My friend Freddie was playing with a computer creativity program, called Idea Generator, and for his first "problem" he mischievously entered "Solve the World's Problems."  When he got to a section called "Try Opposite Solutions" things began to surprise him.  His task was to suggest things that would make the problem worse, instead of better, with the idea that in a later stage of the program he would be guided to adopt the reverse of things that worsened the problem.  He began by jotting down in the opposite solutions "idea scratch pad" things which surprised him.  His list of things to do that would make the problem worse were things that were in fact being done in the real world!

For example, he noted that you could make the problem of world hunger worse by feeding the starving masses in over-populated regions (because they only made more babies with which to exacerbate the starvation problem in future years).  You could make the problem worse by intentionally withholding birth control information and paraphernalia from the poor.  You could make the problem worse by encouraging women to liberate themselves by choosing professional careers, so that the role of producing offspring for the next generation would fall to those who failed to attain careers, while those who succeeded would either not make babies or do so late in their lives and make fewer babies (and this would lead to a lowering of the IQ of future generations, a worsening of parenting quality, etc).

Every item Freddie listed to make things worse were things which society and well-meaning groups were promoting.  This was a shocker!  Freddie was reluctant to blame the Idea Generator for this unexpected, counter-intuitive pattern.  Could the blame be in Human Nature?  Could people be ill-equipped to solve certain problems?  Or was there a flaw in the way Freddie was evaluating solutions?

It occurred to Freddie that he might be making an error in assigning costs and benefits to a multi-generational problem.  After all, world problems are created during the course of many generations, and they must be solved by many (later) generations.  It is important to ask how the burden of solving the problem is distributed over the generations, and how are the consequences for hypothetical actions felt by these generations.

Band-aid solutions benefit the generation applying the band-aid.  By not "biting the bullet" (i.e., by applying band-aids instead of painful long-term solutions), one generation could be short-changing the next one, and giving them a harder problem to solve.  But then another thought occurred to Freddie:  suppose a generation tried to apply real solutions too early, and the generation that had been sold on this magnanimous idea got tired of making sacrifices for benefits they could not see (because they would be experienced by future generations).

Freddie asked me, rhetorically, "Is it possible that each generation is inclined to abandon real solutions in favor of the band-aid variety, allowing the basic problem to grow ever larger, and just below the threshold of tolerability?"

"I don't know" I answered.  "How would anyone know?"

That's when Freddie decided to create a computer model to study the situation, and find out, maybe, for himself.

Freddie's model allowed as many generations to grapple with global and species problems as were required to attain a stable, sustainable solution state.  He counted benefits and costs, and incorporated as much cultural psychodynamics as was available and readily accessible.  This included a model for the concepts which he named CD (cognitive dissonance), PS (paradigm shifts) and CDT (cognitive dissonance thresholds for producing paradigm shifts).

His model tried to embrace the complete system of costs and benefits, not only in time (via generations), but also across biomes.  Plants and animals were identified as elements in the living  system, in addition to humans.  It was necessary to identify the Earth's atmosphere, waterways and oceans, and land areas as other elements in the system (because they "stored" mistakes from abuses by the living systems).

Freddie had to quantify happiness and suffering, And this was perhaps the weakest part of his model.  Per capita wealth was an element, as was individual health, longevity, quality of the immediate environment, and crime rate.  An unusual category was created to keep track of inefficiencies caused by the presence of people who were disabled, either in body or mind.  He even kept track of able-bodied, able-minded social parasites and added their "load" of additional inefficiency to the societal endeavor.

Freddie studied scenarios belonging to three categories:  1) no actions are taken, 2) band-aid actions are taken, and 3) "real" solution actions are taken.  He graded outcomes according to a subjective formula for desireableness which involved individual happiness and unhappiness.  He took close note of the histograms showing what percentage of the population was in each happiness category, since some specific scenarios within a scenario category involved large spreads (i.e., profoundly well-off people co-existing with large numbers of destitute people).  A scenario was not judged until the conditions for all generations was considered.  Equal weight was given to all generations; which would become a crucial point for evaluating the recommendations Freddie finally came up with.

Overall, Freddie's best solution was the counter-intuitive #1 ("no actions are taken"), whereas the worst solution was #3 ("real solution actions are taken").  The reason for this result can be understood by considering that happiness and unhappiness were integrated across all generations equally.  The scenarios belonging to category #1 caused severe unhappiness to only a few generations:  the one or two generations which lived through crises (environmental and social upheaval) and the next generation which experienced CD growth beyond CDT, producing a complete change in cultural values and a PS.  The PS generation started a recovery process that was irreversible and swift, and the benefits began to accrue to the following generation.  The total integrated damage to the environment was less than for the other scenario categories because the crises and recovery occurred more rapidly than for the other scenarios.

In contrast, the scenarios belonging to category #3 entailed the most protracted, agonizing and reversible oscillations of them all.  The crises came and went, without resolution.  The foresighted of each generation saved the day for the near-sighted of their generation, so the issues were really never dealt with by societies at large.  None of the "real" solutions were adhered to for long, and the visionaries actually postponed the day of implementing earnest, irreversible solutions by society as a whole.  The many years of uneven attention and neglect of environmental and social issues wrought a greater time-integrated price on the environment and social well being of the populations than the more abrupt crisis created by the scenarios in which "no action was taken."  Compassion turned out to be a double-edged sword for the category #3 scenarios.

But Freddie was most bothered by the fact that the generations appear to be fundamentally in conflict with each other.  The band-aid scenario provides the easiest relief for the generation deliberating solution options, so it is therefore the solution path that is most likely to be chosen; yet the welfare of far-future generations is best served by a solution path that is the most painful to the current and next generation.

Who is to judge the relative merits of choices that affect the generations so unequally?  How can a future generation represent its interests to the generation whose actions affect it?  "It can't" Freddie believed.  So societies are destined to be guided by forces that produce sub-optimum results!  There is a justice, however, because our generation has been short-changed by those that preceded us, as we prepare to short-change the generation that follows ours.  We deserve to have been short-changed, because we are willing to short-change future generations.  There seems to be no natural restoring force.  Time flows in only one direction.

"This is an unnacceptable situation!" Freddie proclaimed.

And I agreed.  As should every generation.  Yet no generation can be expected to change.  No one will be the first to do what each admonishes other generations to do.  This is because the concept "other generations" is just an abstraction!  To the extent that we think and behave only as the genes allow, we are helpless to improve.  The genes only know about competing allels at their respective locations (as a first approximation).  They are not subject to the consequences of making individuals in future generations undergo hardships that are unnecessary, or worse than an optimum.

Freddie had an idea, though, which he confided to me.  He believed that he had discovered a way to do his small part in helping future generations.  He would stop supporting the well-meaning special interest groups that were working to save the environment and reduce population growth.  He suspended all contributions to these groups.

Having taken this new stance, he realized that this was a passive and ineffectual gesture.  He needed to think something more "active."

He discussed with me the possible merits of working on behalf of politicians that were like Ronald Reagan, and he wondered if such politicians were in fact more far-sighted and statesmanlike than the intellectuals had given him credit for being.  He tried to think of ways of making our country use more oil, in order to hasten the advance of global warming.  He thought about working on behalf of third world countries to provide for their exemption from regulations on the use of CFCs, in order to speed up stratospheric ozone depletion.

At about this time Freddie changed jobs, and moved to Oregon.  He neglected to write me, inexplicably, and I had no way of locating him.  It has been several years now, and I am afraid to speculate about what Freddie is up to.  I am bothered by the thought that he has gone underground to work on behalf of the "forces of evil" in order to "Save the World!"
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This site opened:  October 30, 1998.   Last Update: October 30, 1998