Writings about uncertainty, complexity, history, leadership, and more!
Conflagration
(Volume 1, Issue 1)
Word Count: ~1,500
Read Time: 5 minutes
In the summer of 2017, a month before my wife, Diana, was due with our first child, we went on a short vacation to Santa Fe, New Mexico. Santa Fe was only a short drive from our house at Fort Carson, Colorado, and we had always wanted to go. As we drove through mountain passes and high desert, Diana looked up things to do in Santa Fe. Of the many attractions, she found the Santa Fe farmers market, which was very unique because it was set up in an old railyard. We determined that this was something we couldn’t miss.
We arrived at the farmers market early in the morning, excited to see what the vendors had to offer. The farmers market had two main portions, an inside portion that was set up in what used to be a rail terminal, and an outside portion which was arrayed along the rail platform. Inside the terminal was a large open area with some vendors quietly bargaining with shoppers and people sitting on benches enjoying snacks and showing off the things they had purchased that morning. We came in through the terminal’s main entrance, looked around for a few minutes, and then went out the side entrance to see the vendors under the awnings outside.
When we returned inside the terminal, I saw a large unattended backpack sitting close to the entrance of the building, where we had first come in. I turned to Diana and said, “was that here when we got here?” Diana looked at me panicked, and said, “no, it definitely wasn’t.” I quickly said, go outside and call 9-1-1.” We didn’t need more words than that. A few years earlier Diana was at the Boston Marathon when two bombs killed 3 people and wounded 264 others, and my military training taught me to identify potential threats and take action. We both knew how devastating a bomb attack would be in that enclosed space, and we knew what needed to be done. I didn’t want to cause a panic but I needed to identify the owner of the bag, and if no owner could be found, I needed to try to evacuate everyone from the building.
As an Army Captain, I was the commander of over one hundred Soldiers. I could control my unit’s complex maneuvers through wretched terrain, at night, in the rain, under fire with nothing more than a radio and a map. Getting some people to move away from a potential threat was going to be a walk in the park. When I gave orders, things happened. In this potentially dangerous situation, I was going to take charge and things were going to be just fine. I knew simply issuing commands would be insufficient, I needed to explain the situation and people would easily see what needed to be done.
I turned and faced the people in the bustling terminal, took a deep breath, and in a booming voice said, “MAY I HAVE YOUR ATTENTION!? THERE IS AN UNATTENDED BACKPACK SITTING BY THE FRONT ENTRANCE.” I motioned to the backpack. “IF THIS BACKPACK BELONGS TO YOU, PLEASE IDENTIFY YOURSELF IMMEDIATELY.” The crowd looked at me with blank stares. There was silence and then some murmuring. “WHOSE BACKPACK IS THIS!?” I shouted. No response. In my loudest commanding voice, I said, “AT THIS TIME I AM GOING TO ASK THAT EVERYONE VACATE THE TERMINAL USING THE SIDE ENTRANCE AND MOVE AWAY FROM THE BUILDING UNTIL WE FIND OUT THE ORIGIN OF THE BACKPACK. I WILL ALERT LAW ENFORCEMENT.”
People murmured and looked at each other confused about what to do, but no one moved. I inhaled once more and I felt an increasing urgency to get people moving. “WE NEED TO IMMEDIATELY EVACUATE THE BUILDING.” A few people started slowly gathering their things and started sluggishly moving towards the exit, but for the most part, everyone just sat there. As I tried to get people moving by motioning my arms to the exit and saying, “Let’s go, let’s go” I was confronted by a tall thin man in his 50s who angrily said, “You need to stop, that bag probably just belongs to someone who just left it there to shop and they’ll be back soon.” After a brief back and forth it was clear that getting people to leave was an impossible task. I turned and left, furious at the naivete of the crowd. I called the police, told them what had transpired and Diana and I walked back to our rental house, we weren’t going to stick around to find out what was going to happen. Based on the fact that there were no news reports about a bomb at the Santa Fe farmers market, it was clear that someone had simply left their backpack.
Yes, the probability that the backpack contained a bomb was extraordinarily low. It was far more likely that it belonged to someone who left it there temporarily and who would soon return. But the consequences of a bomb going off in an enclosed space with over one hundred people were devastating. Maybe I overreacted. Maybe I didn’t try hard enough to get people to leave and gave up too easily. Maybe I should have thought about it more before I addressed the crowd. To this day my emotions about the incident are a mix of intense embarrassment and a feeling of firm resolution that I did something approximating the right thing.
Crowds are very odd things. Author and probabilist Nassim Taleb points out that even if you have perfect information about every individual in a crowd, and can predict with precision how each person will react in a situation, it is impossible to predict the actions and reactions of a crowd. As you scale up the number of people, the complexity increases immeasurably. This incident helped me realize that different crowds will react to different things in different ways. Had this happened at a farmers market in Boston or New York, I would likely have found an audience more willing to realize the danger of an unattended bag, but maybe not.
You can’t predict with certainty what a crowd will do in a given situation, but you can probably get more movement from a crowd by repeatedly screaming something really simple, really loud, than by trying to rationally explain the best course of action. The one thing that everyone knows about crowds is that in a theater they will trample each other to death running for the exits if someone shouts “FIRE!” Had I shouted “BOMB!” people would likely have exited the terminal. But I also might have caused a panic, and people may have gotten hurt going for the exit, when in reality there was no bomb, just an abandoned backpack.
Perhaps this exposes the potential danger of simplistic slogans, ideas, and beliefs. Simple ideas may get people moving, but people might also get trampled in the process. Even if you are trying to do the right thing, like trying to get people away from a potential bomb, there may be more harm done by shouting the simple thing than by trying to explain the complicated thing. The risk of harm of an idea, belief, or communication decreases as simplicity decreases. (See graph at bottom).
You can’t control the crowd, you can only control you. I wasn’t responsible for ensuring the safety of the people in the terminal, my only responsibility was to alert them of a potential threat and then attempt to guide them to the correct course of action. But once they were aware of the threat, they were responsible for their own actions. Had I reduced a complicated idea to a simple one by shouting “BOMB!” I would have been responsible for the harm that was done. This same principle holds true in the sphere of public discourse. If you knowingly reduce a complex idea to a simple one for the purposes of inspiring action, you are responsible for the harm that is done. Even if your cause or your goal is righteous, failing to understand and communicate nuance and complexity can carry significant risk, much of it hidden. For this reason, don’t just parrot what others say, look deeper at simple ideas, and examine the hidden premises of catchy memes and slogans. It’s really easy to think critically about things you disagree with - it’s much harder to think critically about the beliefs we currently hold.
Questions for Reflection:
What would you have done if you were in my position at the farmers market?
What simple ideas animate you?
What complexities are you ignoring?
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