Paul Ballonoff
Ballonoff Consulting
Suite 400, 601 King Street
Alexandria, Virginia 22314 USA
pablito@cais.com
Abstract
That this conference is taking place means that the more extreme Y2K disaster forecasts were not correct. This may reflect both success and failure of those forecasts. The warnings may have been accepted as potential real problems which were then solved. However as predictions of an actual disaster, the forecasts were false. This paper first discusses reasons for why so many prominent systems disaster forecasts have proven spectacular failures. And, since the session is about forecasting, the paper ventures one of its own, on why the North American electric power grid will not fail forY2K technical reasons.
1. The Disaster of Disaster Forecasting
1.1 Prominent Failed Forecasts.
Y2K disaster forecasts join other spectacularly failed systems-based forecasts of imminent disaster in the last half century: The citations given below illustrating the disaster claims made, are simply the most prominent in what was a true deluge of hundreds or perhaps thousands of books, articles, seminars, government reports, international organization studies, and special projects, on these topics in the respective periods. Most of these disaster forecasts led to, indeed, still dominate government policies in many major governments and world institutions, despite the evidence of the complete failure to occur of the events forecasted.
* The new ice age foreseen in the 1950’s to early 1970’s did not visit us. The 1950’s through the 1970’s were littered with forecasts, based on recent climatic trends, of a new ice age soon to engulf the earth. Even the American Association for the Advancement of Science issued reports forecasting this imminent disaster. One of the most prominent prophets of the new ice age [Schneider 1976] of the United States National Center for Atmospheric Research, later switched to prophecy of global warming.
* The population explosion has not carried the earth past its inherent “carrying capacity” by the early 1990’s, [Hardin et al., 1973] [Meadows et al., 1973], [Meadows et al, 1974]. Instead world population growth is slowing, itself an unpredicted phenomena by all but one systems theory [Ballonoff, 1998].
* The purported limits to growth of economic resources forecasted by well known studies led by the so-called Club of Rome and the American Association for Advancement of Science [Meadows et al, 1973], [Hardin et al, 1973], [Meadows et al, 1974], which were criticized even at the time in [Cole 1974] have not been reached. Instead at the same time that mineral prices have fallen in real terms an unpredicted (by systems analysis) efficiency of use increased and absolute remaining known resource grew See [Ballonoff, 1997] for documentation of this result especially in the energy industry.
* The planet has not run out of fossil fuels. Known energy reserves have grown, total use has far outpaced forecasts and real price has fallen – not exploded to the predicted heights forecasted. The United States Department of Energy and many hundreds of other forecasters, including nearly all major institutions, both public and private, national and international, made such forecasts at many various dates in the 1970’s and 1980’s, as documented in [Ballonoff and Moss, 1991], and further analyzed in [Ballonoff, 1997].
* The idea of imminent global warming is seen with increasing disbelief, and often if believed not considered a threat. This is another forecast made by seemingly reputable government sponsored scientists, first presented in reports to legislative bodies [Hansen et al. 1988], and which currently drives much national government and international institution policy. See the critical review of literature in [Michaels, 1998a] and [Michaels, 1998b].
This record deserves some explanation. It is not that all system-based forecasts are wrong. Many forecasts are made and used daily in business planning and areas of government economic policy, some with good success. None the less the large-scale forecasts have been the ones on which much systems science has staked its public reputation. Their failures have contributed to wide public skepticism of such forecasting, particularly where it involves human activity.
1.2 The Two Cultures
This paper proposes one reason common to the spectacular failures that deal with human activity — which is to say, all but the forecast of the new ice age, which was based purely on purported geological forces. The same reason proposed for these failures underscores a related reason for the one successful system forecast noted above (certain population predictions), and underlies in part the most successful Western institutions.
In the 1950’s C.P. Snow [Snow, 1959 reprinted 1993] in The Two Cultures was renowned for discussing the purported great gap between science and the humanities. Snow saw two worlds that lacked a common language or purpose. As a critique of education in Britain and much of the West in the 1950’s this was probably accurate. But as a description of systems science it is false. Biology and economics share common intellectual foundations from the turn of the last century. The basis for creation of early computer languages and language theory grew from work of Carnap and others to create formal logic for cultural descriptions. Much modern systems analysis grew (and still grows) from efforts at cognitive analysis and creation of artificial intelligence to emulate natural models, including of course natural language, human communication and natural discourse. There is no intellectual disconnect between science and humanities (however badly the universities may have failed to understand either).
1.3 Some Actual Human Cultures
More to the point here, the most long lasting institutions in the West include the most humanistic: the religions. What in the United States has come to be called the “Judaeo-Christian tradition” has existed in some continuous form for thousands of years. The presently existing forms have existed for at least hundreds of years, and in several prominent cases (the Catholic, Orthodox Christian, and Orthodox Jewish forms) for more than a millennium. These institutions share at least one common feature with the longest lasting continuous forms of government, and with the successful examples of forecasting of human activity.
What is that property? Consider this citation from 12 Romans 6, summarizing the duties of Christians and their relationship to the Church: “Having them gifts differing according to the grace that is given us, let us prophesy according to the proportion of faith.” Individuals with unique graces have common duties or roles due the Church. A similar notion is expressed within the Talmud (the ancient collection of Jewish law and teaching based on the Testaments), at Sanhedrin Chapter 4 Mishna 5 as follows: “ … man stamps many coins with one seal and they all resemble one another but the King of Kings ? stamped man with the seal of the first man yet not one of them resembles his fellow” ? and therefore each person has certain obligations. The common pattern: unique persons with common obligations in law or contract.
1.4 Uniqueness as a Basis for Analysis
Recognition of human uniqueness is fundamental to viable institutions and social theories. One of the more successful branches of economics, micro-economics, also known as the theory of the firm, is constructed on the concept of “incomparability of individual utilities”. The theory assumes the existence of unique individual human preference functions, yet which are manifest by economic activities of “firms” which have similar forms capable of analysis. Likewise, the more stable continuous Western political systems are predicated on individuals acting on their own choices, constrained in certain ways (largely by criminal laws proscribing certain acts and mandating honesty of action) but otherwise free to act as they wish. Biology of course creates genetically unique individual humans, so these more successful institutional concepts also reflect biological reality.
What the above share is the notion of unique individuals, acting on their own preferences, while sharing certain common classes of roles. What all of the failed systems forecasts share is the opposite of these assumptions: implicitly or explicitly they assume that all humans are and will act, identically. The recently failed communist and socialist political systems assume that individual differences could be often ignored. In doing so they eliminated (or failed to take into account) the very human diversity which creates the possibility of solving problems by previously unforeseen, or simply diverse, solutions.
In short, systems of analysis that assume human identity ignore the possibility of adaptation, of innovation, of “progress”, by denying the existence of the sources of that innovation and progress. In a very literal sense, the failed forecasts share a common technology: the assumption of identical humans. The assumption of identical particles in thermodynamics leads to predictions based on use of density functions using the Stirling Number of the First Kind (identical objects into unique locations). Since these methods underlie traditional thermodynamics, and since traditional systems techniques are borrowed from thermodynamics, even technical-looking systems methods make wrong forecasts. In contrast, the above-cited successful analyses and institutions are based on analysis assuming unique individuals — analysis requiring density functions using the Stirling Number of the Second Kind.
1.5 Human Uniqueness vs. Finite Sets of Rules
It is important to distinguish the assumption that all humans are unique, from assertions about properties of systems of cultural rules. We know, from experience, that systems that assume humans are identical fail miserably whether as scientific, political, economic, bureaucratic or religious mechanisms. But we also know that each culture has a limited set of rules on how people “ought” to behave, and/or of actions to avoid. This last fact however relates to assertions about systems of role structures and classifications, not to identicalness of individual humans. In fact, successful cultures can and do simultaneously employ limited sets of classifications and also allow uniqueness in human action, such as the prominent examples noted in Paragraph 1.3.
1.6 Uniformity of Failure
The failed forecasts shared the same mistake to which the journal of science commentary, Scientific American, recently attributed the failure of American government programs to design more fuel efficient cars: “They stuck to some of the [technological] requirements in such a dogmatic manner that they wound up with nothing at all.” Communist systems likewise voided their capability of technical innovation (more precisely, implementation of innovation) by limiting choices and risks taken to those of a tiny minority, thus eliminating practical diversity. In the West religions and enterprises that ignore the presence of human diversity have found little long-term success, whatever their professed uniformity of faith.
The claim of “finite” resources falsely freezes the concept of resource to the technology of a moment, failing to recognize the essentially cognitive (and short-term technological) nature of definition of resource, hence failing to recognize the possibility of change or diversity in that cognition. Energy is but one cognitively created resource. Predictions of imminent disaster due to “finite resources” are false because at any given time the concept of what constitutes a “resource”, and how to use it, is changing due to continuing invention. Since what is human is always potentially unique the concept of technology is always subject to unique (in specific cases, unpredicted) innovation.
Thus the more spectacularY2K doom forecasts failed for similar reasons: failure to recognize adaptability, innovation, change and diversity of individuals and of systems composed of individuals. Y2K disaster forecasts ignored that humans could and would adapt their systems, and otherwise act in unique, diverse and unpredicted non-identical ways. It is our very humanity that saves us, whether in science or more “humanistic” endeavors.
2. Venturesome
As this conference session is about (this author predicts) failed forecasts, it is fair to ask the author to venture one which presumably will be correct. Thus on the May 10, 1999 date on which this is written, the author predicts that the electric power system of the United States will not suffer a spectacular failure on January 1, 2000, or at least not one due to Y2K issues. (I do not forecast the weather with such certainty so far ahead; a late Carribean hurricane ridding into a Canadian winter storm could produce fascinating practical tests of power system reliability in eastern North America.)
2.1 Forewarned is Forearmed
Why will the Y2K disaster not occur on the North American power grid? One reason is that the forecasts of disaster caused the power industry to act to prevent it. Why does this author believe the actions will be successful? The reasons are all applications of the logic of Part I of this paper: humanity and diversity.
2.2 Humans Tend to Act Responsibly
First, to believe that the power system, or indeed any industry, will fail due to Y2K is to believe that the operators of that industry are irresponsible. But just the reverse, the very human individuals who make the actual operating decisions have risen to their positions because they assume personal and actual responsibility for what occurs on “their watch”. The would not wish to see the system for which they are responsible fail while they are in charge, and will therefore act to prevent it. Because humans are unique, each may seek to implement that responsible action in somewhat different ways, making the specific actions taken in any one place somewhat hard to forecast. It may even be this very unpredictability of mode which makes so many systems analysts distrustful of actual humans. Even so, the single most unexplained facet of Y2K disaster forecasters is the basis for their implied belief that all operators of all major systems will act irresponsibly.
2.3. Diversity of Ownership and Control
Second, in North America at least, ownership and control of operating systems is highly diverse. This is a product of two primary factors: the predominantly private ownership of industry in North America; and the structural consequences of the legal separations of sovereign powers in all national jurisdictions of North America. Due to this diversity of actual operating responsibility, a failure in any one local operating system is exceedingly unlikely to simultaneously occur in nor equally affect all of the others.
2.4 Redundant Design
Third, the design and construction of the power supply and distribution grid in North America includes a high degree of redundancy coupled to diversity of ownership and operating structure. This also occurs due to two primary factors. First, the same diversity of ownership means a diversity of management styles and technological solutions. But second, most power system operators are themselves very good systems analysts of the classical form and so they employ classical tools, including especially intentional design for redundant systems to accommodate normal planning scenarios.
The first of these implies that it is unlikely that all systems will fail simultaneously for the same reason at the same time, as each has different operating characteristics. This is one reason that private industry generally is more resilient than socialist industry.
2.5 Design for Extreme Conditions
The second of these reasons is more technical. Ordinary power system design includes an intentional “overbuilding”of capacity compared to normally expected peak (extreme) experienced operating conditions. Typically the extreme operating condition occurs in North America in their summer, perhaps in the hottest days of July. A typical design is to plan for the existence of actually available production and transmission capability equal to the expected (experienced) peak, plus perhaps 20%, so the total system has available about 120% of the expected greatest demand. Now, the Y2K disaster is predicted to occur in mid-winter, not mid-summer. In mid-winter most power systems are operating at about 50% of their summer peak. Indeed on January 1 at midnight (of December 31) power systems might be operating at much less than 50% of peak, due to normal general shut-down of industry for the new year holiday reducing power demand significantly. The result is that even if capacity representing up to 70% of peak operating requirements were shut down unexpectedly due to Y2K failures, the system could still operate to produce the required demand of up to 50% of system peak in mid-winter (50% + 70% = 120%, the total actually available capacity).
2.6 Responsibility + Diversity = Resiliency
It would require a truly spectacular failure of responsibility for 70% of designed peak capacity to fail simultaneously in so many diversely managed systems. In fact, as part of the assumption that all humans are identical traditional methods also apparently assume that all humans are irresponsible. In fact however, given the opportunity, most humans take their duties with great seriousness and attempt to do them well. It must certainly be one of the great failures of systems forecasts to fail to take account of this fact. The most commonly forecasted reason for purported failure of North American power is the presumed shut down of all nuclear production. Like much public “analysis” of purported problems in the nuclear power industry of North America, this one is also based on fantasies of complete absence of responsible action.
But even if it were granted that somehow, all nuclear production in North America were to fail unexpectedly (or even, planned) on December 31 at midnight, the complete loss of all this power would not collapse the grid, and certainly not for any sustained time. Why? Redundancy. Nuclear power provides about 20% of all North American production. The system however is designed with 120% of required capacity. Loss of about 20% of that capacity, especially on a date when only 50% is required to cover total output, is a manageable problem. It is especially manageable for those scenarios in which all nuclear plants are intentionally shut down in advance due to pure (if irrational) fear. In that event, other plants would already be scheduled to be on-line, so there is little risk of even short term interruption, and if it occurred it would not (in that event) be due to “nuclear” failures.
2.7 Requisite Variety
It is useful to note that in the concrete discussion above, the failure of the Y2K disaster forecast occurs precisely because the system about which the disaster is predicted (the North American power grid) has in fact employed many traditional systems tools in their classically intended mode: redundancy, reliability, variety, scenario forecasting – all systems reliability engineering tools, applied to physical systems. But they are also applied in ways that allow for the diversity of human capabilities to be also employed, especially at the level of system management and operations.
One summary of the discussion above in purely traditional terms is thus to note that this may be an example of the law of requisite variety (see review by [Umpleby, 1999]), in the form that the control system must have sufficient variety to manage the probably greater variety of possible behavior in the system being controlled. In the North American power grid, this occurs since the design embodies diversity of ownership, with therefore diverse management styles, diverse individuals required to act responsibly in the operating levels of management, and minimal government control (which when present tends tor educe variety at the control level), resulting in diversity of behavior and a control system with the apparently necessary variety to manage that behavior. This institutional structure, plus the system redundant design, allows for a much better ability to respond to unexpected events, and in an overall more reliable system.
3. Conclusion
In short, the greatest Y2K risk to the power system, or any other system, is not from any Y2K technical issue. It is instead from the purely social causes induced by ignorance of how human systems actually work. These are made even worse due to the unfortunate tendency of many national governments and world institutions to act on “scientific” forecasts of pending disasters, to completely determine, and therefore massively misdirect, their policies. It may be that the measured response of many national governments to the forecasted doom of Y2K has been among the more responsible replies of government to doomsayers. But the on-going hysteria building for action on “global warming” shows that governments as a group have not learned from past mistakes.
References
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[Ballonoff and Moss 1991] Ballonoff, P. A. and Diana Moss, “Natural Gas Price Forecasting: One Explanation for Upward Bias” in Energy Exploration and Exploitation Vol 9 No. 3 107 – 121.
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[Hansen et al, 1988] Hansen, James et al. “Global Climate Changes as Forecast by Goddard Institute for Space Studies Three-Dimensional Model”, in Journal of Geophysical Research, 93: 9341-64 , August 20, 1988.
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[Meadows, et al. 1974] Meadows, Donella H. and others, The limits to growth: a report for the Club of Rome’s Project on the Predicament of Mankind, Universe Books, New York
[Michaels, 1998a] Michaels, Patrick J. “The Consequences of Kyoto”, CATO Policy Analysis No. 307 available at http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa-307.html
[Michaels, 1999b] Michaels, Patrick J. “The Long Hot year: Latest Science Debunks Global Warming Hysteria”, CATO Policy Analysis No. 329 available at http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa-329.pdf
[Schneider, 1976] Schneider, Stephen H. and Lynne E. Mesirow, The Genesis Strategy The Plenum Press, New York.
[Umpleby, 1999] Umpleby, Stuart, Presentation to the Y2K Before and After Conference: Before, George Washington University, Summer 1999, transcript available at http://www.gwu.edu/~y2k.