9. Too many cooks in the kitchen:
decision paralysis
If
there are 20 scientists who have 20 different, equally plausible-sounding
accounts of global risks, decision paralysis (also called analysis paralysis or
option paralysis3) may set in and there is the temptation to do
nothing. A.P. Chekhov wrote, ÒIf many remedies are prescribed for an illness,
you may be certain that the illness has no cure.Ó If too many remedies are
prescribed for global risk, it may be that we cannot come up with a ÒcureÓ.
More simplistically, there may be a large pool of experts and we just listen to
the wrong ones.