Island at the Edge of the World

As I mentioned in a recent post ("Are tropical birds returning back to Guam?"), I occasionally return to the subject of an older post so that I can provide an update to the information I previously shared.  Today, I would like to update not one, but two older posts on Easter Island (see "Butterfly Wings and Stone Heads" and "Robin Hood and the State of Texas"), based upon information that I recently read in a book by the British archeologist and journalist Mike Pitts called Island at the Edge of the World: The Forgotten History of Easter Island – A Provocative Archaeological Study of Colonial Legacy, Indigenous Reclamation, and the Collapse Myth (see also Margaret Talbot's review of the book in The New Yorker magazine).

Easter Island (also known as Rapa Nui - I will use that name from now on, even though Rapa Nui is still not what the island's original inhabitants called their home) is so-named because the Dutch explorer, Jacob Roggeveen "discovered" the island on Easter Sunday in 1722.  The island is located in the Southeastern Pacific Ocean and was annexed by Chile in 1888.  It is technically part of the Polynesian islands, and it is truly an island at the edge of the world, as it is one of the world's remotest islands.  The closest inhabited island, Pitcairn Island, is over 1,200 miles away (Pitcairn Island is famous for being the island where nine of the mutineers from the famous "Mutiny on the Bounty" led by Fletcher Christian settled).

Rapa Nui is perhaps most famous for its nearly 1,000 monumental stone statues, called moai, which were created by the early Rapa Nui people.   The moai, monolithic human figurines carved out of volcanic rock more than 500 years ago, played a major role in the culture of the island during its early history. Oral tradition suggests that Rapa Nui was first settled by early Polynesian explorers from the Cook Islands, though the Norwegian scientist and explorer Thor Heyerdahl suggested in the late 1940's and early 1950's that Rapa Nui was also settled by people from parts of South America, most notably Peru.  Heyerdahl completed a voyage in 1947 from South America to the Polynesian Islands aboard a raft called the Kon-Tiki to at least prove that his hypothesis was plausible (the voyage was the subject of a book and a movie, which won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Film in 1950).  He further elaborated on this theory in his 1957 book, Aku-Aku (also an instrumental song on the studio album "Pieces of Eight" by the legendary rock-n-roll band from Chicago, Styx).  As Pitts discusses in his book, until recently Heyerdahl's theory had been largely discredited.  More recent studies suggest that there was at least some mixing of the two populations (Polynesians and South Americans), though not to the degree and manner originally suggested by Heyerdahl.  

The first European explorers noted the presence of the moai, and at this point in time, most of the moai were still standing.  However, by the time that the British explorer James Cook visited the island in 1774 (see the painting "A View of the Monuments of Easter Island, Rapa Nui" by William Hodges, who accompanied Cook on one of his voyages), most of the statues had toppled over.  Whether this was done intentionally and, if so, for what reason can only be speculated at this point.  Unfortunately, after first contact with European explorers, the population of Rapa Nui dramatically decreased, to the point where by the late 1800's, the population was just over one-hundred inhabitants. 

Explorers and scientists going back as far as James Cook have speculated that the Rapa Nui islanders caused their own destruction.  In her speech on Global Environment to the United Nations General Assembly on November 8, 1989, then British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher said, "We also have the example of the tragedy of Easter Island, where people arrived by boat to find a primeval forest.  In time the population increased to over 9,000 souls and the demand placed upon the environment resulted in its eventual destruction as people cut down the trees.  This in turn led to warfare over the scarce remaining resources and the population crashed to a few hundred people without even enough woods to make boats to escape."

The theory that the Rapa Nui islanders sowed the seeds of their own destruction (the "ecocide hypothesis") was greatly popularized by the American scientist and writer Jared Diamond in his book Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed (see also his two publications in the journals Science and Nature).  Basically, they cut down the island's native palm trees in order to create the logs, ropes, and sleds used to move the moai from the quarries in the center of the island to their final positions at the island's periphery.  As the palm trees took up to 100 years to reach adult height, the trees were cut down faster than they could be replaced.  Without trees, the island's ecology (and Rapa Nui society) collapsed.  The loss of the trees led to the collapse of the bird population.  No trees meant less rain (apparently tree growth and rainfall are mutually interdependent) and more soil erosion and greater water runoff.  Crop yields tumbled.  Without trees, the Rapa Nui no longer had wood for their cooking fires, canoes, and shelters.  As food and water became more scarce, the different tribes of Rapa Nui started to fight.  Diamond claims they even resorted to cannibalism.  

Marc Gerstein and Michael Ellsberg write about Diamond's ecocide theory in their book, Flirting with Disaster: Why Accidents are Rarely Accidental, "It would have been impossible to conceive that one day an islander would cut down the very last tree and, with that act, one thousand years of civilization would collapse soon thereafter."  The economist Joseph Stiglitz referred to Diamond's theory in an article for The Guardian in which he warns of the global threats of rising inequality, the undermining of democracy, and climate change, “It reminds one of Jared Diamond’s story of collapse on Easter Island where they cut down the last tree and there they were, unable to paddle to any other island and they’d destroyed their future...We're doing the same."

It's a popular theory, and scientists (and at least a few politicians, such as the late Margaret Thatcher in her speech from 1989 mentioned above) like to use the story as metaphor for what's happening on planet Earth today.  For example, Diamond said in a speech at Stanford University in 2000, "The fate of Easter Island society seizes hold of our imagination, because the parallel between Easter Island isolated in the Pacific Ocean and Planet Earth isolated in our own galaxy is so obvious."  John Flenley and Paul Bahn also compared the fate of Easter Island to Earth in their book, Easter Island, Earth Island, "Humankind's covetousness is boundless.  Its selfishness appears to be genetically inborn...But in a limited ecosystem, selfishness leads to increasing population imbalance, population crash, and ultimately extinction."  

Unfortunately, the environmental metaphor here is probably not accurate (see "What really happened on Easter Island?" published earlier this year in Scientific American).  In fact, the population on Rapa Nui more than likely decreased slowly over many years (see Terry Hunt's article, "Rethinking the Fall of Easter Island" that appeared in the journal American Scientist), and the decline was not because the Rapa Nui people cut down all of their trees.  The most plausible reason for the decline is far more disturbing.  Recent evidence, as discussed by Pitts in his book, suggests that Rapa Nui's population decline was largely external in origin (rather than internal, as proposed by the "ecocide hypothesis").  As Hunt writes, "Newly introduced diseases, conflict with European invaders, and enslavement...were the chief causes of the collapse."  In other words, Rapa Nui's story is similar to what the earliest Indigenous Peoples of North America experienced shortly after the arrival of Europeans.  The Europeans arrived, bringing with them diseases that the native Rapa Nui islanders had never been exposed to, such as smallpox, tuberculosis, and others.  The population was further decimated when islanders were forcibly removed from the island by South American slave traders.  History, as they say, does tend to repeat itself.

The final point that Pitts makes in his book (Island at the Edge of the World) is also an important one.  The anthropologist Katherine Routledge traveled to Rapa Nui in 1914-1915 with her husband, William Scoresby Routledge.  During her extensive time on the island (they spent a longer time on the island than originally planned due to the outbreak of World War I), she conducted archaeological investigations and interviewed islanders about their traditions and history. Her work preserved invaluable evidence about Rapa Nui culture and the memories of its people.  Unfortunately, her work was largely discredited, overlooked, and forgotten because she was a woman.  In the end, rather than a case study of ecocide, Rapa Nui is an apt metaphor for the social injustices of gender bias, racial prejudice (even if implicit), and colonialism.

Leading Student

I recently finished Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community by the American political scientist Robert D. Putnam.  The book has been on my list for a very, very long time.  I am really glad that I finally picked it up to read (and finish - it's packed with over 400 pages of data), because I think Putnam provides one of the most important commentaries on what is happening in American society today.  He argues that civic engagement, social connectedness, and social capital have significantly declined in America since the mid-20th century, mostly due to the impact of generational changes (replacing a generation that was very active in the community with one that is not), television and modern media (notably the book was written before social media and the Internet), suburban sprawl, and pressures of work and time.  Putnam goes on to argue (convincingly in my opinion) that this is a bad thing for America, as the loss of social capital weakens democracy, increases loneliness, lowers public trust, and degrades community health, safety, and governance.

I'm still processing most of what I've read in Putnam's book, and I suspect I will return to the subject in future posts.  However, today I want to focus on just one very subtle point that Putnam made with me, either intentionally or unintentionally.  I came across several instances in the book where he was describing the research of some leading authority in a specific discipline.  Rather than stating that the individual was the leading authority or the leading expert, Putnam wrote that the individual was the leading student.  I love that!  He's basically stating what the ancient Greek philosopher Socrates once said about wisdom, "The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing" (please see my recent post, "He who knows most knows best how little he knows").

I came across the following graphic on the Internet that I think summarizes Putnam's (and Socrates') point perfectly:

As we begin to learn more in a specific field of inquiry, we start to become more confident about our knowledge in the field.  As we develop more knowledge, however, we soon discover that there is a lot more that we need to know.  We are never experts, but rather, we are always students of our craft or in our field.  Rather than striving to become a leading expert, focus on being a leading student in your field!

Inalienable

In honor of America's 250th birthday this year, I have been reading a number of books on the Revolutionary era and more specifically the United States Declaration of Independence.  One of the best books that I've read so far in this genre is The Greatest Sentence Ever Written by Walter Isaacson.  Isaacson takes a surprisingly in-depth look (the book is only 80 pages long) on the first sentence of the second paragraph of the Declaration: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness."

Wait a minute...is this another example of the so-called "Mandela Effect" that I mentioned in an older post (see "I once knew a gold robot with a silver leg....")?  I could swear that the Declaration says that these rights are inalienable and not unalienable.  I looked again, and sure enough, it does say inalienable.  Have you ever made that mistake?  It's a nearly unavoidable one, as it's just a difference of the first letter (substituting i for u), and according to Merriam-Webster's online dictionary, there is absolutely no difference in meaning between the two words.  Here's what Merriam-Webster's has to say about the derivation of the two words:

Alien, alienable, inalienable—it's easy enough to see the Latin word alius, meaning "other," at the root of these three words. Alien joined our language in the 14th century, and one of its earliest meanings was "belonging to another." By the early 1600s that sense of alien had led to alienable, an adjective describing something you can give away or transfer to another owner. The word unalienable came about as its opposite, but so did inalienable, a word most likely borrowed into English on its own from French. Inalienable is the more common form today, and although we often see both forms used to modify "rights," it was unalienable that was used in the Declaration of Independence to describe life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

If you've ever visited the Thomas Jefferson Memorial in Washington, D.C., and only if you were really paying attention, you may have noticed that the panel bearing the Declaration's preamble also substituted the "i" for the "u", whether by mistake or by intention:

Importantly, while the final version of the Declaration of Independence used the word unalienable, some earlier drafts (including several of the early drafts in Jefferson's own handwriting) used the word inalienable instead.  It seems then that the Jefferson Memorial includes the version of the preamble that Jefferson himself had preferred.

There is a footnote from a classic 1922 book on the history of the Declaration (The Declaration of Independence: A Study in the History of Political Ideas by Carl Lotus Becker that adds some additional context.  The footnote reads:

The Rough Draft reads "[inherent &] inalienable." There is no indication that Congress changed "inalienable" to "unalienable"; but the latter form appears in the text in the rough Journal, in the corrected Journal, and in the parchment copy. John Adams, in making his copy of the Rough Draft, wrote " unalienable." Adams was one of the committee which supervised the printing of the text adopted by Congress, and it may have been at his suggestion that the change was made in printing. "Unalienable" may have been the more customary form in the eighteenth century.

I know what you are probably thinking.  "Does any of this really matter?"  As I will cover in another post soon, there were other mistakes made in transcribing the Declaration from Jefferson's pen to the piece of parchment that we see displayed in the National Archives today.  For today's post, though, let's just say that my curiosity got the better part of me, and I actually jumped down the proverbial rabbit hole to find out more information on this particular part of our American history.

I came across an article written by Scott Barnes that appeared in the Panama City News Herald on July 13, 2013 ("Comparing inalienable to unalienable rights").  Apparently, there are at least some legal differences between the two words.  According to Black's Law Dictionary, which is the most frequently used law dictionary in the United States, unalienable means incapable of being alienated, that is, sold and transferred.  Black's Law Dictionary further states, "You can't surrender, sell or transfer unalienable Rights, they are a gift from the Creator to the individual and can't (under any circumstances) be surrendered or taken."  Conversely, according to another, albeit less commonly cited legal reference, Morrison v. State, Mo. App., 252 S.W.2d 97, 101, inalienable rights are rights which are not capable of being surrendered or transferred without the consent of the one possessing such rights.  In other words, unalienable rights are ours for eternity and can never be taken away from us.  Neither can we given them away, even voluntarily.  If we wanted to do so, we could surrender our inalienable rights.

Not to confuse things even more, the 17th century English philosopher John Locke wrote about what he called natural rights in his Second Treatise of Government.  Natural rights are in essence the same as inalienable rights (or unalienable rights).  Locke argued that all individuals are naturally born with fundamental rights to life, liberty, and property, which exist independently of government.  Note that Jefferson borrowed heavily from Locke when he wrote the Declaration's most famous passage; however, he substituted pursuit of happiness for property (more on that in a future post, perhaps).  Locke also argued that individuals are equal with regards to these natural rights, in that these rights are part of what it means to be a human being, no individual or group of individuals could take away or limit these rights, and governments were legitimate only to the extent that they protected these rights.  Here was the fundamental point that America's Founders used to justify breaking away from England.  King George III had violated this principle by taking away or limiting some of their natural, God-given rights.  As a result, King George III (i.e. "government") had violated the principle that governments existed to protect natural rights.  Hence, King George III's government was no longer legitimate, and the American colonists could declare their independence ("...whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government...").

In his Panama City News Herald article, Barnes goes on to explain that he had stumbled across some original letters between Thomas Jefferson and John Adams.  Remember that Jefferson, Adams, and Benjamin Franklin were part of the five-man committee that the Second Continental Congress had chosen to write the Declaration of Independence (just so you have it for pub trivia night, the other two members were Roger Sherman and Robert R. Livingston).  Jefferson originally used the word inalienable, but Adams greatly preferred the stronger unalienable to suggest that these God-given rights (life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness) could never be taken away or surrendered voluntarily.    Barnes goes on to suggest that Adams had refused to sign the Declaration unless this subtle change was made (which is completely in character - Adams was notorious for having a thin skin, short temper, and the need to always have the final word).

As it turns out, the question on whether natural rights could be taken away was not as clear-cut as Adams had suggested.  The 18th century English jurist and judge William Blackstone added an important clarification here when he defined natural rights in his Commentaries on the Law of England, writing:

Those rights, then, which God and nature have established, and therefore called natural rights, such as life and liberty, need not the aid of human laws to be more effectually invested in every man than they are; neither do they receive any additional strength when declared by the municipal laws to be inviolable.  On the contrary, no human legislature has power to abridge or destroy them, unless the owner shall himself commit some act that amounts to a forfeiture.

For example, if someone commits a crime (which usually infringes on someone else's natural rights), they are punished in some way (e.g. required to pay a fine or serve time in jail).  Blackstone recognized this point, as did America's Founders.  In fact, the Fifth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution clarifies this point rather succinctly, stating that no person shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.

Ultimately, I agree with Merriam-Webster's dictionary that there is probably no real difference between inalienable and unalienable.  The important point is this - all of us have rights based on the fact that we are individuals and as humans.  Whether we choose to call these rights natural, inalienable, or unalienable probably doesn't matter.  What does matter, is that these rights are sacrosanct, inviolable, hallowed, and untouchable.  With only rare exception, these rights can never be taken away from us.  As such, we too can never violate someone else's rights, for to do so would de-legitimize their humanity.  

I can't end this post without at least mentioning what the historian and author Joseph Ellis calls one of the greatest contradictions involving the Declaration of Independence in his most recent book, The Great Contradiction: The Tragic Side of the American Founding.  By failing to end slavery, America's Founders contradicted their own views on natural or unalienable rights.  It was left to the future 16th President to redefine the principles written down in America's founding document and which define the essence of what it means to be an American today.

The Leaning Tower of Pisa

Several years ago, my wife and two of our adult children (I think they had just graduated from college) traveled to Spain, France, and Italy on a cruise around the Mediterranean Sea.  I have a lot of great memories from that trip.  We visited the famous "Leaning Tower of Pisa" on one of our excursions (see my failed attempt at making one of those "forced perspective" Tower shots below).  It's a stunningly beautiful building, but if I were to be 100% honest, I doubt we would have visited it if the tower hadn't been so famous for the fact that it was leaning.  

The Tower of Pisa, as it is more simply known, is actually one of three structures in Pisa's Cathedral Square (Piazza del Duomo), which includes the cathedral and Pisa Baptistry.  The tower began to lean during its construction in the 12th century, largely due to the fact that the area's soft ground could not support the tower's weight.  The "lean" became progressively worse during construction, which wasn't completed until the 14th century (see my post "Cathedral Thinking").  The "lean" reached a five-and-half degree tilt in 1990, but thanks to modern engineering from about 1993 to 2001, the tilt has been stabilized to just under four degrees.

Today, this leaning tower has become one of the most visited tourist attractions in the world, receiving over 5 million visitors every year.  The irony that a colossal blunder of engineering has become a world famous tourist attraction is not lost on me.  A few months ago, "Reliability 4 Life" posted on LinkedIn and compared the Leaning Tower of Pisa to High Reliability Organizations - well, not exactly in the way that you would think.  The post claimed that the reason why the tower ended up with a four degree lean was that they tried to build it on a poor foundation.  Soft, sandy, swampy ground does not make for a good foundation.  In the same way, a High Reliability Organization's foundation is its safety culture.  Strengthen the foundation and you strengthen the reliability of the organization.  It's a great analogy, and I fully agree with the concept.

I think there is another lesson to be learned here, and that is this: Sometimes our greatest failures can go on to be our greatest successes.  There's no question in my mind that the engineers who built the Tower of Pisa never planned for it to lean.  I can only imagine what they were thinking if they had been able to see the finished product, which admittedly was probably cast as a colossal failure.  But I can't help think that there's likely no way that the Tower of Pisa would have become such a modern icon had it not been for the fact that it started to lean.  Failure is never the end.  Sometimes we can end up with a success, even when things don't always go according to plan.

"Compared to Ranger school, combat was easy..."

The United States Department of Defense, at Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's direction, recently announced a controversial plan to begin mandatory testosterone testing for all male service members age 30 years and older.  Secretary Hegseth has previously stated that he believes that screening troops for "testosterone deficiency" is necessary to keep them operating at their "absolute best".  Sean Parnell, a spokesperson for the Pentagon said that "by proactively identifying and treating suboptimal hormone levels," we will "invest in the health of its warfighters, strengthen their performance, and maximize force readiness."  The plan for the moment excludes female members in the military.

The Pentagon's plan is controversial because (1) medical professionals currently do not recommend universally screening testosterone levels in men (testing is recommended only for those individuals who report signs and symptoms of decreased testosterone, including low libido and depressed mood) and (2) there is limited, if any, evidence to suggest that replacing testosterone has any appreciable effect on energy, vitality, physical function, or cognition (testosterone replacement can, however, improve sexual function and bone density).  Importantly, the Pentagon's plan does acknowledge the limited medical benefits of testosterone replacement, and the new policy does not make testosterone replacement mandatory.

As I was reading about this new Pentagon policy, I couldn't help but think of a study that I read a few weeks ago showing that men and women respond differently to arduous physical training.  In addition, there is evidence to suggest that certain high stress military environments can deplete the body's normal testosterone levels, at least in men.  For example, consider what participating in the Ranger Training Course (RTC) does to a soldier's body.  RTC (also known as "Ranger School") is a rigorous 62 day small unit tactics and leadership course designed to push soldiers to their absolute extremes.  The mixed martial artist and Ranger Tim Kennedy reportedly once described RTC as "a place that starves you and denies you sleep for over two months."  Colonel Robert "Tex" Turner claimed that he once woke up from a dream while serving in Vietnam and said, "I woke up in my foxhole in a cold sweat. I had a nightmare that I was still in Ranger School. Thank God that I was in Vietnam. Compared to Ranger School, combat was easy."  Several studies have shown that soldiers have progressively lower levels of testosterone and growth hormone during RTC, and by the end of their training (if they make it to the end - only about 50% of soldiers complete the entire training course), most soldiers have testosterone levels that are consistent with a medical diagnosis of secondary hypogonadism (if you are interested, the links to these scientific studies are here, here, and here).

Historically, female soldiers were not allowed to complete the Ranger Training Course.  However, since the first two women - Kristen Griest and Shaye Haver - graduated from RTC in 2015, approximately 175 female soldiers have completed the training to become eligible to wear the Ranger Tab on their left upper shoulder.  Accordingly, Samantha Goldenstein and colleagues conducted a study to determine if females would experience a similar decrease in metabolic, growth, and sex hormones during RTC.  The results of their study were published this past year in the July issue of the Journal of Applied Physiology.

Goldenstein and her team studied 26 men and 10 women who completed RTC.  They measured body composition, resting energy expenditure, energy balance, and blood and urine levels of key metabolic, growth, and sex hormones at baseline (prior to starting RTC) and then at periodic intervals during the three different phases of training (general field, mountain, and swamp training).  Overall, as expected, energy balance was negative in all three phases, which resulted in an average loss in body mass and decreased resting energy expenditure throughout the entire course compared to baseline.  However, males experienced a larger negative energy balance in the first two phases (but not the third phase) compared to females.  

Thyroid hormone remained suppressed during all three phases in male soldiers, but only during the second phase (mountain phase) in females.  Growth hormone was suppressed in all three phases in both males and females.  Similar results have been reported in a study of females participating in a 61-day Antarctica expedition (similar decreases in body mass and resting energy expenditure, but no significant change from baseline in thyroid hormone).  Female sex hormones (estrogen, progesterone, and testosterone) only changed during phase 2 (mountain phase) of RTC compared to baseline.  Male testosterone levels were significantly lower than baseline during the first two phases (but not phase 3).  Finally, inflammatory markers did not change significantly in either males or females (this may be due to the transient nature of the increase in inflammatory markers associated with acute exercise).

Goldenstein and colleagues conclude that "Females exhibited minimal alterations of physiological status that were largely phase-specific, whereas males demonstrated consistent changes in many markers of health across the course, despite experiencing similar energy deficits."  They go on to state that "male physiology may disproportionately be affected in multistressor environments." 

So, what does all of this mean?  First, in regards to the Pentagon's new policy of measuring testosterone levels in male soldiers, marines, sailors, and airmen, the timing of when testosterone levels are measured will matter a great deal.  Measuring testosterone levels following a lengthy deployment or period of arduous training would not make sense, as testosterone levels would be expected to be lower than normal at these times.  Second, males and females clearly react differently to chronic stress, and further information is required to help support the overall health of our military members.  Third, we need to determine the impact of these changes in endocrine function on the overall health with additional studies.  To that end, this same group recently published a study on the sex differences in physical performance, sleep, and psychological response to RTC (see their follow-up study here). 

"Meetings are broccoli"

Several years ago, I posted (see "Death by Meeting" from March 2020) about an online article written by Michael Mankins for the Harvard Business Review (see "This Weekly Meeting Took Up 300,000 Hours a Year") that claimed that one weekly executive level meeting ended up costing an organization 300,000 hours per year!  Mankins estimated that one of the executives attending that weekly meeting spent up to 7,000 hours per year meeting with direct reports in order to prepare for it.  Each of the executive's direct reports in turn spent time with each one of his or her direct reports to prepare for the meeting with the executive.  And so on.  And so on.  If you add up all of the hours spent meeting in order to prepare for just that one weekly executive meeting, the total time spent in meetings by the organization was a mind-blowing 300,000 hours per year! 

Mankins asked a fair question (more than fair actually) about whether all that time spent in meetings was worth it to the organization?  He added that the 300,000 hours per year didn't even include the time spent outside of meetings gathering information and preparing for the upcoming meeting.  He then stated, "Research shows that 15% of an organization's collective time is spent in meetings...No amount of money can buy back that time.  It must be treated more preciously."

A recent working paper from the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) provides some additional perspective on how much time (and money) is spent in meetings.  David Deming and colleagues utilized a large administrative database managed by Statistics Norway and covering "the universe of workers and firms" in the country of Norway, with a specific focus on data collected from 2022 to 2024.  The data was linked to a national survey performed by Norstat which sampled approximately 10,000 individuals who worked at least 20 hours per week at the time of the survey (a 3 month period from May to July in 2025).  Here is what they found:

1. Workers spend a lot of time in meetings.  

The survey showed that the average worker spends approximately 4.7 hours per week in meetings (12% of the standard 37.5 workweek in Norway).  While about 40 percent of workers attend less than one meeting per week, 21 percent spend up to 8 hours per week in meetings.  Among those workers who attend meetings on a regular basis, the average time spent in meetings is about 80 minutes per day.

2. Organizations spend a lot of money on time spent in meetings.

Deming and his team estimated the annual labor cost of meetings by combining the number of hours spent in meetings per worker per week combined with an individual worker's wages.  The average worker accounts for 88,000 Norwegian kroners (NOK) (US $9,000) every year, which when extrapolated to the entire Norwegian economy accounts for NOK 230 billion (US $24 billion) every year!  Similar to Mankins' analysis mentioned above, these estimates do not account for time spent organizing or preparing for meetings or for travel time to and from meetings.

3. There is a lot of heterogeneity in the time spent in meetings between different industries and different types of workers.

The average cost of meetings (using the method described above) is highest in the knowledge- and coordination-intensive service industries, such as finance, insurance, information and communication, professional services, and administration.  The average cost of meetings is lowest in the transportation, agriculture, manufacturing, and retail industries.  Managers attend meetings much more frequently compared to non-managerial workers.  College-educated workers also spend more time in meetings.  Similarly, the time spent in meetings is higher for professional and technical occupations compared to production and manual occupations.  Finally, perhaps not too surprising, workers in remote and hybrid employment arrangements spend more time in meetings than workers who are primarily office-based.

4. Meetings play a larger role in organizations with greater complexity and coordination needs.

Individuals who work at larger firms spend more time in meetings.  Similarly, workers in capital-intensive firms, firms with higher revenue per worker, and heavily unionized firms also spend more time in meetings.  These patterns suggest that meetings are necessary in those organizations in which substantial communication and coordination between workers is required.

5. Workers report that meetings are necessary to facilitate coordination.

When workers were individually surveyed, the three most common stated reasons for participating in meetings were to receive updates on projects and tasks, facilitate collaboration and problem solving, and discuss planning and strategy.  In contrast, networking, informal conversations, administrative matters, and feedback conversations accounted for a considerably smaller share of meeting activity.  These activities were stable across different industries and occupations.

6. Meetings are beneficial to organizations (and to the workers).

Workers in firms with higher wages, total revenue, and average revenue per worker spend more time in meetings.  Importantly, the opportunity costs associated with the time spent in meetings is higher in firms paying higher wages, which suggests that either firms receive larger benefits from the communication and coordination activities that occur during meetings or (less likely) they are more tolerant of unproductive time.  Importantly, wage growth over time is higher for workers spending more time in meetings (in fact, meetings are the strongest predictors of wage growth), suggesting that workers benefit from the time spent in meetings.  Workers in the organizations that spend more time in meetings reported substantially more learning on the job, which suggests that meetings not only facilitate coordination and communication to the benefit of the organization as a whole, but also that they help to facilitate learning and professional development for the individual workers.

There's no question that the quality of meetings can be improved.  For example, there have been several excellent articles on improving the quality of meetings published by the Harvard Business Review (see the link here).  The bottom line though is that we would be short-sighted to do away with meetings altogether.  As the authors of the NBER study discussed above conclude, "Meetings are the broccoli of work – widely disliked, but probably good for us anyway."

When you know...

I recently came across this great cartoon from The New Yorker magazine by Paul Noth.  Those of you who are familiar with the famous "Trolley Problem" (see also a great video clip from Harvard professor Michael Sandel, who introduces his course on "Justice: What's The Right Thing To Do?" with a discussion of the "Trolley Problem" ) will recognize the point immediately!

The "Trolley Problem" is a philosophical thought experiment first described in a 1967 article by Philippa Foot, an American philosopher (and, on an interesting side note, granddaughter of former US President Grover Cleveland).  While Foot described the thought experiment, Judith Jarvis Thomson dubbed the experiment the "Trolley Problem" in a 1976 paper.  

The thought experiment basically asks whether it is ethically acceptable to kill one person in order to save five people.  In essence, the problem is usually set up as follows:

1. There is a runaway trolley moving down the tracks. 

2. Up ahead, on the tracks, there are five people tied down to the track and unable to move. The trolley is heading straight towards the five people and will likely kill them. 

3. You are standing some distance off in the train yard, next to a lever. If you pull this lever, the trolley will switch to a different set of tracks. 

4.  Up ahead on the side track, there is one person tied down to the track and unable to move.  

The reader is left to ponder one of two choices - do nothing, in which case the trolley will kill the five people on the main track, or pull the lever, which will divert the trolley onto the side track, killing the one person (but saving the five).  

The "Trolley Problem" has become very popular since Philippa Foot's first description in 1967.  The television sitcom M*A*S*H, which was about a U.S. Army mobile army surgical hospital (which explains the abbreviation) during the Korean War and ran on CBS from 1972-1983 used a version of the problem in its series finale episode, "Goodbye, Farewell, and Amen", which aired on February 28, 1983.  More recently, the problem also featured in episode 19 of the television show The Good Place (check out the video clip).  It's been the subject of a number of articles and books, both in the popular press as well as the academic literature.  

Kudos to The New Yorker for identifying one of the most frightening possible uses of artificial intelligence (AI).  On the one hand, it doesn't seem so realistic that AI would ever make a decision involving the kind of ethical trade-off posed by the "Trolley Problem".  On the other hand, I could envision several real-world scenarios that involve a similar ethical decision posed by the "Trolley Problem".  

Two patients need an organ transplant.  There is only one organ available for transplantation.  Who gets it?  

Alternatively, imagine a critically ill patient admitted to the intensive care unit (ICU) who is not expected to live.  If the patient's organs could be harvested, five or six lives could be saved, assuming the patient could donate both kidneys, liver, heart, and lungs.  Should the medical team continue to provide care for the patient, or should they withdraw support and proceed to harvest the patient's organs?  

Alternatively, two patients need care in the ICU.  There is only one available ICU bed left.  Who gets the bed?

Imagine autonomous (driverless) vehicles!  If the car encounters a sudden brake failure, should the computer force the car into a barrier in order to stop it, thereby risking the life of the passenger?  Or should the computer force the car out of traffic and on to a sidewalk, risking the lives of pedestrians who may happen to be walking there?

When you consider all of the permutations of the "Trolley Problem", it's frightening to consider that one day in the not so distant future, it could be a computer, and not a human, making the decision!  Should we allow that to happen?  These are exactly the kinds of questions that will confront society as the use of AI continues to grow and expand.