In Fear, Complexity, Environmental Management in the 21st Century, Michael Crichton argues that simplistic, cause-and-effect thinking must go. Here’s what he learned by going back and looking at old newspapers:
Then in summary, when I went back to examine old fears, the first thing I found was that newspapers were focused on momentary concerns; the second thing I found was that the language employed was excessively frightening, and the third thing I found was that a lot of advocacy was encouraging what was happening anyway. But I learned some other things, too.One interesting feature is the tendency to reversals: a benefit becomes a hazard and then becomes a benefit again. Butter is good, then bad, then good again. Saccharine is good, then bad, then good. But this is also true for some much larger scares, like cancer and powerlines, which hit the media in 1989.
I love this Twain quote:
As Mark Twain said, “I’ve seen a heap of trouble in my life, and most of it never came to pass.”
Definitely read his story about Yellowstone:
As the story unfolds, it becomes impossible to overlook the cold truth that when it comes to managing 2.2 million acres of wilderness, nobody since the Indians has had the faintest idea how to do it. And nobody asked the Indians, because the Indians managed the land very intrusively. The Indians started fires, burned trees and grasses, hunted the large animals, elk and moose, to the edge of extinction. White men refused to follow that practice, and made things worse.To solve that embarrassment, everybody pretended that the Indians had never altered the landscape.