Jared Diamond, the distinguished Professor of Geography at the UCLA gave the Lewis Thomas Prize Lecture at the Rockefeller Institute, NYC, on March 27, 2003, on “Why Do Some Societies Make Disastrous Decisions” and destroy themselves. This work is also published in his book, Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed, Penguin Book. The references to the US government decision strategies in the article was in reference to President George W Bush at the helm. Dr Diamond’s lecture on the reasons for failure are peppered with many anecdotal case-studies from the perspective of history, the environment, and the human and physical geography, through history from the Mayans to the Ester islanders and the Vikings in Iceland to modern day Montana woes. He also cites the work of the historian Joseph Tainter in his book, “The Collapse of Complex Societies”.

In his paper, he provides a roadmap of factors in group decision making, delineated into four ‘fuzzy’ categories

1. Failure to anticipate a problem before it arises.
2. Failure to perceive the problem when it arrives.
3. Failure to try to solve the problem even after it is perceived.
4. Failure to solve the problem after trying to.

In 1, he cites a few possible reasons:

a. No prior experience in recognising the problem. b. The prior experience has been forgotten (even when the records and documentation are still present). c. A flawed reasoning by false analogy (i.e., using a wrong heuristic)

In 2, he cites 3 possible reasons

a. origin of some problems are literally imperceptible. b. the problem takes the form of a slow trend (‘creeping normalcy’). c. distant management (remote leadership).

In 3, he calls it the commonest and most surprising reason – failure even with perception.

a. “rational behaviour”, arising from clash of interests, selfishness and perverse motivation,  absence of a long-term stake, when the interests of the decision-making elites clashes with the interests of the rest of society (and are insulated from the consequences of their actions). b. “irrational behaviour” – where harm occurs to everyone, due to a clash of values (religious; societal baggage etc); clash between short-term and long-term motives (e.g., destroying sustainable farming for the sake of feeding immediate hunger). c. psychological denial – subconscious suppression of action due to an inability to bear the thought of obvious disaster.

In 4, failure to succeed even when we try, the possibilities are

a. the problem is too difficult, and beyond our present capacity to solve and b. when efforts are too little, too late.

He concluded that while the failure to anticipate, perceive, try to solve problems may seem pessimistic, many societies have succeeded, in the area of solving environmental problems. He used for illustration through the ages, the Incas, New Guinea, 18th century Japan, 19th century Germany, and Tonga, who recognised the consequences of deforestation and undertook successful policies to address the potential problem.

Jared Diamond’s work and illustration has great resonance for many of us who study (large) group failure in any other fields.