Comment on "Fluke"

The 2/6/24 Amanpour and Company episode concludes with a fascinating interview by Walter Isaacson with Brian Klaas, author of Fluke, Chance, Chaos, and Why Everything We Do Matters. I posted the complete transcript under Systemic/ Articles/Essays/Op-eds and linked to this comment on the Systemic/Books entry.

The points that struck me most strongly include

KLAAS: A fluke is a highly consequential event that happens by chance or is arbitrary or random. And so, I argue in the book that our world is shaped by these and our lives are shaped by these much more than we imagine, but we just pretend otherwise because it's much nicer to imagine that we have neat and tidy stories to make sense of our world and our own lives….

I think this is the sort of way that our world works, is partly between order and disorder,... A single thing can tip you over that edge and create an extremely consequential event that shifts how the world works….

we have designed a world that is particularly prone to these avalanches because the sand pile is extremely high by design. 

And what I mean by that is that you have this sort of system that operates with optimization and efficiency as its main priorities. And this means that we have no slack in the system. (Emphases added)....

If we had dealt with the problem of the lingering resentment in the American public, then Trump might have (failed)....

ISAACSON: How can an understanding of the role of flukes lead us to have a more resilient society, and let me even add a more resilient personal life?

KLAAS: Yes, I like this question because, you know, I think differently about the world and my own life, having written this book. I was not the same person three years ago. And the reason for that is because…I grew up in the U.S., where I was sort of told you have to sort of just make your own path. This sort of individualist mindset, the American dream, and so on. And it's a culture that is extremely focused on control, right?

And I describe in the book how I was living, you know, what I described as a checklist existence. And I think when you start to think about the role of these forces that are sometimes arbitrary, accidental, and random, and also the chaos theory, the ripple effects of our decisions, it starts to liberate you a little bit, right? It starts to make you feel like, you know what, it's maybe OK if I don't have so much top-down control. And that's what I've internalized as a lesson from the book.

In terms of society, I think the main lesson is resilience. I think that we have the tools to give us the illusion of control more than ever before. Because we have so much predictability and stability in our daily lives that we start to think that our world is also stable. And in fact, it's the opposite. The stability in our daily lives is happening at the same time as the world is changing faster and more profoundly than ever before in human history.

So, in my view, this is something where politicians, economists, et cetera, need to understand that they are creating a world without slack, and the flukes are always going to be there. So, instead of imagining that we can have this top-down control, I think we have to have a little bit less hubris and also accept the limits of what humans can and cannot control. And I think that's true for ordinary citizens as well as for politicians who are calling the shots.

Two points in particular strike me. First, Klaas’s reference to “a system that operates with optimization and efficiency as its main priorities” is intriguing. I’ve said that “the Top-Down System” is driven by people climbing social ladders to look down on and try to dominate and exploit those below and submit to those above. The drive to optimize and maximize efficiency seems consistent with my analysis. I want to get his book and see if and how these two drives overlap. I may need to modify my formulation.

Secondly, his comment about the drive to establish top-down control in personal lives suggests he has a holistic approach,. This comment encourages me to believe that his framework is consistent with mine, and I may be able to complement my analysis with his. Regardless, his assertion that we need to accept chaos in our personal lives is one I haven’t addressed before and will do so now.