gmtPLUS09 | live from Seoul

In this Wired article, civil engineers have found that disobeying authority was instrumental in saving lives in the 9/11 attacks. Case in point, after both buildings were burning, many calls to 911 resulted in advice to stay put and wait for rescue. The use of elevators (which goes against the recommendation of using stairs in case of evacuation)  coupled with the decision to not stay put, saved roughly 2500 lives.

The disobedience was not a representation of mob panic, the report documents how people stopped to help the injured and assist the mobility-impaired, as well as offering emotional comfort. Experts call these actions as a whole "reasoned flight".

The organizational behavior as seen in this group brings up a point in Chapter 3, Surowiecki writes about a group of army ants who are
moving in a huge circle with a circumference of 1200 feet. Taking each
ant 2.5 hours to complete the loop. A "circular mill", which is created
when army ants find themselves separated from their colony. Once they
have become lost, they obey a simple rule which is to follow the ant in
front of you.

Ants as a species are hard-wired to know nothing, yet they are able to as a crowd efficiently run their colony. What is significant of course is that the simple tools that has enabled ants to survive (locating food sources, completing work/task, and reproduction) are also responsible for the demise of the ants who get trapped in the circular mill. Every decision an ant makes depends on what its fellow ants do, and an ant cannot make decisions as an independent, which could help break the "march to death."

Therefore, the individuals in the two towers who so choosingly broke away from the pack (disobeying orders) and their ‘independent’ decision saved their lives. One thing to remember is:

Independence doesn’t mean isolation, but it does mean relative freedom from the influence of others. If we are independent, our opinions are, in some sense, our own. We will not march to death in a circle just because the ants in front of us are doing so.

One of the lessons all have learned during childhood is, particularly after facing punishment for participating in a misdeed: if your friend jumped off a bridge, would you follow?

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 9th, 2005 at 9:25 am and is filed under Office Space. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.