Talk:Unintended consequences

Wasn't ...

Wasn't the phrase "unintended consequences" popularized by Karl Popper's book The Open Society and Its Enemies in the 1940s? If so, maybe that should be mentioned in this article. -- Mike Hardy

The article I read said it was originated by Robert K. Merton. Spalding 22:01, Dec 18, 2004 (UTC)

I added Robert K. Merton as the originator. I think he preceded Karl Popper, but I didn't research it very thoroughly, since it is very common in web searches that the idea originated with Merton. Spalding 17:40, Feb 7, 2005 (UTC)

examples

i think some of the examples should be removed for the following reasons...

Gun Control - as far as i can see there's still no reference for this. there are numerous reason why crime is higher in new jersey and Washington DC than Switzerland's and Vermont, to focus on it being an unintended consequence of gun control is, i believe, misleading. This example should be removed?

Aid to poor countries - while aid to poor country many increase poverty i don't believe it is for the reason stated. i read (although i can't find the reference!) that poverty increases birth rates as people have more kids in the hope that some survive. the idea that people in countries reliant on aid 'breed' as much as the resource allow is, i think, nonsense. again this example should be removed?

there are surely plenty of examples to give people an idea of what "unintended consequences" are with out these examples which seem to have an 'agenda'

firearm ownership

"In countries where firearm ownership is or was recently legal, restrictions on legal ownership of firearms has been associated with increases in personal crimes as criminals have less to fear from victims who are more likely to be unarmed."

I support Gun Rights, yet I have never heard credible claims to support the above. I would like to for this claim to be documented. All that would be necessary for this section of the article to stand would be one case where this is true. If such a case cannot be presented, I would like to see it removed until such evidence is provided.

LegCircus 20:05, Oct 5, 2004 (UTC)

Saddam

The example is out of place. Saddam never attacked the United States in any way.

Low Quality of Article

maybe it's just me, but i think this article seems original research-y and never really gets at the nub of the issue - the law of unintended consequences (as I understood it - maybe I'm wrong) is that a programme intended to have a certain corrective social effect in the community and which (ipso facto) doesn't reflect the current interests of the society when put out to general application in that society will tend to have, predominantly, another unintended effect whcih more properly reflects the values of that society. It's not just that any action has at least one unintended consequence. So, as the classic example, the imposition of a minimum wage is intended to make the poorest members of society better off, but instead it creates unemployment and/or drives up the cost of living, making those members actually worse off. There is clearly material (Merton, Levitt etc) which could and should be used to cite examples. Many of the examples cited, such as Royal hunting forests, and coral reefs made of sunk warships, are simply silly. -- ElectricRay 23:29, 23 November 2005 (UTC)

If you had a reference for the idea that the unintended consequence "more properly reflects the values of society", it could add a lot to the page. A lot of people seem to think it just means "attempts to solve social problems always make the problem worse", which is too simplistic. Meanwhile, I rewrote the section on "Causes", with a reference to Merton's paper. The previous version had more than one cause listed as "most common" (I assume that means it was written by several people who didn't read what they were adding to). -Rbean 21:58, 31 December 2005 (UTC)

I was thinking the same thing; if one doesn't agree with a term or concept, don't try to write a Wiki entry about something you don't agree with. It won't go well. 70.61.22.110 19:11, 29 October 2007 (UTC)Ubiquitousnewt

An article about "Unintended consequence"??

I think this article must be titled "Law of Unintended Consequences" and by no means "Unintended consequence". --euyyn 23:50, 7 June 2006 (UTC)

Support. I tend to think so as well. --Childhood's End 13:14, 14 May 2007 (UTC)

Oppose. It's somewhat popular to call it a law, but it is by no means either a scientific law nor civil legislation. I think the better title is the current "Unintended Consequence" with an explanation of why it's sometimes called a law. Bob Stein - VisiBone 12:32, 5 July 2007 (UTC)

Support.' What encyclopedia has an article on 'unintended consequences'? I had to do a double take when I saw "unintended consequences" linked from another article. J Lorraine (talk) 01:47, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

Does this deserve an article?

I think the said ' law of unintended consequences ' could deserve an article (an economic article), but by no means the subject "unintended consequence" does. It doesn't even deserve, in my opinion, a dictionary entry, as an "unintended consequence" isn't but a "consequence which is not intended". I dislike this article. We need to reengineer it. --euyyn 00:49, 25 June 2006 (UTC)

Yes it does deserve an article. See my comments below. If you've ever managed something then you know that unintended consequences are important. Please do not delete it or anything bad like that. As someone with a fair amount of practical experience in managing things and people, I can tell you that a successful manager gives a lot of thought about unintentional consequences and other ways things can go wrong, and trys to think of how they can be prevented from doing so. In real life, things almost always start to go wrong and you have to be there to check and redirect. I suppose this article could be, now I think of it, part of management theory. I was very impressed by the section giving the reasons for unintented consequences taking place - it suggests ways UCs could be prevented in practice.

You seem to be arguing for the fact that unintended consequences actually occur. That's not the issue here. Should we also have an article for "tricky situation", "hard decision", or "abuse of power"? Those exist in real life too. KenFehling (talk) 13:25, 17 September 2008 (UTC)

Comments on moving

Seeing this talk page is rather dead, I'm going to be bold and move tis article to "Law of Unintended Consequences". I'll add a redirect from this title to there, so nobody will be lost. Any opposition? --euyyn 21:30, 20 August 2006 (UTC)

A great article - thanks!

I think this article is great! It told me a lot about something I wasnt even concious of before. Hopefully I can use these ideas in the future. Thanks to the people or person who wrote it.

Perhaps this is related to the theory of errors and reliability engineering.

I think this article should stay as a separate article.

Delete first two or three paragraphs?

I think these paragraphs should be deleted:

'"An unintended consequence comes about when a mechanism that has been installed in the world with the intention of producing one result is used to produce a different (and often conflicting) result. The notion of "gaming the system" illustrates the idea of an unintended consequence. One "games a system" (for example, the tax code) when one acts in such a way that one gains tax advantages by exploiting a tax rule that was intended for some other purpose. Similarly, computer viruses, worms, and other such plagues are unintended consequences of the way certain computer systems are designed. Spam is an unintended consequence of the way the email system works.'

'It's important to distinguish between unintended consequences in this sense and simple historical contingencies. It would not be appropriate to characterize—as this page does below—a negative side effect of a drug as an unintended consequence. It certainly is true that negative side effects are consequences that were not intended. But much of what happens in the world is not (directly) intended. The term unintended consequence should be reserved for the exploitation of a deliberately designed and deployed mechanism to produce an effect that the mechanism is capable of producing but which it was not intended to produce. See the Museum of Unintended Consequences for more examples.'

'Much of the rest of this page takes a broader view of unintended consequence and would (inappropriately) apply the term to virtually any (unexpected) historical contingency."'

The paragraphs should be deleted as the assertions within them are not true or are nonsensical, and I've never heard of "gaming a system" before which may be an invention of the writer. Any objections?

Article is in a bad state

This article is in really bad shape. The first three paragraphs are talking about how the rest of the article is wrong. Also, the Examples section seems to be written by people pushing some agendas. --Apoc2400 08:47, 4 October 2006 (UTC)

You are right, the start is terrible, confusing and rather POV. Maybe something can be saved from those first paragraphs, but just as illustrations to be reworded and placed at the end of the article. --Pgreenfinch 09:18, 4 October 2006 (UTC)

I concur. The first three paragraphs were written by a person with a particular uncommon interpretation of the words unforseen consequences. I'm going to move the first three paragraphs down to the end of the article, and try to make it less POV. --lk 15:30, 14 October 2006 (UTC)

The Law Of Unintended Consequence: Law or Not Law

I tried to clarify the good and bad reasons for calling this a "law".

I [removed] someone's text that said roughly "well this isn't law as in legislation" saying instead "well this isn't scientific law". Hope that caused no offense but I think I got their intent and made it a little better. Law has two broad meanings anyway: (1) civil legislation, and (2) scientific law. No one ever claimed it was legistated law, that was rather obvious, so I thought it better to merely discuss it's weakness as scientific law.

At the same time it has some of the properties of a law, and I hope I highlighted them well: the consistent expectation of inconsistency, and a principle those with power would do well to heed, almost as if it were a rule imposed on them. Bob Stein - VisiBone 12:58, 5 July 2007 (UTC)

There are three reasons why associating Sod's/Murphy's Law with the Consequences law is a serious philosophical error. First because the claimed Consequences law is known to be not always true and therefore is not a Law at all, but merely a statement of likelihood. Second because Sod's/Murphy's Law implies the inevitability of adverse results whereas the Consequences law allows the possibility of both good and bad outcomes fromm the same action. Third because it presumes that the outcomes of the Consequences law always arise from human action - whereas Sod's/Murphy's Law outcomes are random and presumed to occur without human involvement. All references to Sod's/Murphy's Law should be removed from the page.

[User Boscon (talk) 13:53, 26 December 2008 (UTC)<Forthcoming publication, 'The Sod Superstition', David Boswell>

History

I thought the Scottish Enlightenment mention deserved some slight elaboration, and anyway belonged closer to Merton's mention. Together they cohesively introduce the history. The original paragraph where Scottish Enlightenment appeared (at least before I edited it) seemed to deal with the law/not law question.

Removing memetics category

I am removing the memetics category from this article since you learn no more about the article's contents from the category and v.v. Since so many things may be memes we should try to keep the category closely defined in order to remain useful. Hope you're okay with that. The link to meme would be enough I suggest. Facius 10:42, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

Prune down on number of examples

Here are the examples as the exist now. Can we discuss about what should stay and what should go? --lk (talk) 06:09, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

Examples of Unexpected Benefits:

• The medieval policy of setting up large hunting reserves for the nobility has preserved green space, often as parks, throughout England and other places in Europe.

• The wartime practice of sinking ships in shallow waters has created artificial coral reefs.

• Controversial research carried out by John J. Donohue and Steven Levitt and published in the Quarterly Journal of Economics suggests that legalized abortion in the United States has accounted for as much as 50% of the drop in national crime rates. As evidence, Donohue and Levitt cite the fact that states that legalized abortion before Roe v. Wade saw correspondingly earlier drops in crime, and that states where abortion is common saw greater drops in crime than states where abortion is rare. Most convincingly, they found that "in high abortion states, only arrests of those born after abortion legalization fall relative to low abortion states."

• In medicine, most drugs have unintended consequences associated with their use, which are known as 'side effects'. Many are harmful and are more precisely called 'adverse effects'. However, some are beneficial—for instance, aspirin, a pain reliever, can also thin the blood and help to prevent heart attacks. The existence of beneficial side effects also leads to off label use—prescription or use of a drug for a non-intended purpose.

Examples of Perverse Results:

• The Streisand Effect occurs when an attempt to censor or remove a certain piece of information (such as photograph, file or website) instead causes the information in question to become widely known and distributed in a very short time. The fact that a piece of information is being restricted assigns to it a previously nonexistent value in the eyes of the public.

• The introduction of rabbits into Australia for sport led to an explosive growth in the rabbit population; rabbits have become a major feral pest in Australia.

• Standard economic theory implies that minimum wage laws increase unemployment among low wage workers (the workers whose wages the minimum wage law will affect). A survey of American Economic Association economists found that 45.6% fully agreed with the statement, "a minimum wage increases unemployment among young and unskilled workers", 27.9% partially agreed, and 26.5% disagreed.

• The stiffening of penalties for driving while intoxicated in the United States in the 1980s led, at first, to an increase in hit and run accidents, most of which were believed to have been drunken drivers trying to escape the law (Later, legislators stiffened penalties for leaving the scene of an accident when driving while intoxicated as well).

• In 1990, driven by concern for the increasing number of cyclists' head injuries, the State of Victoria (Australia) made safety helmets mandatory for all bicycle riders. The expected significant reduction in the absolute number of head injuries occurred, but there was also a concomitant, entirely unexpected reduction in the number of juvenile cyclists. Research by Vulcan et al., found that the reduction in the number of juvenile cyclists was entirely due to the fact that the youths considered wearing a bicycle helmet unfashionable or not "cool".

• "Prohibition", in the 1920s U.S., originally enacted to suppress the alcohol trade, drove many small-time alcohol suppliers out of business and consolidated the hold of large-scale organized crime over the illegal alcohol industry. By the time the U.S. repealed Prohibition, the brewing industry had concentrated in a few major brewers, which had been able to ride it out. Sixty years later, the "War on Drugs," intended to suppress the illegal drug trade, likewise drove many small-time drug dealers out of business and consolidated the hold of organized drug cartels over the illegal drug industry. Additionally, it has led to the existence of street drugs of unknown strength and contamination; at least some drug-related (and particularly opiate-related) deaths are the result of accidental overdosing on drugs that a dealer neglected to dilute to the usual extent.

• In CIA jargon, "blowback" describes the unintended, even undesirable consequences of covert operations. Examples include:
  • Operation Ajax, which contributed to the 1979 Iranian Revolution & the Iran hostage crisis
  • Covert funding of the Contras in Nicaragua, which lead to the Iran-Contra Affair
  • Covert funding of the Mujahideen, which led to the rise of the Taliban

• Government rent control has led to the unintended consequence of housing shortages and reduction in housing quality, increased difficulty for less desirable renters to obtain or retain housing and even to the creation of slums—areas where owners permit rental property to run down until it becomes uninhabitable, leading renters to leave.

• The locking of aircraft cockpit doors to prevent terrorists taking control of the aircraft resulted in Helios Airways Flight 522 crashing due to the pilots' loss of oxygen and the stewards' inability to control the craft.

It seems to me that it's the makings of a list of unintended consequences or a Category:Unintended consequences Pontiff Greg Bard (talk) 15:18, 9 December 2007 (UTC)

Hmm, that sounds interesting. But a Category:Unintended consequences would require that there be many articles documenting cases of unintended consequences. Are there enough? --lk (talk) 19:23, 9 December 2007 (UTC)

I think there are many candidates, but it will also be very contentious. Most things that humans do can be criticized by claiming unintended consequences, and much of the discussion revolves around just that. For practically all contemporary issues, and many historical ones, the verdict is still out. — Sebastian 20:46, 19 December 2008 (UTC)

I'm suspicious of the minimum wage one: It appears to be just a survey of people, not an actual proof. 68.39.174.238 (talk) 22:10, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

Wiktionary has the following to say about example:

1. Something that is representative of all such things in a group.
2. Something that serves to illustrate or explain a rule.
3. [...]

I think the second meaning is the one that makes most sense here. Therefore, we only need to list enough examples to explain the meaning of the topic. For that reason, I just removed the reference to biofuel. It does not help explain the topic, but rather uses this article as a WP:Soapbox. — Sebastian 20:37, 19 December 2008 (UTC)

Please no minimum wage

Minimum wage was listed as a perverse example, but it's a very bad one. It's very controversial, without a good empirical study showing a strong negative effect. For example most studies listed in Minimum_wage#Empirical_studies show percentage decrease in hours worked lower than percentage increase in hourly wages, what means that people will earn a bit more total money while working slightly less, hardly a major perverse consequence.

Even if the effect was in its totality somewhat negative, it's just too weak and controversial to be worth the mention. There are just so many better examples than that, with strong and clear negative effects, there's no reason to use a weak one like that.

No Bastiat?

WTF wikipedians?

Ce qu'on voit et ce qu'on ne voit pas —Preceding unsigned comment added by 189.6.28.35 (talk) 18:18, 25 December 2008 (UTC)