We need Antifragile Futures
Dear reader, you may think this is the next post about how the coronavirus has transformed the World in general, and more specifically your own life.
“Lord, have mercy” you will say, but fear me not. I’m not going to write about how society, government models, businesses, consumer habits or interpersonal relationships are going to change. There are plenty philosophers, sages, analysts and chatters writing about it. I must confess I’m reading everything these days, from the end of Capitalism to the resurgence of Capitalism; the end of Globalization to the resurgence of Globalization; the end of the Welfare state to the resurgence of the Welfare state, and the great opportunity to fight Climate Change or turn it into a second-class challenge.
Other topics that seem to raise interest are: what is going to happen with privacy, with authority, with economy, with civil rights, with feminism, with unemployment, with summer holidays… For all these topics you’ll find all kinds of articles, in which we can find perfectly possible scenarios, because you know, all these things could eventually happen! We can even find desirable some of them, considering our own point of view based in our beliefs and opinions.
“No hables de Futuro, es una ilusión” (1)
At the end of the day, all of them are pretty viable scenarios, as they reveal a reality: we can imagine how the future can be like, identify which is the future that we would like to materialize and we can even work to make that future come true. Yet none of this will matter, because those scenarios, plans and designs will disappear at the stroke of a pen the very same week that schools are closed and Government decrees the limitation of commercial activity, and the freedom of movement for citizens.
If we look back to January 1st 2020 no one in Spain was working on how we were to adapt to our current scenario. The scenario where we are the Country with a death toll over 17,000 on April 13th. The scenario where March ends with more than 3.5 million unemployed (not counting the hundreds of thousands workers affected by temporary layoffs)
The ultimate proof that no one knows what is going to happen next month is that we have been living for weeks under the two-week fallacy. Those of you from software development world will be familiar with the concept. When someone asks “How long will the job take?”, the answer is always “Two weeks”. Why two weeks? Why not eight? Why not one?
The Two-weeks fallacy
We fall in the two-weeks fallacy because we think that 15 days is an adequate measure of time to increase both visibility and ability to act. Indeed, in 15 days we think we’ll have more information to understand what is happening, so we’ll be able to make decisions.
- On the one hand, it is a matter of visibility. It happens in situations where there are more unknown things than known things (including the problem of “not knowing what we do not know”). Therefore, when we don’t have the information to make decisions, we think that 15 days is enough time to do research, obtain information and be able to validate it. And then, decide. Therefore, a first effect of the two-week syndrome is that decision-making is postponed to the moment when the situation is clear. Which by definition, no one knows when it will be.
- On the other hand, in two weeks, decisions can be made and also implemented (or even completed) which gives a sense of control and ability to act.
More than two weeks conveys a sense of loss of control and lack of initiative, and less time expresses an excess of optimism (usually associated with ignorance). You’ll find the epitome of the two-weeks fallacy in Tom Hanks’ “The Money Pit”
Closely related to the two-week fallacy (and also a classic situation in the world of software development) is the 90% syndrome. It involves the feeling that a project is “about to end”, but paradoxically, it never ends. Up to the point that the 10% of work remaining is equivalent to 90% of work done. Again, it has to do with the lack of visibility. The team is not aware of the things that need to be done, and therefore, of those that are missing. The greater the detail, the greater the visibility, yet this turns into a counterproductive effect: the more visibility of a task, the longer it takes to be completed. Being so close to the end, detail (something that in theory should be positive) becomes a problem when, due to a lack of transparency, the team / managers choose to hide problems. Just hoping that they will be solved within the time frame, and no one will ever find out (they always do when things explode)
The combination of the two-week fallacy and the 90% syndrome is lethal: it leads us to think that everything will be over in two weeks. Which I’d say is the state my Country is in, with millions of people waiting two more weeks for the announcement that we are going back to our previous normality. Or at least, to invent the new normal.
So, does it make sense to design a future in years to come, when we are unable to be certain about what is going to happen in two weeks?
No future for you
I find it normal to think that if there is no future, we will have to focus on the present. Some kind of going back to the roots of Punk in the 70s. But how does our present look like? I’d say if you look around you’ll realize that we want to make our future a return to the past. To how things were on February 11th, the day before a citizen with pneumonia who had travelled to Nepal was moved to the Intensive Care Unit in the Arnau de Vilanova Hospital, Valencia.
In the present, the World is struggling to make the immediate future resemble our recent past.
However, in our attempt to go back in time, to leave things as they were, we have a chance to improve. I’m not talking about our ability to improve society; we don’t need to adress the health situation to be aware that we are sunk in an economic and social crisis too. Decisions taken today will have an impact in the future in one way or another. That’s OK, we already know that.
I mean the way we design our future scenarios. A whole generation of innovators and designers has been exposed to the truth that as a society, we are extremely fragile. All our beliefs and certainties have gone down the drain in a month. When will we be able to move freely through Europe again? To rub shoulders with strangers in front of the Mona Lisa? To squeeze between the stalls at El Rastro? When will be able to drink gin-tonics in La Latina? To see our kids playing in gardens? When will we be able to dance in a music festival again? Are we going back to traffic jams? To Tinder dates? I know these are more or less frivolous examples, yet they represent the kind of things we took for granted and that we may not see again for a long time.
I think we need to introduce Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s Atifragility theory into futures design. From my point of view, it’s the best way we have to be able to propose scenarios designed for chaos and disorder, something that foreseeably happens on a recurring basis. Taleb proposes a classification of systems according to their behavior under change and pressure:
- the fragile, those that crumble with crises. Therefore, these systems need order and stability.
- the robust ones, that can resist the crisis. Thus they keep their properties when turbulences end. We can say then that they are to some extent immutable, as they remain the same.
- and the antifragile, those that improve with stress. In other words, systems that grow or prosper when they are put through a crisis.
The visual representation of an antifragile system is a curve with a convex distribution of effects, where benefitis increase with volatility and disorder. As opossed to the curve of fragile systems, whose benefits decrease while volatility and disorder increase.
What I like from Taleb’s theory is the idea that in fragile systems / models potential benefits are limited, they last as long as things are stable and remain controlled. But losses are exponential when crisis arrives. On the contrary, potenial losses are limited in antifragile systems, while benefits are exponential.
It seems antifragile systems have some common atributes: they are flexible and agile, they are designed to need stressors, they have redundancies, they are distributed and decentralized, they encourage the autonomy of its parts, and above all, they serve a well defined purpose that endures with time.
So, considering crises are an essential part of our future, how might we create futures with antifragile characteristics? I’d like to answer that question right away, but I’ve been strongly advised not to. First, because it seems my post are way too long for my readers to keep their interest. And second, because I’ll be talking about Antifragile Futures in Innov8rs Connect Barcelona next April 22nd. I won’t spoil my own talk ;-)
In the mean time, stay safe.
(1) “El Rompeolas” is a song composed by Sabino Mendez, included in Loquillo y los Trogloditas’ Morir en Primavera (1988)
