What are Unintended Consequences?

What is a system?

A system is a collection of parts that relate to each other. Understanding what those parts are, how they are related or connected, and what behaviour we might see can be surprising. A system has a boundary. Some systems are part of our natural world and emerged over long time scales. Some are created by people and may change rapidly but will often have a purpose. 

What is a contemporary example of a system?

The education system is a good example of a system. The number of students entering primary school, how likely they are to complete their education and apply to university, the range and availability of good career prospects they have when they graduate, what fields of study happen to be popular at the time, how well-prepared they are, the economies of different countries, government subsidies and the likelihood of students to study abroad are parts of that system. 

Changing one part can lead to a change somewhere else. Universities that expanded by attracting international students were left unable to handle the sudden collapse of international travel during COVID-19.

What do we mean by unintended consequences? 

When we take an action and the result is something other than we expected, we call that unintended consequences.

What is second-order thinking?

First-order thinking considers the direct outcomes of an action. Second-order thinking attempts to consider the outcomes of the outcomes. 

Rather than assuming that an action results in a direct response, we should know that responses create their own responses. The common lack of second-order thinking creates many system surprises.