Forrester, Meadows, and their colleagues strongly suggest that we need to reflect on our assumptions before taking any action. This might be what we should have done in 2020 regarding the COVID-19 virus—and what we must do when facing other pandemics in the near future. We must take into consideration such matters as the Nuclear, Delay, Fishmonger and Philadelphia Effects. This is quite a challenge—but we do have the modeling tools to engaged in this systemic consideration. But what do we do with the often counter-intuitive outcomes of these considerations? I would suggest that we must slow down our thinking when doing this work.
Slow Thinking
We need not travel far (just to a nearby building at M.I.T.) to find a complementary perspective on human decision making. I have already briefly cited the work of MIT’s Daniel Kahneman. He is the Nobel prize winning author of Thinking Fast and Slow (Kahneman, 2013) who focuses on processes of human decision making. Kahneman suggests that we are inclined to think fast about a pressing (and complex) problem—especially one (as I noted above) that is filled with anxiety. We should instead slow down our thinking so that we might better understand the problem and identify often untested underlying assumptions embedded in the problem. Like Forrester and Meadows, Kahneman urges us to stop for a few minutes (or a few days) before deciding and acting—especially when we are anxious or when there seems to be social pressure to quickly arrive at a decision.
As a sidebar, I can point to a story issuing from the recent reporting of Steve Dalkowski’s death. Legend has it that he threw the fasting pitch ever recorded in modern baseball history. Supposedly, he was able to fire in a baseball at close to 110 miles per hour (though he was playing before the device recording the official speed was invented). While Dalkowski could pitch hard and fast, he was not very accurate. His errant pitches over the backstop were noteworthy, as was his strike-to-walk ratio (more of the latter than the former). Dalkowski was portrayed (as “Nuke” LaLoosh) by Tim Robbins in the movie, Bull Durham, with his fastball flying everywhere.
