Apart from any value we get from the results that mathematical models provide, the process of simply building and studying the models is extremely valuable. For starters, in working with models like Balance of the Planet and World3, either in building them or exploring them, one is drawn toward a high-level view of the world. From this elevated vantage point bigger problems appear bigger and smaller problems smaller, where from the trenches it may be impossible to see the bigger problems because they're occluded by smaller, more immediate problems. We live in a world starving for perspective, plagued by insidious special interests, short-term thinking, hidden agendas, and "cause-ism." Tools and techniques that offer hope of objective comparison should be embraced.
"When viewing the overall pattern of worldwide environmental degradation, we sometimes find it difficult to attain a sufficiently distant perspective from which to make sense of the confusing jumble of information."
-- Vice President Al Gore, Earth in the Balance
Secondly, building and refining these models requires a focused study of real-world systems, ensures quantitative analysis, and demands careful attention to details and definitions of terms. This sort of work forces discipline and helps insure against intellectual sloppiness. Model building also helps us focus on interrelationships, not individual problems. Researchers from different disciplines must work together to see how the things they study influence each other, focusing on interdependencies, rather than particular facets of the whole.
Thirdly, models like Balance of the Planet encourage their users to evaluate policy decisions in terms of perceived costs, benefits, and opportunity costs. This sort of evaluation requires explicit statement of values and priorities, and promotes rational optimization of stated goals. Thinking about morals and values in the context of rigorous models helps to fight thoughtless compassion.
"I'm impressed with the reluctance of society to confront certain issues, and the ingenuity people show in developing a rhetorical defense against controversial concerns."
-- Garrett Hardin
One of the most common criticisms of models like World3 and Balance of the Planet is that they are built out of uncertain guesses that over-simplify complex systems we don't fully understand. That's true, but the alternative seems to be to rely solely on mental models, which have the same uncertainties and over-simplifications and which also substitute impressions, estimates, and general guidelines for known facts, measured values, and reliable mathematical techniques. Rather than abandoning the mathematical models as worthless, I think we should work to make them better -- larger, more detailed, more accessible, and more easily expanded and modified.
| Exercise | A few years ago I worked for a big bank on Wall Street, where I was paid $105 an hour to help build a computer program to apply advanced mathematical modeling techniques to large and complex sets of real-world data in order to ensure the bank will continue to make scads of money even in the face of uncertainty. Wall Street banks and big oil companies make extensive use of mathematical models, probability, and decision theory, in spite of the fact that the models are incomplete over-simplifications that must deal with uncertainty. Explain why Wall Street banks do this while Greenpeace and the United Way don't. |
The Bottom Line
Collaborating to build and study formal models of world systems
is a rewarding enterprise that we should be doing far more of.
