PREDICTIONS – 10 Years Later - Santa Fe Institute

5. GOOD GUYS AND BAD GUYS COMPETE THE SAME WAY
• • •
Army headquarters, Washington, DC, 1915. World War I
is raging in Europe, but Americans still remain anxious observers.
This is another meeting of the Army’s top brass,
another sequence of heated exchanges among men whose specialty
is warfare. Their instinct is warning them of nearing
action. The events in Europe challenge these men’s training
and preparedness. The talk is of numbers: dollars, ships, airplanes,
weapons, men, and casualties. They break down the
numbers by country, by continent, by army; they project them
into the future. They are trying to be as rigorous as they can, to
make use of everything they have learned. They want to account
for all possibilities, make the best forecasts, the most
probable scenarios, leave nothing to chance.
“How much is it going to cost? How many men are we going
to lose? How many will the enemy lose?” There are
contingencies that seem unforeseeable. “We must anticipate
and prepare for all eventualities: bad weather, diseases, earthquakes,
you name it. How many men are we going to lose just
from ordinary diseases? One out of six people today die from
either tuberculosis or diphtheria. These numbers have been declining
in recent years, but what if the trends reverse? What if
these numbers double or triple from an epidemic among men
in action during the critical months?”
“That will not happen,” sounds the voice of a psychointellectual
maverick attending the meeting. “Trust human nature.
When people are called upon to perform, they become more
resistant to illness. Soldiers in action develop high resistance,
like pregnant women. Under trial they become immune to diseases.
They fall ill only when they give up hope.”
“I don’t know about that theory,” snaps a pragmatic military
man. “I wish we had a miracle drug for these diseases.
What have those scientists been spending all the research
money on? Why don’t we have a drug to wipe out these diseases?
With an effective vaccine in our hands we could
instantly eliminate such possibilities for disaster.”
• • •
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