#unintendedconsequences — Public Fediverse posts

“Most things are never meant”*…

From Dan Russell‘s nifty (and in this instance, all-too-appropriately-named) newsletter, Unanticipated Consequences, an “appreciation” of a gentleman into whom (Roughly) Daily has run before (e. g, here)…

If you set out to design a supervillain to destroy the biosphere, create a jovial, optimistic mechanical engineer from Ohio who wanted to make the world a slightly more convenient place. Thomas Midgley Jr. was not a mad scientist plotting global ruin from a diabolical evil-genius lair, he was an enthusiastic tinkerer, and as a friend once commented, had “ten ideas a minute, nine of them screwy, but the tenth a lulu.” He wrote light verse, loved music, and held over a hundred patents. As a teenager, he used elm-tree juice instead of spit to throw unhittable curveballs. He was, by all accounts, a charming guy who merely sought practical solutions to the day’s pressing technological annoyances. What could go wrong?

Yet, by the time his career was over, Midgley had introduced two of the most globally destructive chemical compounds in human history. He became, as one historian aptly put it, a one-man environmental disaster. His legacy is the ultimate cautionary tale for the modern innovator: a masterclass in the massive, terrifying, and utterly unanticipated consequences of design choices…

[Russell tells the stories of Midgley’s pair of consequential inventions: the additive “lead” (tetraethyl lead, a neurotoxin) in gasoline and the refrigerant CFC (the use of which ripped a hole in the ozone layer). He recounts Midgley’s death (literally) in the grip of another of his inventions, then concludes…]

… What do we do with the ghost of Thomas Midgley? It is easy, with a century of hindsight, to look back at the millions of cardiovascular deaths, the plummeting IQs, and the shredded stratosphere, and label him a monster. But that ignores the fundamental mechanics of innovation. The Midgley story is a stark reminder of the massive delta between human intent and ecological reality.

When we invent, we are almost always trying to solve a local, immediate pain point. Engines rattle and refrigerators explode. Midgley looked at these problems and offered brilliant and simple solutions. But biology and atmosphere are deeply intertwined and heavily networked systems. The consequences of introducing synthetic compounds into these systems don’t spool out in days or weeks; they unfold across generations.

Midgley did not want to poison the world. He wrote poetry about human dominance over the Earth, genuinely believing that science could only make the future better. If forced to concede the environmental damage of his inventions, he likely would have plunged headlong into the lab to invent safe substitutes. But he lacked the conceptual tools, the time horizon, and the humility to imagine that the very things that made his inventions magical—the cheap and effective solution of lead and the unyielding stability of Freon—were exactly what made them apocalyptically awful for humanity.

The history of Thomas Midgley is a brilliantly clear, slightly horrifying reminder: sometimes, the most dangerous things in the world are brought to us by a friendly guy with a periodic table in his pocket, just trying to stop that really annoying noise in his car…

The bane of unintended consequences: “New Ways to Poison an Entire Planet: The Legacy of Thomas Midgley, Jr.”

* Philip Larkin, “Going, Going“

###

As we consider consequences, we might acknowledge that there are some consequences ourecall that on this date in 1908, at around 7:15 am, northwest of Lake Baikal, Russia, a huge fireball nearly as bright as the Sun was seen crossing the sky. Minutes later, there was a huge flash and a shock wave felt up to 400 miles away.  Over Tunguska, a meteorite over 50-m diameter, travelling at over 60,000 mph penetrated Earth’s atmosphere, heated to about 10,000 ºC and detonated 6 to10 km above the ground. The blast released the energy of 10-50 Megatons of TNT, destroying 830 square miles of forest and leaving almost no trace of life. (As the area was essentially unpopulated, estimates are that only three people died.) The Tunguska rock came from the Taurid Meteor storm that crosses Earth’s orbit twice a year.

Midgley’s story is a reminder that we need to take all of the care we can to protect ourselves from unintended harms that we might inflict on oursleves. A meteor strike is, of course, not the product of a human choice– and in 1908, outside our control. But today, there is something we can do: check in with the B612 Foundation.

Not now, remote-controlled cockroach swarm.

#DisasterWaitingToHappen #Cockroaches #NotNow #TheEndIsNigh #UnintendedConsequences #ThisIsFine

#sabotage #vandalism #blowback #UnintendedConsequences

"30 gallons of fuel spilled on National Mall after event for America’s 250th birthday

The fuel from commercial generators at the May 17 event seeped into underground cisterns that collect rainwater to irrigate the Mall, these people said. Four of the cisterns, which hold up to 250,000 gallons, are under the National Mall. The people familiar with the matter said efforts to clean up the spill are underway.

Cleanup efforts are underway as Freedom 250, a group created by the Trump administration that organized the event, blames 'vandalism.'

(. . .)

'Following the Freedom 250 team’s installation of temporary lighting on the National Mall, our equipment has been repeatedly targeted by vandals. The recent fuel leak was the direct result of that tampering,' Rachel Reisner, spokeswoman for Freedom 250, said in a statement provided to NBC News."

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/white-house/30-gallons-fuel-spilled-national-mall-event-americas-250th-birthday-rcna347935

A quotation from Mark Twain

   “You heard these words: ‘Grant us the victory, O Lord our God!’ That is sufficient. The whole of the uttered prayer is compact into those pregnant words. Elaborations were not necessary. When you have prayed for victory you have prayed for many unmentioned results which follow victory — must follow it, cannot help but follow it. Upon the listening spirit of God fell also the unspoken part of the prayer. He commandeth me to put it into words. Listen!
   “O Lord our Father, our young patriots, idols of our hearts, go forth to battle — be Thou near them! With them — in spirit — we also go forth from the sweet peace of our beloved firesides to smite the foe. O Lord our God, help us to tear their soldiers to bloody shreds with our shells; help us to cover their smiling fields with the pale forms of their patriot dead; help us to drown the thunder of the guns with the shrieks of their wounded, writhing in pain; help us to lay waste their humble homes with a hurricane of fire; help us to wring the hearts of their unoffending widows with unavailing grief; help us to turn them out roofless with their little children to wander unfriended the wastes of their desolated land in rags and hunger and thirst, sports of the sun flames of summer and the icy winds of winter, broken in spirit, worn with travail, imploring Thee for the refuge of the grave and denied it — for our sakes who adore Thee, Lord, blast their hopes, blight their lives, protract their bitter pilgrimage, make heavy their steps, water their way with their tears, stain the white snow with the blood of their wounded feet! We ask it, in the spirit of love, of Him Who is the Source of Love, and Who is the ever-faithful refuge and friend of all that are sore beset and seek His aid with humble and contrite hearts. Amen.
   (After a pause.) “Ye have prayed it; if ye still desire it, speak! The messenger of the Most High waits!”

Mark Twain (1835-1910) American writer [pseud. of Samuel Clemens]
Story (1905), “The War Prayer”

More about this quote: wist.info/twain-mark/5637/

#quote #quotes #quotation #qotd #twain #marktwain #warprayer #blood #consequences #defeat #destruction #devastation #divinewill #divinewrath #enemy #imprecation #intercession #killing #prayer #suffering #tragedy #unintendedconsequences #victory #violence #war #divineintercession #curse #divinelove

#UnintendedConsequences

"Unintended consequences happen so often that economists call them 'Cobra Problems,' after one of the most interesting examples.

(. . .)

In the end, Delhi had a bigger cobra problem after the bounty ended than it had before it began."

https://fee.org/articles/the-cobra-effect-lessons-in-unintended-consequences/

A quotation from Thomas More

Well, those are my objections on moral grounds. From a practical point of view, surely it’s obvious that to punish thieves and murderers in precisely the same way is not only absurd but also highly dangerous for the public.
   If a thief knows that a conviction for murder will get him into no more trouble than a conviction for theft, he’s naturally impelled to kill the person that he’d otherwise merely have robbed. It’s no worse for him if he’s caught, and it gives him a better chance of not being caught, and of concealing the crime altogether by eliminating the only witness.
   So in our efforts to terrorize thieves we’re actually encouraging them to murder innocent people.
 
   [Non licere putem. Quam uero sit absurdum, atque etiam perniciosum reipublicae furem, atque homicidam ex aequo puniri, nemo est, opinor, qui nesciat.
   Nempe quum latro conspiciat non minus imminere discriminis duntaxat furti damnato, quam si praeterea conuincatur homicidij, hac una cogitatione impellitur in caedem eius, quem alioqui fuerat tantum spoliaturus. quippe praeterquam quod deprehenso nihil sit plus periculi, est etiam in caede securitas maior, & maior caelandi spes sublato facinoris indice.
   Itaque dum fures nimis atrociter studemus perterrefacere, in bonorum incitamus perniciem.]

Thomas More (1478-1535) English lawyer, social philosopher, statesman, humanist, Christian martyr
Utopia, Book 1, ch. 1 “Discourses of Raphael Hythloday” (1518 ed.) [tr. Turner (1965 ed.)]

More about (and translations of) this quote: wist.info/more-thomas/83554/

#quote #quotes #quotation #qotd #thomasmore #utopia #penalsystem #capitalpunishment #crime #criminal #cruelty #deathpenalty #execution #hanging #killing #nothingtolose #punishment #severity #stealing #theft #thief #thievery #unintendedconsequences

How the war of choice in Iran is fueling the electric vehicle boom:
https://nationalinterest.org/blog/energy-world/how-the-iran-war-is-inadvertently-boosting-our-energy-transition

#electricVehicles #energy #energyIndependence #energySecurity #energyTransition #EV #EVs #foreignPolicy #fossilFuels #greenEnergy #Iran #IranWar #renewableEnergy #renewables #unintendedConsequences

The overdose spike that alarmed NPR was a model trained on old data https://boingboing.net/2026/04/14/the-overdose-spike-that-alarmed-npr-was-a-model-trained-on-old-data.html

That's kind of fascinating. #UnintendedConsequences

Really, what kind of war would it be without a little Hezbollah, amirite?!

#missioncreep #blowback #unintendedconsequences #terrygilliam

Meanwhile, in Yemen...
A massive show of solidarity with Iran.
#blowback #unintendedconsequences

@ARC_Tracker
16 months? Too late! Cat's out of the bag! I could get heaps of research done with all me north Korean collaborators during that 16 months, publish a stack of papers, patents and all, before the actual funding application is sent to the bottom of the harbour on national security grounds.

#UnintendedConsequences #PerverseEffects

@dyckron

"Follow these rules!"

...

"Not like that!"

#UnintendedConsequences #ViciousCompliance

"Trump Administration Tells Judge It Will Release Gateway Funding. Payments for the $16 billion rail tunnel between New York City and New Jersey had been suspended for more than four months":
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/13/nyregion/gateway-tunnel-funding-ny-nj-trump.html?smid=tw-nytimes&smtyp=cur
By suspending those funds, Trump helped a Democrat defeat a Republican, to become the newest governor of New Jersey.
copy: @renewedresistance #politics #UnintendedConsequences #incompetence

It struck me during Carl's talk that massive, general LLMs are yet another technology that, through the competitive haste of capitalism, we’ve unleashed globally without considering all of the likely effects on things we value (like social cohesion, functional democracies, and a healthy biosphere). As usual, we’ll now live through all these consequences and will scramble to undo the worst of the damage.

We’ve done the same with chlorofluorocarbons, DDT, acid rain, whaling, forever chemicals, cars,... It’s what we do, but every new global-scale technology is a gamble that it won’t irrevocably damage civilisation and the biosphere. Eventually we’re going to lose that gamble.

To drive a large, global high-tech civilisation for thousands of years, we have to learn to be *much* more restrained and future smart. Are we capable of that?

#SustainableFuture #UnintendedConsequences #LLM

Most #AI failures don’t come from bad intent—but from unexamined decisions. What if discovery rituals, not principles, are where Unintended Outcomes really surface? How do second-order effects sneak in? #unintendedconsequences #Ethics #Design #HACD #HumanAgentCenteredDesign

https://www.designative.info/2026/01/05/managing-unintended-consequences-designing-encapsulated-workflows-to-anticipate-ai-side-effects/

#UnintendedConsequences
Berlin: 🎶 Take my breath away... 🎶

(In a choked voice): "Not like that!"

The Absurdity:
EU: "We're protecting privacy!"
Also EU: "Publish your home address publicly or you can't sell apps here!"
#GDPR #IndieDevs #AppDevelopment #Privacy #EURegulation #TechNews #StartupLife #SoloFounder #SignallingVsSubstance #UnintendedConsequences

The Absurdity:
EU: "We're protecting privacy!"
Also EU: "Publish your home address publicly or you can't sell apps here!"
#GDPR #IndieDevs #AppDevelopment #Privacy #EURegulation #TechNews #StartupLife #SoloFounder #SignallingVsSubstance #UnintendedConsequences

"Missing birth certificate" denial... but it was attached. 🤦♀️
This is what happens when you measure only processing speed: Canadian immigration officers making decisions in seconds on complex applications.
Local optimization breaking global systems.
https://agilepainrelief.com/blog/mismeasurement-mess-ircc-leads-the-way-in-measuring-the-wrong-thing/
#Measurement #UnintendedConsequences

It's so considerate of ICE to run this public service announcement telling the resistance about the best way for it to tie up the maximum amount of ICE resources.

#ICE #resistance #UnintendedConsequences

@xgranade it is definitely going to become easier and easier to replace high-salaried Senior VPs or Board members. Not to speak of discovering previously hidden conflicts of interests across an organization... #UnintendedConsequences #BraveNewWorld

The law of unintended consequences and YES file this under You Can't Fix Stupid!

In addition to the very real possibility that the removal of BLS leader Erika McEntarfer will erode trust in government data – a lack of trust in BLS published data seriously endangers the $2T (T as in Trillion) market for Treasury Inflation-Protected Securities (TIPS).

TIPS are U.S. government issued bonds specifically designed to help protect investors from inflation. In TIPS bonds the principal value is adjusted based on changes in the Consumer Price Index (CPI). As inflation rises, the principal increases, resulting in larger interest payments. If the CPI data becomes politicized the TIPS market could implode!

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2025-08-05/trump-throws-a-2-trillion-market-into-doubt-with-one-firing-evening-briefing
#unintendedconsequences #Fail #YouCantFixStupid #Stupid #BLS #USGov #Securities #Securitiesmarket #TIPS #Bonds #Inflation #CPI #LaborData #LaborMarketData #USGovBonds

https://www.wacoca.com/anime/1883545/ Osaragi-sensei’s Lesson | SAKAMOTO DAYS | Clip | Netflix Anime #2025Summer #2025SummerAnime #2025年夏開始の新作アニメ #Action #Anime #AnimeFight #clairvoyant #Comedy #CriminalLife #Exciting #Franchise #GoingStraight #HITMAN #Humorous #KosukeToriumi #OrganizedCrime #PowerUp #psychic #Sakamoto #SAKAMOTODAYS第2クール #ShonenJump #StartingOver #Superpower #ToughCharacters #UnintendedConsequences #アニメ #サカモトデイズ #シン. #ネットフリックス #ネトフリ #少年ジャンプ #新作アニメ #鈴木祐斗 #鳥海浩輔