Want to Change the World? Keep These Thoughts in Mind

Solving the world's problems will require some new ideas and some effective selling of many ideas. Taking advantage of opportunities to improve things that are okay now will also take new ideas. That's easy enough to see.

But what counts as a good idea? If you don't know then you can't really say whether your idea is any good. Many factors are really involved here, though we may want to oversimplify the evaluation process and simply assert that we have a good idea ("My idea will be good for women." "My idea will force people to save energy.").

I've written about the characteristics of social pollution before. We obviously want our world-changing ideas to be the opposite of social pollution. We want our "good" ideas to be scientically sound (wherever there is some relevant science), logical, and consistent with widely held human values like freedom, family, and health.

One more element we need to consider is the set of abstract principles that also need to be considered. I'd like to offer a preliminary list of principles to keep in mind as you create an idea and try to sell it to the world:

1. Decision making is emotional not rational.

2. Canging perceptions will be more effective than appealing to emotions or to cold facts.

3. People will work harder to avoid a loss than to achieve a gain.

4. People who benefit from an idea should also bear the costs.

5. Look for ways to gain leverage over an issue, to get the maximum effect per unit of money or time.

6. All changes in society will have unintended consequences, good and bad.

7. People always want to know what's in it for them.

8. Opportunities, rather than perceived problems, are a legitimate focus.

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A Magazine About Ideas

Why isn't there a Consumer Reports for ideas? That very popular magazine does us a service by reporting on the performance and quality of all manner of consumer goods. I bet many of you have used Consumer Reports magazine or one of the annual Buying Guides to help you make a purchase or two.

Why isn't there a similar magazine devoted to ideas? Yes, I realize that many magazines are devoted to ideas, usually approached from a liberal (Mother Jones) or conservative (National Review) perspective. Other magazines evaluate ideas about religion and science from a skeptical or critical perspective.

I'm talking about a magazine that tests political ideas, social policy ideas, popular beliefs, popular attitudes, and even traditions. The "tests" in question could include conventional policy analysis, thought experiments, creative exercises (What if marriage were a five year renewable contract?), and assessments of ideas, attitudes, behaviors, and beliefs that may qualify as social pollution.

Social pollution - an idea, belief, attitude, or behavior that is unscientific, illogical, and/or that tends to undermine widely-held human values like self determination and health.

How many of our beliefs, ideas, and behaviors would look bad when subjected to the "social pollution" test? Note that I do not expect an idea to die out because it scores poorly! We hold on to ideas for emotional reasons and because of intertia - it takes too much effort to change.

I think my magazine, call it Is That a Good Idea?, could include debates, interviews, policy analysis, speculative articles (What would really happen if we legalized marijuana use by adults? What if we lowered the age of consent for sex to 13?), and profiles of bad people and ideas.

People who come up with really bad ideas could be ridiculed in a section called "The Padded Cell" and ideas that desperately need to go away could be detailed in "The Circular File."

So, who wants to help me get this thing started?

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Helping People Make Better Decisions(r)

Voters, politicians, consumers, activists, managers and the rest of us all make choices regularly. We make choices about legislation (Shall I vote for it or against it?), where to live, what car to buy, what politicians to vote for, whether to bother voting at all, and a bunch of other stuff. You get the picture.

My topic for the past two posts has been the common human question "What should I do?" and the ways in which our answers depend on much more than free will. Now I want to offer a few (potentially) practical thoughts and put this subject to bed.

My ideas relate to creating a social environment where people are encouraged to make better decisions. One of the big influences on decisions is what sociologists call the "generalized other" - a fancy term for the cultural expectations and judgements that we're exposed to throughout life. Our childhood is another important factor in our decision making.

So, here are six suggestions for creating a social environment that encourages better decision making.

1. Create and promote new ideas -specifically, we need people who can create and sell new decision rules, like the rule about avoiding synthetic chemicals or the rule about never taking "hot" stock tips.

2. Boycott men's and women's lifestyle magazines - I never read the women's magazines, but the men's magazines tend to promote fantasy images of what a man's body, sex life, income, and wardrobe should be like. I suspect that the equivalent women's magazines are just as harmful.

3. Advertising regulations - Libertarians please don't read this! We should ban AL:L advertising for alcohol, tobacco, and gambling. I don't care about adults who drinkm, smoke, or piss away their money on slot machines and video poker. I do think the net effects on society of those three things are so negative that we should not allow companies to market them through the usual channels. That brings me to ...

4. Banning product placements - Companies should not be allowed to place their alcohol and tobacco products in movies.

5. Critical thinking skills - teach 'em in school

6. Moral education - GASP! CHOKE! Yes, I think kids should be taught to understand widely held human values (like freedom and family), why those values are so common, and how they can be undermined by our personal decisions, by corporations, by governments, by religions, and by secular interest groups.

So, your homework assignment is to take one of my six ideas and make something happen! I'll expect to see a progress report monthly beginning on 11/04. 

(r) Obviously, the (r) is a joke here! I can't register some generic-sounding blog title. Or can I?

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