Limits to ethical behaviour in a world of chaos
I have been wrestling with the concept of entropy quite a lot recently. As the amount of information, the amount of communication, the number of people and entities/organisations, the level of expectations and social norms, the number of rules and regulations all increase over time; the level of complexity in our world is almost certainly on an increase too. And probably exponentially at that.
Over the past few decades many designers and thinkers have tackled more and more complex problem spaces. Some so complex in fact, that a new category of problems was created: wicked problems. Two design professors: Rittel and Webber, coined the term in 1973. “A wicked problem has innumerable causes, is tough to describe, and doesn’t have a right answer, as we will see in the next section. Environmental degradation, terrorism, and poverty—these are classic examples of wicked problems.” (source: https://hbr.org/2008/05/strategy-as-a-wicked-problem)
Tom Wujec points this out in a classic Ted talk on these kinds of problems (source: https://www.ted.com/talks/tom_wujec_got_a_wicked_problem_first_tell_me_how_you_make_toast?language=en#t-529476). While Tom and others have tried to develop tools for tackling these kinds of problems – using system thinking. The premise that they start from is profound in itself: that many, many ordinary problems (even the simple one of designing a toaster for example), taken in the full context are in fact wicked problems.
Here is the thing about wicked problems: the designer or creator is facing a system so complex that they are not able to fully (or in some cases, even partly) predict the outcome of their actions on the system. The consequences of any product or experience that they design are not just unknown, they are unknowable. Put another way, we never fully know the consequences of the impact of the products we create or things that we put out in the world.
How do you solve a wicked problem ethically?
How does one act ethically in such a complex world? In a very real way, we may all be judged as harshly as some of the worst people in history knowing that we had the best of intentions with the work we create. In fact, the things that we create may, at times be intentionally put to uses which we did not intend and have extremely negative effects. How does one act ethically in such a world?
I do not know the answer, but several principles seem sensible at this point:
You must remain be bold enough to create. Creating something always takes courage. One faces all sorts of risk. The one I am speaking about here is merely another one of these risks. However, to be so risk averse as not to act is in fact to condemn the world to a future without progress.
Do no harm, intentionally. This is the Hippocratic oath that doctors take upon qualification. It is the same one that guided google in its modern incarnation: Do not be evil. It needs modification. Well, to be precise, it needs clarification. One cannot guarantee the outcome of consequences, so intention was always the subtext in the principle. But you should try your utmost to not deliberately cause harm even when it may be in service of the greater good.
When you mess up, apologise, and make amends, quickly. Because there is no way of guaranteeing you will not do any harm, one must be vigilant and make amends if you do mistakenly step offsides.