How many of us are bothered by the little screw ups? Who notices things like misspellings on TV news captions? Are these the same kind of mistake that leave fuselage panels unfastened on airliners? Is e. coli on onions akin to the sanitary problems that shut down a baby formula plant in 2020? Do the impenetrable forms for a doctors’ appointment come from the same people who botched the form to apply for financial aid for college?
Of course any given problem has its specific causes. And some people will always pull out some ideology-based blame. Capitalism, or just pressure for companies to maximize profits is a common scapegoat, no doubt true in many cases. But is the “Boeing problem” really different from the FAFSA mishap, which was a government function?
How much of any dysfunctions result from workers’ ‘satisficing’ rules and procedures, and how much is institutionally determined? Did Silicon Valley Bank lack people who understood the increased risk, that long term bonds can lose value faster than short term notes? Or did the chain of command that reviewed that threat to their mandated reserves fail to note the particular risk because the regs did not specify to check for it? Or did someone try to garner a bit of credit for the higher rate on longer dated bonds, by “fudging” the risk assessment? How much of any of this goes on in other settings?
When institutions say they will institute new training to correct for malfunctions, do they mean they will engage with line level workers and design new protocols, new instructions and new methods? Or do they mean they will require a 30 minute online questionnaire every quarter, from everyone? And how many of these does everyone already take? EY recently fired a number of workers for taking these tests while multitasking with other work.
How many scholars have been fired or disgraced for plagiarism or false attribution of sources, or falsification of research results? Elizabeth Holmes of Theranos is the most famous of these cases, but how many other products and services are also (if not so consequentially or brazenly) incompletely tested?
How many innovations are based on unexamined cleverness? TerraUSD, a cryptocurrency purportedly tied to the US dollar, was actually tied to another dollar-tied cryptocurrency, in a scheme that seemed designed to play on offsetting market dynamics. Whether the scheme was misconceived or simply a canard is hard to tell, but the difference between stupid and lying is whether it was the inventor, or the regulators and buyers, who failed to think it through.
How much of any of these frauds or misconceptions is a matter of sloppiness, how much do they reflect complexity beyond our ken, and how much is cynicism?
One effect of all of these screw ups, whether small and inconsequential, cynical and devastating, or (maybe most of them?) “fudging” that turns unexpectedly disastrous, is that society at large has good reason not to trust anything from any institution.
In today’s world any certainties are already under stress. Quantum physics, artificial intelligence, genetic engineering, and climate change all upend any firm images of reality and nature. Social media, propaganda and hackers raise suspicion about any claim voiced by anyone. Unscrupulous operators, commercial, financial, political and personal, raise mistrust across the board. As has been said of the goal of Russian misinformation, we are ever more vulnerable to feel that “nothing is true and anything is possible.”
People need some basis for confidence, for faith that something can be trusted. That requires a body of people to “know” that some group of like souls can be trusted. Most often that trust arises from personal contact on an extended and intimate basis, but those ties are more and more rare in modern society. The next best thing, for larger, more dispersed populations, is some convincing, core article of faith that all can hold in common conviction.
Common conviction, though, also calls for each of us to do her or his part to bolster everyone else’s confidence. Especially if that conviction is in a creed that gives leeway to personal free will, through a faith in unalienable rights. Do we use our freedom well? Taking the time to spell news captions correctly adds to that confidence.
Happy Thanksgiving.
Common Conviction 