In This Article: - How raised awareness and understanding of cause-&-effects can lead to smarter decision making and an improved quality of life.
Within the last few years, there is a growing talk and real technological innovation about improving the quality of life on this planet via novel technologies. And with no doubt this is a great way forward. For instance consider developments in the zero-net house; here your home and castle does actually not need to bring in energy from a power plant in order to provide you with cozy warmth and a hot dinner. Or consider the killer-combo: a zero-net house, powered by rooftop heat exchangers and/or solar-cells, which at the same time re-charge your electric vehicle, so that you don't have to burn fossil fuels in order to move yourself around. On top of that, you might even make some $$$ alongside, by feeding excessive electricity from your solar-cell system back into the grid. While some forward thinking individuals do live such net-zero dreams, it is about the rest of us and what we can do towards a creating a smarter planet that I want to talk about in this post.
After all - it's about choice, or is it?
I give the punch line away upfront; in order to make a smarter planet, you and me should make more active usage of our brain power towards 'smart' decision making in every day life. The key word here is 'decision making' and thus choice. We humans choose to do something when we are motivated to do so. However, there exist two different kinds of motivations, namely intrinsic and extrinsic ones. Example: When you pay your taxes, you don't really see the impact of your money, nor do you get an sincerer "thank-you" from the IRA. This is a problem for humans, because even though we know we should give that money to the government such that it can provide for save roads, schools and education for us and our kids etc., we don't feel our contribution. This is an example of extrinsic motivation. Now, consider this scenario: you donate some amount of your wealth to support a good cause. You do this because you simply feel good about doing it, hence you are intrinsically motivated.
So, the question is what motivates us humans to do something? Before we go there, let's take a look into what 'motivates' an and animal, say an insect in their life. With its limited brain power the bug basically see's three motivations: sex, food, and doing-all-that-with-the-least-amount-of-energy spend. In order to execute these at times complex tasks its brain is 'pre-wired' or 'pre-programed' to do that, and only that. While being pre-programed is great, since the bug 'knows' the first moment it comes to life, what it should do, being pre-wired is at the same time a curse, because such pre-wired connections can not be un-wired, nor can new connections be established (or only to a minuscule amount). In this sense humans are entirely different and hence can have different motivations in life, or so it seems. Starting with infants, a human baby is probably the most helpless being on this planet - left alone for just a few days it will certainly die and it will take it more than 365 days to learn how to walk. This is unlike most animals, who can walk and even run the first day they are born. However, such un-pre-wired human has now the opportunity to learn and thus wire our CPU in a unique way, every day again and again.
Wiring our CPU - the task of life
So how do humans learn and thus wire our processor? It's called cause & effect plus repetition. Example-1: if I step on your toe and it breaks you know what was the cause for it (and you might avoid standing next to me the next time). Example-2: if, however, say your cat or dog (assume mid-sized dog) steps on your food applying about 10 lbs and your toe breaks, you are quite puzzled - unless you had taken into account that your toe actually had osteoporosis. While example-1 highlights a first order effect, example-2 is of second order and hence much more difficult to detect and hence learn from. Here, however lies the crux in human behavior; we often only see (or want to see) first order results that my action could cause and do not consider those of higher orders. Consider this little example. Assume you ride your bike on a narrow road and there is a car behind you. The only thing the car driver has in mind (maybe he is in a rush), is to take over that for him painfully slow bicyclist. Finally the oncoming traffic is cleared and he takes his chance rushing past you only to realize seconds later that in 150 yards the red traffic light is spoiling his eagerness to press on. So, why didn't the driver noticed the already red-shining lights BEFORE rushing forward? Well, he was not being aware of his 2nd-order effect once he had gained his 1st order one overtaking the biker, something we should start doing on an every-day basis.
This example for the rushy car drive overtaking the biker can also be analysed from an energetic/environmental point of view. Rushing past the biker requires the car to be accelerated requiring significant more energy than driving it at a constant speed. Then the fast car had to break for the traffic light and all that kinetic energy is wasted into heating up the break pads. There are two lessons learned here; (a) all that wasted energy could have been saved and (b) that unnecessary acceleration produced extra exhaust fumes inhaled by the biker and others adding to decreasing their health condition, from whose the car driver is unaffected.
Reducing carbon and externality footprints
Interestingly, economists created a term for such negative action of producing disadvantages for others and called it "externalities". Let me give you another example to illustrate this: consider two people - Alice living near a power plant and Bob in a desert. Bob is lucky and doesn't have to sweat in his house, because he can turn on his AC. The power required to run his AC comes in form of 'clean' electricity produced by a coal-burning power plant far away where Alice happens to live. Who do you think is more likely to develop cancer, Alice or Bob? Correct, and that's why Alice is experiencing Bob's externality. So, think about where have you created externalities for someone else? Could or can you avoid it next time?
Raising the awareness in our everyday life for our environment and fellow humans by thinking one step further than the immediate first order goal & effect caused by my actions would create a tremendously constructive ecological as well as sociological impact. Such a sociological negative externality (i.e. something positive) could for instance lead to reduced health care costs, non-renewable resources saved etc., all of which are topics of highest priority to U.S.'s policy makers and should be to you and me as well. Furthermore, it could be argued that such improved awareness would have a much greater and immediate impact on us and our environment than the external-motivating emerging smart technologies we are (luckily!) seeing today - hence the title of this post.
So, what's the first step into that direction? Becoming aware of myself, my actions and my sourroundings. Given that, I can now act and change my behavior (re-wire new connections of my CPU and un-wire 'bad' ones) accordingly such that I minimize my externalities and seed social integrity among humans a better world.
