We seem to have an instinctive urge to trust GPTs. I call that the Canny Valley. It’s the positive flip side of our negative response to an almost human-like robot, which Masahiro Mori called the Uncanny Valley. This urge to trust GPTs is rooted in society’s current approach to truth, and it has important implications for those who manage or are involved in complex conflicts. As long as human conflict is driven by our own fallible perceptions of the world around us and the sometimes hard-to-fathom actions of others, the Canny Valley is going to make it easier for us to avoid grappling with the messy reality of complex conflicts.

Social license isn’t working for anyone anymore. It’s not working for the project proponents because it’s impossible to plan around. It’s not working for opponents either, because it doesn’t get them more integrated into the planning process. We need a new concept to help us organize our thinking, and I suggest we use “social capital” instead. 

Peter Coleman is a leading academic in the world of complex conflicts. One of the most important contributions from Professor Coleman and his academic colleagues has been the application of nonlinear dynamical systems theory to complex conflicts. That's one way of saying that complex public conflicts act very much like other complex natural systems, including the kinds we observe in particle physics, flocking birds, predator-prey behavior, and social psychology.

Being a conflict advisor is not for the faint of heart. Purposefully choosing that profession in South Africa borders on insanity. Succeeding at that role in South Africa is nearly miraculous.