“Nested” Problems

June 2, 2015

Nested Problems:  Problem situations which have the appearance of being tame  (and therefore seem to be solvable), but actually are “bundled” problems consisting of tame problems nested within wicked ones. 

In early February, 2014, the keepers at the Copenhagen Zoo were face-to-face with a problem.  It was clear to them that something needed to be done.   The problem had a name – Marius.  Marius was an eighteen-month old reticulated giraffe which had the bad luck to be in the Copenhagen Zoo with other giraffes which shared his genetic makeup.  He was a “surplus” animal.  And so on a misty Sunday morning,  Marius was given his favorite meal of rye bread  – and then shot in the head with a bolt gun.

Why did Marius have to die?  Here is the official, scientific explanation: Marius did not have the genetic profile that would have made him a useful breeder and so in order to protect against inbreeding that would create future problems, he had to be “put down.”  Otherwise,  if kept alive but not allowed to breed, he would have become unruly.  And, he would have used up resources that could be spent on a more genetically desirable animal.  “Killing Marius was a positive sign,” said Bengt Holst, scientific director at the zoo, “and was insurance that in the future we will have a heathy giraffe population.”

Why shoot Marius and not dispatch him with a lethal injection? Because they had decided to feed Marius to the lions and tigers and did not want to contaminate the meat.  As part of the zoo’s educational outreach, they invited zoo patrons, including children, to witness the “dismemberment” of Marius as they butchered him into pieces.   Their intent was to teach those in attendance about giraffe anatomy.   “This helps increase the knowledge about animals but also about life and death,” said Holst.  “We are committed to showing the real thing and not make nature into a Disney World.”  And so, after cutting up Marius into manageable pieces of giraffe meat, they fed him, one piece at time to the lions, tigers and leopards. 

Afterwards, the zookeepers were pleased.  They had a problem.  They followed the appropriate scientific principles and solved it.  Job well done they said to themselves.  When the news got out about what happened to Marius, however, they had what can only be called a rude awakening.   They were blindsided by a world-wide avalanche of anger, revulsion and outrage.  Suddenly, they were faced with a much bigger and more serious problem than deciding what to do with Marius.  Among the many hundreds of thousands of colorful messages they received were many that suggested that they were “evil, wicked, sick, psychopaths” who deserved to get what they gave to Marius!   The news that the zoo keepers had cut up Marius in front of children and then fed the various parts to the lions and tigers  resulted in another wave of furious abuse. 

The scientists at the zoo were genuinely surprised at the hullabaloo.  Pleased that they had solved one problem, they were nonplussed  by the sudden appearance of a much bigger one.  Such emotional reaction is “totally out of proportion” said Holst.   “A giraffe is not a pet; it’s not like a dog or cat that becomes part of the family. It’s a wild animal.”  Marius may have been a wild animal for Holst and the zoo staff, but for the children of Copenhagen, Maius was like a pet.  He did not live in the wild.  He lived in a large city, in a zoo where thousands of citizens came to see him He had a name and as he grew, he became a favorite of the children.  When he  would extend his long neck toward the crowds of children and bat his long eyelashes, they would shout, “Hello, Marius.”

The zoo officials never flinched.  “We know we’ve made this decision in a factual and proper basis. If we are serious about our breeding activities…we need to follow what we know is right.  And this is right!”  Holst only added fuel to the fire when he said “I know that a giraffe is a nice-looking animal, but I don’t think there would have been such an outrage if it had been an antelope, and I don’t think there would have been such an outrage if it had been a pig.”  But it was not a pig, it was Marius. And Marius belonged not only to the zoo but to everybody!

“Nested” Problems:   Tame and Wicked

The dilemma of the Copenhagen Zoo officials is not a unique one.  Often, people think that they have solved one problem, only to discover that they have created a much bigger, more serious one.  And then they are puzzled and confused.  “After all,” they think,  “we solved the problem, didn’t we?”  What causes them confusion is that they believe that are were working to solve one problem when all along they are working on two.

The source of the confusion among the zoo keepers in Copenhagen was that they were facing a “nested” problem and didn’t know it. It looked like a tame problem on the surface, and therefore, they believed, it could be treated like one.  What they actually had  was a tame problem nested in the middle of a messy, complicated and  intractable wicked one.

The zoo keepers made a common mistake.  They  saw only the tame, or technical problem: “Marius is surplus.  Let’s kill Marius and then take advantage of this wise decision to teach people about life and death.  We will end up with a better zoo and people will learn more about animals.” In the immediate sense it was true that Marius’ existence was a tame problem –  one that could be solved with a bolt gun –  but that was not all that it was.  The  extended problem was bigger and more complicated than how it was defined by the scientists. For example, the people of Copenhagen were also part of the problem situation, as were thousands of people world-wide.  And once they all learned what had happened, the wicked problem part of “The Marius Problem”  broke into public view with all of its emotion and outrage.

Almost all problems that get solved in the laboratory and then applied to people’s day-to-day lives, are nested problems, containing both tame and wicked elements.  Some examples:  The application of DDT to kill mosquitos and halt the progress of malaria seemed to be effective until it was discovered that there were unanticipated  consequences far beyond the original goal;  using nuclear power to generate electricity seemed like a good idea until people became more aware of the dangers of contamination and the difficulties of the storage of spent fuel; the U. S. invasion of Iraq was defined as a military excursion to topple Sadam Heussin. At most, we were told, it would require a few weeks, or several months and then it would be over and the troops could come home.  Mission accomplished!

Many problem solvers – scientists, technical experts, strategic planners, zoo keepers – believe that the problems they are working on are tame ones and that, once solved,  are finished. “Aha,” they say,  “here’s the problem,  and here’s the solution.  They match! Wonderful! Problem solved, case closed.  Time to move on to the next one.”  They are unaware that the tame problem they are working is frequently nested in the middle of  messy, emotional,  intractable wicked one.  They are genuinely surprised when they learn that the case is not closed,  it is not possible to move on, and the troops are not coming home.

More Nested Problems

Mugged in New Delhi:   The first assailant appeared suddenly in front and silently held out his hand.  As she turned, she saw that the second was behind her, also beckoning for her bag.  She was trapped.  Maeve O’Conner was aware that resistance was not only futile but also could have been dangerous.  She handed it over. “I had other bags with me,” she said later, “but they knew the bag that had fresh bread in it.  They were totally silent, very quick and very effective.”  The whole encounter took only 15 seconds.  Bag in hand,  the two  sauntered arrogantly away, chewing on the bread. O’Conner had not been mugged by people, but by monkeys.

New Delhi has a serious monkey problem. Under normal circumstances, it is one that could  be controlled.  The original plan by the monkey control officials of the city government was  straightforward:  Pass laws to prohibit the feeding of monkeys, then trap them and move them to forested areas.  But the plan was a failure.  The monkey population has grown bigger and more aggressive each year.  The reason is quite simple. The people of New Delhi believe that the monkeys are the living representatives of the Hindu god Hanuman and so must be honored and respected.  The tradition is that they must be fed on Tuesdays and Saturdays.  That leaves Sunday, Monday, Wednesday, Thursday and Sunday when the monkeys must fend for themselves.  And so on these days  they go after the tourists!

It would seem that too many monkeys in New Delhi is a tame problem.  You would think that the experts could find ways to get rid of them.  But the monkey problem is a nested one, not simply a tame one.  When city officials must not only battle the monkeys but the city residents as well, tame solutions will never work.

Wild Horses on the Range:  The problem of wild horses roaming the Western lands of the United States is not difficult to define: There are many more horses and burros than the land can support, thousands and thousands too many. Many people think that there is a simple solution:  Get rid of the excess horses.  Send out expert riflemen, they say, and shoot them. Then send some of the horse meat to France where it is a delicacy and  sell some to the dog food companies, and leave some on the range for the coyotes and buzzards. Problem solved, everybody wins (except the horses).

It’s not that simple of course.  Yes, there are too many horses, but no one can agree on what to do about them. It  is not a tame problem but a nested one, one for which there is no simple or quick solution.  In 1971 Congress passed the Wild Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act  which declared wild horses and burros to be “living symbols of the historic and pioneer spirt of the West.”   Protection of wild horses was assigned to the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), thus putting the bureau in an impossible position since the BLM is also charged with maintaining the health of the rangeland.  The only way the BLM could protect the horses was let them range wild and free, and the only way to protect the rangeland was get rid of most of them.   Joseph Heller gave this dilemma a name in his masterful novel Catch-22.

Further complicating matters is that large sections of the range are leased to ranchers as pasture for their cattle.  And it is clear that there is not enough room – or feed – for the cattle and the horses.  The ranchers want action now to reduce the numbers of horses grazing on what they see as their grass.

And then there are the groups that believe that the horses should be left alone.  The American Wild Horse Preservation Campaign has weighed in against the BLM’s attempts to remove hoses from the range:  “It is particularly troubling” they wrote in April of 2014 that the BLM is meeting to discuss the removal of wild horses from public lands.  “We urge the…officials to refrain from removing wild horses from BLM lands in violation of federal law.”

And the horses?  Their numbers are doubling every four years.

The BLM solution has been to round up the horses, keep them in pens and offer them for adoption. Since 1971 the BLM’s Wild Horse and Burro Program has adopted out more than 230,00 wild animals.  Yet in 2014, there were still over 50,000 horses in corrals waiting for someone to decide what should be done with them.  Keeping wild horses in pens is a very expensive solution that solves nothing.  About half of the BLM’s horse program’s $80 million budget goes to keeping animals in pens, while only 4 percent goes to  on-the-range management. And of those adopted out, no one knows what has happened to them.

Wolves Are Killing Sheep in France:  In the 1930’s, with  government encouragement, French herders and farmers hunted the gray wolf to extinction.  But now the wolves are back!  Beginning in 1992, small groups of wolves entered France from Italy, and, much to the delight of conservationists and European government officials, they have thrived.  For the sheep herders of the high meadows, however, their return has been a disaster.  The wolves have thrived because the sheep in the meadows have been easy pickings.  During the past five years, by official count, the wolves have slaughtered  at least 20,000 sheep .  “They are killing shepherding as I know it,” said Bernard Bruno, 47, who has lost at least a thousand sheep in recent years.

Why not exterminate the wolves once again?  Recently the European Union, by declaring the wolves to be a protected species,  made that impossible.  “The wolf’s return to Northern and Western Europe is the success story of the last 40 or 50 years,” said Joe Hennon, the spokesman for the European Commissioner for the Environment of the European Union.  For the herders and famers, it seems much more like the end of their world.

What can be done?  French authorities spend  millions each year to reimburse  herders for lost animals and for the Great Pyrenees guard dogs that are supposed to protect the flocks. But nothing seems to be working:  Sheep and goat losses doubled in the last five years.  ” I don’t know what more I can do,” said shepherd Isabelle Feynerol.  “And no one has an answer.”

Kill the wolves?  Tame.  Find a way for wolves and sheep to coexist?  Wicked.

Polio in Pakistan:  The eradication of smallpox is one of the great triumphs of modern medicine.  And the eradication of polio should be another great success.  The vaccine against polio has been proven to be safe and effective, permitting millions and millions of children to grow up without its crippling effects.   All that remains in order to rid the world of this scourge is logistics: find the children and give them the vaccine.   Yet it hasn’t happened.  Polio is still crippling children in parts of Africa including Nigeria, Uganda, Togo, and Mali;  in Syria; in the Middle East, and in Pakistan.

The problem is not in the viability of the vaccine.  There is no doubt that it works.  The problem is to be found in society.  Consider the struggles of the public health people in Pakistan: First there is the spreading of false rumors:  The polio vaccine contains HIV, it is made from monkey or pig urine, it is meant to sterilize the children.  And then there is the violence.  In June of 2012, the Taliban ordered a halt to the immunization of 161,000 children in North Waziristan Province until the U. S. drone attacks stopped.  Several months later, in the middle of a three-day campaign to vaccinate all of the children in Pakistan, 15 health workers going door-to-door to vaccinate children were gunned down Karachi.

Several years earlier, Bill Gates, whose foundation has spent over $700 million dollars to eradicate polio, part of a $8.2 billion effort over the past two decades,  listened to the discouraging words of Bruce Aylward, a World Health Organization official, as he described how the virus was rippling through countries believed to have stopped the disease.  “There’s no way to sugarcoat the past 12 months,” he said.

“So,” asked Mr. Gates, “What do we do next?”

Stopping the spread of polio and eradicating it from the world is a nested problem:  The tame problem is solved: there is a vaccine.  The wicked part of managing the prejudices, the ignorance, and the hostility so that the children can be vaccinated remain.  

The example of smallpox offers hope that in a future time, polio can disappear as well. 

HPV and Cervical Cancer:  Human papillomavirus (HPV) is the most common sexually transmitted infection in the United States.  According to a recent study by the Centers for Disease Control, nearly half of the women ages 14-19 were infected with at least one strain of the virus, with the highest rate, 54 percent, among women ages 20-24.  While HPV is a problem in its own right, its most serious consequence is that it can cause cervical cancer.

The good news in this story is that in 2006 a vaccine was licensed which prevents certain strains of HPV.  The bad news is that only 35 percent of those who can benefit from the vaccine – girls between 13 and 17 – have been protected. “Behind these numbers are people who will develop cervical cancer that could have been prevented,” said Dr. Bruce Gellin, director of the National Vaccine Program Office at the Department of Health and Human Services.

The most important reason that young girls and women are not being protected from what could be a deadly virus is the attitude of the parents.  In 2008, 40 percent of parents said they would not have their girls vaccinated.  In 2010 the percentage of parents opposing vaccination rose to 44 percent.  Some of the parents reported that they were suspicious of all  vaccines, but most were loath to talk to their children about sexual issues in general and STD’s in particular.  According to Dr. Amanda Dempsey, a professor of pediatrics at the University of Colorado in Denver, “when asked, most parents say ‘I just don’t want this vaccine for my daughter.’  If you probe further,  it was either safety concerns or the sex issue.”  Since the parents of young girls are choosing to not have their daughters vaccinated, the medical experts are frustrated.  After all, they reason, science made it possible to avoid  most of the risks of a deadly disease.  Why don’t the parents want to have their girls protected against the possibility of cervical cancer?   “I can’t remember a vaccine where I saw a pattern like this,” said  Dr. Walter Ornstein, director of Emory University’s Program for Vaccine Policy and Development, who ran the CDC immunization program for 16 years.  What they don’t realize is that the problem that worries them is not a tame one but a wicked one.

Once we understand the nature of “nested” problems, no one should be surprised that people who expect to see some problems solved are frustrated   Developing a vaccine against a specific illness is a tame problem, but it is not the whole story.   Actually getting people vaccinated is much more complicated. When beliefs, prejudices, fears, and misinformation is introduced into the equation, the problem becomes a wicked one.

Develop a vaccine?  A tame problem.  Making sure people get vaccinated?  A wicked one.

 Follow Your Bliss

During the 1980’s, in a previous life as a psychotherapist, a middle-aged woman called and asked to see me.  “I have decided to follow my bliss,” she announced.  Unsure as to what she was telling me or why, I asked “What do you mean, ‘follow your bliss?’ ”

She seemed shocked that I was not up-to-date on the latest advice about how to live one’s life.  “Here is what Joseph Campbell tells us to do,” she responded,  quoting Campbell:

If  you follow your bliss, you put yourself on a kind of a track that
has all the while been waiting for you, and [then]the life your ought to
be living is the one you are living…I say follow your bliss and don’t be afraid…
If you follow your  bliss, doors will open for you that wouldn’t have
opened for anyone else.

“And how to you plan to ‘follow your bliss’ ” I asked?

“I have spent the last twelve years of my life raising my four children and trying to please my husband,” she answered. “Now it is my turn. I am planning to leave for India where I hope to find what I am seeking.”

“And what about your family?” I asked.

“Well,” she answered, “they will just have to find their own bliss to follow.”

This dissatisfied woman had come face-to-face with a problem:  “I am unhappy and dissatisfied.  How do I find what I need to feel whole and worthwhile?”  Her solution?  “I will follow my bliss.”   Her understanding of her problem was that it was a tame one: one that she could solve herself.  As we can clearly see, however, it was not a tame problem but a nested one, containing wicked elements. By choosing to “follow her bliss,”  focusing only on her own satisfaction and ignoring her responsibilities and commitments, she was creating serious problems for others.

My therapeutic intervention on that afternoon consisted of trying to help her see that the decision she was thinking of making would seriously affect other people.  It didn’t seem to matter.

There are some “problems” that we can solve without affecting the lives of others:  Decide to major in economics; work to be able to do 25 pushups and 15 pull-ups at the gym; learn to play the Moonlight Sonata by Beethoven; lose twenty pounds.  These are tame problems.  Each of them, given enough discipline and dedication, can be solved.

However, most of the problems we face in our personal and professional lives are not tame ones, but are nested problems, containing both tame and wicked elements.  Dealing with them requires a very difference approach, one that  I will turn to in the next essay.

“Follow Your Blisters!”

A year or so later, the woman who went off to India with the plan to “follow her bliss,” called and asked to see me again. “I learned that my bliss wasn’t in India at all” she told me.  And Joseph Campbell?  Later in his life, after  becoming aware of disruptions his advice caused in the lives of  thousands of people,  he said “I should have said ‘Follow your blisters!’ ”