Blog – Page 7 – Eugene Eric Kim

Firing People and Being Fired

Published November 23, 2020November 23, 2020 by Eugene Eric Kim

You can tell a lot about a person’s relationship to power from whether or not they’ve ever fired anyone and how. Do they understand the scope of their power, both formal and informal? Do they realize that not firing someone can be just as impactful in both positive and negative ways as firing someone? How do they deal with the aftermath?

I would love to experiment with getting folks to talk about their experiences firing others and being fired as a way to talk about power and to align around what success and failure might look like for everyone involved when power is wielded.

Eating Extinct Animals

Published November 21, 2020November 21, 2020 by Eugene Eric Kim

Yesterday, I wrote about how we may have eaten the Woolly Mammoth to extinction. Today, I want to write about eating extinct animals today.

Last year, I took care of my nephews in Cincinnati for a week while my sister and brother-in-law were on a trip. I decided to make it a point to work my way through their packed freezer, which had some truly ancient and scary looking items, including some cod that was older than my then nine-year old nephew and that had survived a move several years earlier.

Around the same time, I was reading Steven Rinella’s, American Buffalo, an excellent book about this iconic animal’s role throughout human history. At one point, Rinella mentions a mummified, 36,000 year old Steppe Bison in Alaska, and writes off-handedly:

Dale Guthrie, a professor emeritus at the University of Alaska, cooked and ate part of the animal’s neck. He reported it to be “well aged but still a little tough.”

I did a double-take when I read this line. It seemed wrong in more ways than one. I was also intrigued, so I did a little research, and I feel good about the overall ethics and wisdom of the move. It turns out that eating ancient animals is a thing, although Woolly Mammoth apparently does not keep well.

It made me feel a whole lot better about cooking that decade-old cod for my nephews. I ended up turning it into a tasty fishcake, which forever boosted their respect for my cooking abilities.

Eating the Woolly Mammoth to Extinction

Published November 20, 2020November 20, 2020 by Eugene Eric Kim

Earlier this year, I listened to a podcast about extinct foods. It opened by claiming that the woolly mammoth went extinct because of humans. Wikipedia is not as definitive about it, although I did find some other articles that also argued humans played a strong role.

These days, it’s de rigeur to blame all of our most extractive, unsustainable practices on capitalism. Capitalism deserves its share of blame, but I think this kind of reasoning is overly simplistic. Animals are not ecologists. Animals behave in ways that are fundamentally selfish and sometimes destructive. Ecosystems succeed when there is just the right mix of competing and cooperating species. There is no management from above.

We are most definitely animals. It doesn’t surprise me that humans have been eating animals to extinction long before higher order economic systems existed. But, we are also theoretically capable of seeing and understanding ecosystems in the way other animals are not. In order to do that, we still have to figure out ways to see how our practices in aggregate impact the world at large. Furthermore, those feedback loops must not just be intellectually understood, but felt. Charts correlating carbon dioxide in the atmosphere with climate, for example, clearly aren’t enough.

This is what scares me about the de-extinction movement. It’s amazing that we can now revive the Woolly Mammoth, but should we? I would feel better about our chances at doing this “right” if we were better at building social systems with feedback loops that helped us make better collective decisions. I believe that we are capable of this, but our track record hasn’t been stellar.

How Can We Learn If Decisions Are Disconnected from Impact?

Published November 19, 2020November 19, 2020 by Eugene Eric Kim

Two years ago, there was a ballot initiative in California, Proposition 10, which would enable city governments to enact rent control on any buildings. I had no idea whether or not this was a good idea, and I was going to go to my default in situations like this, which is to vote no. But I decided to check with my friend, Steph, who works in affordable housing. She was thoughtful, knowledgeable, and even, and after my conversation with her, I decided to vote Yes.

This year, there was a similar ballot initiative, Proposition 21, which would enable city governments to enact rent control on buildings that was first occupied over 15 years ago. Once again, I had no idea whether this was a good idea or not. Once again, I turned to Steph. Once again, I voted Yes.

Here’s what troubled me about finding myself in almost the exact same situation two years later: I had learned absolutely nothing. I didn’t even remember whether or not Proposition 10 had passed. (It didn’t. Neither did Proposition 21.) Even if it had, I would have had no idea what the impact of that measure was.

I believe strongly in collaboration, democracy, and the wisdom of crowds. It’s why I do what I do. And I understand why folks don’t have faith in a population’s ability to govern itself. Our track record, especially recently, is terrible.

Here’s the thing: In order to act in intelligent ways, people need to be responsible for the impact of their decisions. If we don’t know the impact of our decisions, we are not going to make good decisions.

In his book, The Signal and the Noise, Nate Silver explains that pundits are terrible at predicting financial markets, but meteorologists are exceptional at predicting the weather. Why? For starters, we are more likely to remember a meteorologist’s track record, because the feedback loop is tighter. Last night, the weatherperson said it would be sunny. Today, it rained. You’re going to remember that.

If we could figure out better ways to tie decisions with impact, I think we would find society generally doing the right things. This is obviously incredibly hard, but I don’t think it’s impossible.