Don McMinn

In his terrific book, Precipice, Australian philosopher Toby Ord talks about existential risks that threaten the future of humanity. Some are natural risks: an asteroid hitting the earth, or super-volcanic eruptions. Another category is anthropogenic risks which are caused by humans, like nuclear weapons, climate change, and unaligned artificial intelligence. 

But the risks that are most alarming to me are the risks that may develop that we currently can’t even imagine.

It’s happened before. 

• • The possibility of nuclear holocaust was inconceivable until 1942 (the year physicist Enrico Fermi initiated the first self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction).
  • The field of artificial intelligence wasn’t formally founded until 1956, at a conference at Dartmouth College, in Hanover, New Hampshire, where the term was coined.

So 60 years ago, nuclear catastrophe and unaligned artificial intelligence would not have been mentioned in Ord’s book. 

Chances are good that in the next 50 years, an existential threat will be identified that we have never even thought of.

Which leads me to a discussion of the end of history illusion.

Humans have a tendency to acknowledge that change took place in the past but we discount the possibility of change happening in the future. For example, a 20-year-old’s prediction of how great a change he will undergo in the next ten years will not be as extreme as his recollection, as a 30-year-old, of the changes he underwent between the ages of 20 and 30. The same phenomenon is true for people of any age.

We can clearly see how our lives have changed a lot in the past, but we are reluctant to anticipate how much our lives will change in the future. Psychologist Dan Gilbert says we are “works in progress claiming to be finished.” In his research he discovered that young people, middle-aged people, and older people all believed they had changed a lot in the past but would change relatively little in the future. [Click here for more information about Gilbert’s work.]  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/End-of-history_illusion 

We need to disavow ourselves of this illusion. 

Relative to change:

Change is inevitable so we should anticipate and embrace it.

Every individual (and organization) has its own unique attitude toward change. We can be change-averse (resistant to change); we can reluctantly acquiesce to change (change is seen as unavoidable but undesirable) we can be change-friendly (view change as inevitable and probably necessary), or change-eager (view change as desirable and the key to growth and health).

The rate of change is going to accelerate.

In their must-read book, The Leader’s Voice, Clarke and Crossland say, “In ancient times, work was performed on an almost stationary stage. Visionary inventor Ray Kurzweil explains the rate of change in terms of paradigm shifts. During the agricultural age, paradigm shifts occurred over thousands of years. The industrial age produced paradigm shifts, first in a century and then in a generation. At the start of the information age, paradigms appeared to shift at the rate of three per lifetime. Kurzweil suggests that beginning in the year 2000, paradigm shifts have begun to occur at the rate of seven to ten per lifetime.”

Two thousand five hundred years ago the Greek philosopher Heraclitus said, “The only thing that doesn’t change is change.” Let’s anticipate and embrace changes that will occur in the future.

Years ago, conventional wisdom (or was it an urban legend?) taught that before you open a can of soda, tap on the top. Ostensibly, it calmed down the carbon dioxide inside the can so it wouldn’t spray when opened. So I adopted the habit of tap-tap-tapping on the lid before I pulled the tab.

One day, I saw my eight-year-old daughter tap-tap-tapping on the top of a can prior to opening it. I asked her, “Why do you tap on the lid?” She paused, and said, “Because you do, Dad.”

Oh my…

It caused me to wonder—in what other ways is she mimicking my behavior? Then I thought, for better and for worse, in what ways do I imitate my family of origin?

For instance, relative to my family of origin:  

• • Often, my father would be impatient with my mother. It saddens me to admit: I struggle with that issue in my marriage.
  • My father neglected holidays and special occasions (birthdays, anniversaries). I also neglect those events.
  • Mom was kind. I hope that rubbed off on me.

I recently asked my grown daughters (ages 40 and 42): “What did you ‘inherit’ from Mom and me (other than tapping on cans)?” They struggled with answering the question and Mary and I weren’t much help because we’re too close to it to be objective. Eventually, though, it led to interesting conversation. 

How should we respond to these learned-from-our-family traits? How can we overcome the negative influences and strengthen the positive ones?

Mitigating the unhealthy traits is very difficult. They’re so deeply engrained we’re probably not even aware of them. It usually takes a third party’s involvement to help us identify them and change. But predisposition need not be deterministic. We can and must work through these issues.

Every two years (why don’t I do this every year?) I perform a detailed audit of my personal finances. I realign investments, adjust our annual budget, and update future plans. 

An important part of the audit is analyzing all reoccurring bills and services by asking these questions:

1. 1. 1. Am I paying for something I no longer need or value?
      2. Has the price for this product or service gone down?
      3. Can I negotiate a better price from the current vendor or should I get new bids?
      4. Am I paying for a service I could provide myself?

In January 2020, my financial audit prompted these changes:

• • • A service representative from AT&T helped me tweak my mobile phone plan, saving $29 per month.
    • I renegotiated my internet service plan, saving $49 per month.
    • I canceled my subscription to the local newspaper because I can find most of the information online, saving $35 per month. 
    • I changed storage facilities and reduced the rent I’ve been paying from $119 per month to $35—saving $84 per month. 
    • I asked Chase Bank to eliminate the monthly service charge on two of my six checking accounts. They did, saving me $20 per month. 
    • I purchased a new battery-powered hedge trimmer and started trimming my bushes instead of paying to have it done, which will save me about $800 annually.

Savings: $3,404 per year. 

The same technique should be used in organizations. At my church, we recently renegotiated the contract on our copy machines, saving 40%. We canceled two of the four shuttle buses we lease on Sunday mornings, saving $800 per week. Installing LED lights in the sanctuary has a 24-month ROI after which time we’ll save $1,000 per Sunday on electricity. We discovered that we can get twice the internet bandwidth for less cost.

Senator Everett Dirksen (1896-1964), concerned that federal spending had a way of getting out of control, reportedly observed, “A billion here, a billion there, and pretty soon you’re talking real money.”

For the average American, I’ll tweak Dirksen’s statement and say, “A hundred dollars here, a hundred there, and pretty soon it adds up to a significant amount of money.” Why not save money if you can do so without significantly changing your standard of living?

Audit your finances at least every two years.

I’ve written before on the curse of knowledge

• • Part 1 – The “curse of knowledge” may occur when someone has such mature and advanced knowledge in a specific area that he cannot remember what it’s like to not have this knowledge. 
  • Part 2 – It can happen when you share too much information about an area of expertise. 
  • Part 3 – We tend to share what we’ve recently learned, though it may not be appropriate to the current conversation.  

In this post I’ll talk about yet another way that our personal knowledge can often be a hinderance in our personal relationships.

What do these scenarios have in common?

• • Mary and I served a good California chardonnay at a dinner party we hosted for friends. Someone made a nice comment about the wine and I responded, “It is nice, but I should have served it about five degrees cooler.”
  • At Sunday brunch, someone commented on how much they enjoyed the instrumental group that had played in the morning worship service. My response was, “Yes, they are a talented group. They struggled with intonation in the first service but were spot on in the second service.”
  • In a staff meeting, I corrected someone’s pronunciation of a foreign term. It interrupted the flow of conversation, may have embarrassed the speaker, and made me look like a pompous backside. 

Here’s the challenge I’m talking about: When we’re knowledgeable in a certain area, we’re more likely to notice errors that are made in that domain, both by us and by others. Which is a good thing; that’s what we’ve been trained to do. But there are potential downsides. 

• • • Our expertise can cause us to be needlessly critical in our thinking. 
    • We may unnecessarily share our critical thoughts with others.
    • We may become inappropriately critical of others. 
    • Our heightened sensitivity to mistakes may impede our own and other people’s enjoyment of experiences.

For instance, in the first example given above, I’m a wine expert so I couldn’t help but notice that the wine was served a bit too warm, but I didn’t need to share that with our guests. By emphasizing the issue, I probably sullied my guests’ opinion of the wine and even my own. 

In the second example, I’m a professional musician so I can’t help but notice when mistakes are made in a public performance, but there was no benefit in voicing my observations to others. And, noticing and focusing on the error might have even prevented me from enjoying the groups’ playing in the moment.

Relative to the third bullet point, I’m not an expert in linguistics, I just happened to be familiar with the word that was spoken. It was inappropriate for me to correct the pronunciation. 

By definition, a subject matter expert knows many aspects of her domain, which includes both positive and negative insights. But we must be careful about when and what we share with others. 

• • A nutritionist notices that though a dessert served at a dinner party may be tasty, it’s not healthy. But is it appropriate for her to voice her expertise?
  • A car aficionado knows that the car you just bought has a history of being problematic, but should he tell you?

The story is told of an English professor who was running late to teach a class. He was speeding down the highway, heading toward the college, when a policeman pulled him over.

Policeman: “Sir, you were driving fifteen miles per hour over the speed limit.”

Professor: “I’m so sorry. I’m late for a class I’m teaching at the college.”

Policeman: “Well, okay. This time I’ll just give you a warning. You can go. Drive safe.”

Professor: “Thanks…you mean drive safely…”

Policeman: “On second thought, stay right where you are.”

And he wrote him a speeding ticket.

Sometimes, our knowledge can work against us