Research: The inner workings of progress

Ongoing research into the "progress trap" syndrome focuses on a more scientific than historic analysis of the behavioural aspect.

An analysis of the behavioural stages of counter-productive progress. January 25, 2012
(Research paper, preliminary notes)

Despite several modern discussions of the progress trap syndrome, it is not broadly accepted as a problem, much less investigated scientifically as a specific set of recurring, socially self-destructive steps. This author believes that there are behavioural aspects to this pattern of counter-productivity that merit scientific investigation. The application of the term progress trap to the syndrome in 1990, and the subsequent discussion by Ronald Wright¹, Professor Tad Patzeck² and Thomas Homer-Dixon³ can be seen as instances of independent verification, and perhaps offer grounds for further study.

This project seeks to address the complex syndrome that constitutes the behaviour of self-confounding progress. If one were to list the steps that make up a cycle of self-negating progress, it would begin like this:

1. one can be so focused on cognitive activities as to be unaware of events in one’s environment
2. one can perform rational activities that have an effect on one’s environment
3. one can pursue rational activities that have a negative effect on one’s environment
4. cognitive function can incorrectly interpret stimuli from the environment
5. one can perform activities that harm one’s environment and not be aware of them
..

and continue until the step of failure is reached and the lessons of the experience are enumerated. That would be followed by reasonable proposals for addressing this problem.
There are existing studies that support each assertion. For example, the first can be illustrated with the paper: Gorillas in our midst: sustained inattentional blindness for dynamic events⁴. The second could be illustrated by the common practise of building a shelter.⁵ The fourth item is elucidated by Michael Gazzaniga, who wrote “In neurologically intact individuals, the interpreter does not hesitate to generate spurious explanations for sympathetic nervous system arousal.”⁶ And so on.

1. Ronald Wright, A Short History of Progress, Anansi Press, Toronto , 2004
2. Professor Tadeusz W. Patzek, web archive of articles on progress traps: http://gaia.pge.utexas.edu/Harmful/archive2008.htm
   http://gaia.pge.utexas.edu/Harmful/archive2007.htm
3. Thomas Homer-Dixon, Carbon Shift: How the Twin Crises of Oil Depletion and Climate Change Will Define the Future Random House Canada, 2009
4. Daniel J. Simons, Christopher F. Chabris, Gorillas in our midst: sustained inattentional blindness for dynamic events, Perception, 1999, volume 28, pages 1059 - 1074.
5. Kirsh, D. Adapting the Environment instead of Oneself. Adaptive Behavior MIT Press, Cambridge, MA 4(3-4):415-452, 1996
6. Michael Gazzaniga, “Cerebral specialization and interhemispheric communication, Does the corpus callosum enable the human condition?” Brain, Oxford Volume 123, Issue 7 Pp. 1293-1326. 2000

See also:
Tainter, Joseph A (2003. First published 1988), The Collapse of Complex Societies, New York & Cambridge, UK

Laudan, L., 1977, Progress and Its Problems: Toward a Theory of Scientific Growth. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.