transfers, potentially leading to some architecture of basic income; enhanced investment in public goods; and higher taxes to defray the costs of the crisis.
On surveillance state: Our previous regimes were founded on the principle that states would control us; liberty and privacy was something we claimed against state power to make us feel more secure. Now, security comes from an opposite sentiment: the more we might know about other people, the more secure we will feel. The onus has shifted from fearing the state to fearing society—a perfect recipe for the enhancement of surveillance powers.
The drivers for de-globalisation will come from domestic political imperatives rather than global economic logic. There is no question that the political currents, if not the economic logic in more countries, will seek to have more diversified supply chains.
In building the post-pandemic world, we need to recognize our loves, pursue our passions and build the new global order based on hope and solidarity and not on distance and fear.
This essay critically examines key focal points which collectively were considered sacrosanct in society redirecting us to examine few first principles and pointing towards few basic questions -
How do we forecast social trends playing out in different scenarios?
How can we leverage technology to fight the pandemic?
Can we use any behavioral technique to fight this pandemic?
What kind of leadership behaviors do we need to encourage in such times?
We answer the above questions in our next series of articles.
Building Scenarios Of The Future
Read the article here
As we try to gaze into the future having widespread uncertainties, it is important to confront a dilemma of striking a balance between prediction (believing that we can see past these uncertainties when in fact we can't) and paralysis (letting the uncertainties freeze us into inactivity)
Scenario planning derives from the observation that, given the impossibility of knowing precisely how the future will play out, a good decision or strategy to adopt is one that plays out well across several possible futures. As scenarios are a way of understanding the dynamics shaping the future, there are four categories of driving forces:
Social Categories - demographics, softer issues of values, lifestyle, demand
Economic Issues - Macroeconomic trends and microeconomic issues
Political Issues - Electoral, legislative, regulatory and litigative issues
Technological Issues
After we identify the predetermined elements from the list of driving forces, we should be left with a number of uncertainties. A critical uncertainty is an uncertainty that is key to our focal issue. We can then build a 2 by 2 matrix to explore four unique spaces.
The first axis of uncertainty is the character of our desire, an "I" or "We," individual or community. The second axis shows the uncertain character of social structure - whether it is fragmented or coherent. Thus, the four spaces are -
I Will ( Individual and Fragmented) - a future in which you want and get the ability to make your life uniquely yours. You co-produce the products and experiences that you consume. Your loyalty is to your tools, knowledge, and skills.
Consumerland (Individual and Coherent) - a future in which everyone is the ultimate consumer, possessed of almost infinite choices. Social organizations proliferate but it is clear that they serve individual yearnings. The citizen becomes a consumer - served by society.
Ecotopia (Community and Fragmented) - a future where the center plays a large role in supporting the commonwealth, but more important than government is the emergence of widely shared ecological values. These are not coercive values but a voluntary embrace of cohesion, cooperation, and reduced consumption, backed by legislation and even corporate policies.
New Civics (Community and Coherent) - a future in which values are shared but in many small, competing groups. It is a decentralized world of tribes, clans, "families," networks, and gangs. It is a future in which we want to build and enjoy the benefits of community but without the help of a benevolent Big Brother government.
Some of the decisions we make today will make sense across all of the futures. Others will make sense only in one or two. Scenario planning helps us understand the uncertainties that lie before us, and what they might mean. It helps us "rehearse" our responses to those possible futures. And it helps us spot them as they begin to unfold.
So which of the alternatives do you see the most likely one to be playing out in the post-pandemic future?
Tech Has A Problem But Will The Pandemic Fix It?
Read the article here
Tim Harford argues that despite the disruptive pace of innovation and the boundless creativitiy of Silicon Valley, the reality is contradictory. We lack the technology to deal with the pandemic, we lack effective medicines, we don’t have a vaccine and we don’t have an easy self-administered test.
Harford argues that the problem lies due to a lack of incentives. Governments tend to favour a combination of direct support for researchers and award them an intellectual monopoly in the form of a patent for original ideas.
Major pharmaceutical companies have incurred losses when they sank money into vaccines for diseases like Zika or SARS only to realize that the demand had ebbed. Most companies try to keep a lid on their spending on vaccine development until one has proven to work. We need companies to spend more but ultimately the cost of failures will be borne by the companies and the benefits will be enjoyed by all of us collectively.
In order to fix this lopsided structure, one solution is to provide an advance market commitment - a promise to purchase hundreds of millions of doses at a premium price.
There is a risk of overlooking something simple. Rapid mass testing at quick frequency can detect outbreaks, contact tracing are all simple yet effective measures which have been delayed due to our desperation to develop high-tech solutions like vaccines and contact-tracing apps.
Despite having email, internet and affordable computers for years, we had been slow to explore online education, virtual meetings and telemedicine. We are learning and adapting to different ways of working as we have no choice. This pandemic can lead to creative responses due to disruptions. Disruptions have a way of bulldozing vested interests and tearing up cosy assumptions, jolting people and organizations out of the status quo.
Will this pandemic solve the problem? The answer lies in the future.
A Manifesto For Mathematical Modelling
Read the article here
Mathematical models serve society well only when there is a strong check on their quality. In order to ensure the same, there are five best practices that can be followed:
Mind the assumptions - Models imported from other applications ignore how assumptions in one situation become nonsensical in another situation. It is important to assess the uncertainty and sensitivity.
Mind the hubris - Complexity of a model is not always an indicator of relevance. There lies a trade-off between the usefulness of a model and the breadth it tries to capture. The goal must be to find an optimum balance with error.
Mind the framing - Results will partly reflect interests, disciplinary orientations and biases of developers. One model cannot serve all purposes. It is important to match purpose with context. Shared approaches to assessing quality needs to be accompanied with a shared commitment to transparency.
Mind the consequences - Quantification can backfire and opacity about uncertainty damages trust. Excessive regard for producing numbers can lead to the discipline being roughly right towards precisely wrong. Spurious precision can lead to false sense of certainty.
Mind the unknowns - A failure to acknowledge ignorance can artificially limit policy options and open the door to undesired surprises.
Mathematical models are a great way to explore questions and a dangerous way to assert answers.
The Power Of Moral Sanctions
Read the article here
Barry Schwartz writes that moralizing how we behave as we come out of social and economic isolation may go a long way towards inducing people to behave responsibly and empowering the people around them to demand that they behave responsibly.
Smoking and drunk driving are two examples where moralizing has worked as they have moved from becoming matters of individual discretion to matters of obligation due to its harmful effects on other innocent people. Anything that we do that affects others has a significant moral dimension. Moral sanctions have powerful effects on behaviour and can be used to rein in recklessness in a pandemic.
Four Leadership Skills For The Future
Read the article here
Shane Snow writes that the current events have taught us that we live in a highly interconnected world where businesses are interconnected with partners, with technological platforms built on, communication we use and the supply chains we depend on. Such interconnectedness can create undesired ripple effects and it is important to ask ourselves - what kind of leaders do we want in the future?
Snow argues that there are four key indispensable skills that the leaders of the future need to possess -
They need to be systems thinkers - Leaders of the future need to understand the big picture as everything is connected, their choices and priorities will reflect that. The team they lead must be smarter than them.
They need to be intellectually honest - Intellectual dishonesty is being deceptive, fudging, being unfair while pretending to be fair, pretending to answer questions while not answering them and saying things that don’t make sense but pretending they do, etc. Leaders of the future need to collaborate thereby needing more honesty, transparency and integrity.
They need to be intellectually humble - They need to be aware of the limits of their own knowledge, and to be willing to change their minds in light of new information—no matter how hard it is or how bad it looks. Flexibility is the new strength.
They need to be empathetic and charitable - A kind of leadership that will not just solve new problems, but be able to look at our existing systems that create problems—including inequality, xenophobia and outdated thinking—and re-invent those systems.
These skills in individuals who hold positions of power and influence in the world will help in shaping the world positively through their decisions.
Mental Model For The Week - Cultural Parasitism
Richard Dawkins has identified meme as a functional unit of cultural information (beliefs, practices, rituals, words, recipes, tunes, mannerisms, pictures) - a rival replicator to the gene. A system of misbelief that parasites the mind, changing or altering the host’s behavior so that they spread it to others is known as cultural parasitism. The successful misbelief usually transmitted in the form of memes, is not configured to be true; it is configured to be easily transmitted and believed.
People further the spread of misbeliefs that are adapted to ensure their own propagation, even at the detriment of their hosts. Doxastic parasites spread not because they serve human interest, but because they are more salient, attractive, better shielded from critical scrutiny and refutation, more conducive to spurious confirmation, and more likely to elicit credibility-enhancing displays that infect other agents.
Having an open mind and considering alternate possibilities is one way of protecting your thinking from being affected by ideological parasites.
Book Recommendation For The Week - Give and Take by Adam Grant
The central argument of Grant is that altruism begets success in ways that factors like ability, opportunity and motivation cannot. Grant writes that there are takers and givers in life. Givers focus on what others need from them and takers like to get more than they give. Grant argues that givers dominate at the top of the organization. The book builds a strong and compelling case for demonstrating a helping, caring and altruistic behavior at workplaces.
You may view a brief summary here.
You can purchase the book here.
Podcast Recommendation For The Week - Nidhi Razdan with Amit Varma on The Seen and The Unseen
Nidhi was a TV journalist who specialized in politics and foreign affairs.
In this conversation, there is a discussion on the flawed model of television news, the dangers faced by TV journalism and how dominant narratives through influential journalists are shaping views which may not be in sync with ground realities. It has become a battle of conflicting narratives when it was supposed to be a quest for truth.
You may not agree with Nidhi on all her views but the issue that is discussed remains pertinent in today’s times.
You can listen to the entire podcast episode here.
Afterthought
What matters in life is not what happens to you but what you remember and how you remember it.
- Gabriel Garcia Marquez
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