Enraged, you go to the Tipsy Cow with your bestie and plan to drown your sorrows. Three hours later you notice a hot guy at the end of the bar staring at you. He's shirtless and shredded. His jeans are perfectly worn in. He has sun-kissed long blonde hair, like Brad Pitt in Troy. He buys you a drink and when things are going really well he says he has to take off--he's got a wedding in the morning. You think, could it be? He's related on the groom's side to the guy who once opened for Green Day.
You tell him nothing gets you out of your jeans faster than a good Wisconsin wedding.
Law of unintended consequences
You've got a 10AM wedding date. Having regained your dignity you will then dump him. At ten o'clock on Saturday morning you stand on your porch in the sexiest dress you own, wearing the highest heels on earth. In the distance you hear what sounds like a Singer sewing machine chugging your way, which is immediately explained as a rusty dented maroon Chevy APV rounds the corner, belching exhaust as it comes to a stop in front of your house.
The driver does not resemble the guy you met last night. His beautiful body is now swathed in a poop brown shiny polyester double-breasted suit with melty burn marks on the lapels. His long tresses have been pulled into a double man bun that looks like something Hattie McCoy wore when the wagons rolled West and women feared bats would nest in their hair. He wears smudged glasses, cockeyed. One stem is missing. You could run back inside and lock yourself in, but, like the gentleman he is, he has already reached over from the driver's seat and kicked open the passenger door for you.
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- Edward Tenner: Unintended consequences | TED Talk.
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At the wedding, when you get out of the dust buster-shaped vehicle, which your date has parked beside the bridal party's limo, you realize you do not know your date's name, and he is 5' 4"--facts you overlooked the night before because your ass never left the barstool and you had no frame of reference as to scale, plus frankly you were mesmerized by his tanned, chiseled chest. At 6'4" in stilettos, you are in a perfect position to view the top of his man bun while he is eye-level with your breast area. None of this is lost on the boyfriend, whose date is Scarlett Johansson's prettier twin.
You are seated at the children's table. There is no lobster.
The drinks are not free. You are humiliated and embarrassed at every turn. Maybe you shouldn't have elected someone, I mean elected to date someone, out of anger and frustration. The Law of Unintended Consequences will bite you on the ass every time. Tap here to turn on desktop notifications to get the news sent straight to you.
There are three outcomes associated with this intractable law: Charlottemoment An unintended benefit of your action luck, kismet and damn miracle would be if after six months of proving yourself to the pauper of the pick-up, the man tells you he is actually heir to a green energy fortune and now that he knows you're not just about the money, he wishes to whisk you off to his Wyoming wind farm, nestled picturesquely in the Tetons, where you will have a horse named Rocket. The risk of death and serious injury per cyclist seems to have increased, possibly due to risk compensation.
Prohibition in the s United States , originally enacted to suppress the alcohol trade, drove many small-time alcohol suppliers out of business and consolidated the hold of large-scale organized crime over the illegal alcohol industry.
Since alcohol was still popular, criminal organisations producing alcohol were well-funded and hence also increased their other activities. Similarly, the War on Drugs , intended to suppress the illegal drug trade , instead increased the power and profitability of drug cartels who became the primary source of the products. In CIA jargon , " blowback " describes the unintended, undesirable consequences of covert operations, such as the funding of the Afghan Mujahideen and the destabilization of Afghanistan contributing to the rise of the Taliban and Al-Qaeda.
The introduction of exotic animals and plants for food, for decorative purposes, or to control unwanted species often leads to more harm than good done by the introduced species. The protection of the steel industry in the United States reduced production of steel in the United States, increased costs to users, and increased unemployment in associated industries. Passenger-side airbags in motorcars were intended as a safety feature, but led to an increase in child fatalities in the mids as small children were being hit by deploying airbags during collisions.
The supposed solution to this problem, moving the child seat to the back of the vehicle, led to an increase in the number of children forgotten in unattended vehicles, some of whom died under extreme temperature conditions. Risk compensation, or the Peltzman effect , occurs after implementation of safety measures intended to reduce injury or death e.
The Law of Unintended Consequences
People may feel safer than they really are and take additional risks which they would not have taken without the safety measures in place. This may result in no change, or even an increase, in morbidity or mortality, rather than a decrease as intended. The British government, concerned about the number of venomous cobra snakes in Delhi, offered a bounty for every dead cobra.
This was a successful strategy as large numbers of snakes were killed for the reward. Eventually, enterprising people began breeding cobras for the income. When the government became aware of this, they scrapped the reward program, causing the cobra breeders to set the now-worthless snakes free. As a result, the wild cobra population further increased.
The apparent solution for the problem made the situation even worse, becoming known as the Cobra effect. Theobald Mathew 's temperance campaign in 19th-century Ireland resulted in thousands of people vowing never to drink alcohol again. This led to the consumption of diethyl ether , a much more dangerous intoxicant — due to its high flammability — by those seeking to become intoxicated without breaking the letter of their pledge.
It was thought that adding south-facing conservatories to British houses would reduce energy consumption by providing extra insulation and warmth from the sun. However, people tended to use the conservatories as living areas, installing heating and ultimately increasing overall energy consumption. A reward for lost nets found along the Normandy coast was offered by the French government between and This resulted in people vandalizing nets to collect the reward. The perverse result is that the orphan children were diagnosed as mentally ill so the church could receive the larger amount of money.
This psychiatric misdiagnosis affected up to 20, people, and the children are known as the Duplessis Orphans. There have been attempts to curb the consumption of sugary beverages by imposing a tax on them. However, a study found that the reduced consumption was only temporary. Also, there was an increase in the consumption of beer among households. The New Jersey Childproof Handgun Law , which was intended to protect children from accidental discharge of firearms by forcing all future firearms sold in New Jersey to contain "smart" safety features , has delayed, if not stopped entirely, the introduction of such firearms to New Jersey markets.
The wording of the law caused significant public backlash, [59] fuelled by gun rights lobbyists , [60] [61] and several shop owners offering such guns received death threats and stopped stocking them [62] [63] In , 12 years after the law was passed, it was suggested the law be repealed if gun rights lobbyists agree not to resist the introduction of "smart" firearms. Drug prohibition can lead drug traffickers to prefer stronger, more dangerous substances, that can be more easily smuggled and distributed than other, less concentrated substances.
Unintended consequences
Televised drug prevention advertisements may lead to increased drug use. Abstinence-only sex education has been shown to increase teenage pregnancy rates, rather than reduce them, when compared to either comprehensive sex education or no sex education at all. Increasing usage of search engines , also including recent image search features, has contributed in the ease of which media is consumed. Some abnormalities in usage may have shifted preferences for pornographic film actors, as the producers began using common search queries or tags to label the actors in new roles.
The passage of the Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act has led to a reported increase in risky behaviors by sex workers as a result of quashing their ability to seek and screen clients online, forcing them back onto the streets or into the dark web. The ads posted were previously an avenue for advocates to reach out to those wanting to escape the trade. Most modern technologies have negative consequences that are both unavoidable and unpredictable. For example, almost all environmental problems , from chemical pollution to global warming , are the unexpected consequences of the application of modern technologies.
Traffic congestion , deaths and injuries from car accidents, air pollution , and global warming are unintended consequences of the invention and large scale adoption of the automobile. Hospital infections are the unexpected side-effect of antibiotic resistance , and even human overpopulation is the side effect of various technological i.
Because of the complexity of ecosystems , deliberate changes to an ecosystem or other environmental interventions will often have usually negative unintended consequences.
Sometimes, these effects cause permanent irreversible changes. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. This article is about the sociological concept. For the novel, see Unintended Consequences novel. Perverse incentive and Perverse subsidies.
Boomerang effect psychology Collateral damage Dutch disease Ethics in mathematics Externality Instrumental and value-rational action Parable of the broken window Rebound effect Systemantics Technology assessment Tragedy of the Commons Virtuous circle and vicious circle. Rivington, 12th ed. Merton Dies at 92". University of California Press. Concise Encyclopedia of Economics 2nd ed. Library of Economics and Liberty.
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Exemplifying the Law of Unintended Consequences Comment". The University of Chicago Press. Retrieved 19 September How new life came to the death strip". Archived from the original on Retrieved 24 February When obscenity filters go wrong". Retrieved 4 April