Unintended Consequences

I like the prompt. Something I started a few years ago was writing about unintended consequences: https://unintendedconsequenc.es/ I was best at this when I truly didn't care about success. I took a diversion into trying to intentionally make it successful and now am back to not caring if it succeeds. But it's a win just because I've learned so much working on it. It also brought me to lots of people I never would have met otherwise.

This was on hn recently: https://hnrss.github.io/ Any youtube channel you like Any subreddit you like: https://old.reddit.com/wiki/rss Nitter allows RSS feeds of twitter accounts, useful for low post volume accounts like those of your local government functions. Many (possibly most?) news websites have some RSS functionality. And lets not forget the wide world of podcasting. Some interesting blogs I follow are https://unintendedconsequenc.es/feed/ and https://astralcodexten.substack.com/feed/

I've heard this topic come up before. I belive it is interesting and valuable to think about. I don't have much to contribite of the top of my head, but I did stumble across this blog a while back (it might have actually been from here on HN, don't remember) that explores this very topic. It's even named after it :) maybe other will enjoy it. I like the author's writing style, usually a pleasure to read. https://unintendedconsequenc.es

clickable link: https://unintendedconsequenc.es/

The message of this article (and the rest of the site) seems to be: Things you do will have unintended consequences; you cannot predict these consequences; they will be bad; therefore you shouldn't do anything. I think you might be bringing that interpretation to the site. At least, reading the linked article, I don't find it there explicitly. Maybe you are taking the "Don't Touch Anything" title too literally? The author speaks positively of the attempts to reintroduce beavers to Scotland, and seems cautiously optimistic about the attempts to eradicate the accidentally introduced brown tree snake from Guam. Looking at some of the other articles on the site, I see a message akin to your correction. For example, instead of saying "don't do anything", this article is about how "bounty" programs should be run differently to make them more effective: https://unintendedconsequenc.es/the-cobra-effect-redesigned/. His recommendations sound about the same as your criticisms.

Thunderbolt on Its Trial[1][2] is a recent post that mentioned some of this split, with a story of a german waiter serving allied soldiers after the war. It talked about the soldiers returning home, finding a nation which had radicalized it's hate, a hate they demonstrably did not have. Good article in other ways, talking about "being under a spell", & judgment based on the extreme events that eventually boil (thunderbolt) over from longer situations (heavy weather). I feel this article will stick with me for a long time. [1] https://unintendedconsequenc.es/thunderbolt-on-its-trial/ [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25838341

It’s racism. https://unintendedconsequenc.es/uyghurs-xinjiang-onward-to-the-inevita…