What Aesop's Fable "The Boy Who Cried Wolf" Can Teach Us About Law and Order

BYJus Learning

It's effortless to talk about Aesop's Fable titled The Boy Who Cried Wolf. Sure, we have our morals, and it becomes difficult to trust a liar when they tell the truth. However, we need to look at how the story of The Boy Who Cried Wolf happened. If we look at the fable, we need to look at the systemic error in the story. It's easy to talk about the boy and getting what he deserves. However, we need to look at the story and see what went wrong, not just with the boy but also the system itself. I decided to write this because of the bomb threat and shooting threat that happened in Cebu City, a few days ago. 

We look at the boy crying wolf out of boredom. In Cebuano, we call the "bugal-bugalon na wala sa lugar" or "the out of place prankster". The story had it that the boy kept crying wolf or raising false alarms to entertain himself. The villagers scrambled twice to stop the wolf who wasn't there. The third time the boy raised the alarm, and there was a wolf, nobody believed him. Some versions say the wolf also killed the boy. Yes, we all learned a lesson here, but we couldn't just focus on the boy and the loss of the sheep. 

In psychology, we have the Cry Wolf effect. From the Science Direct website, the authors Alexandros Rigos, Erik Mohlin, and Enrico Ronchi write this abstract:

In today’s terrorism-prone and security-focused world, evacuation emergencies, drills, and false alarms are becoming more and more common. Compliance to an evacuation order made by an authority in case of emergency can play a key role in the outcome of an emergency. In case an evacuee experiences repeated emergency scenarios which may be a false alarm (e.g., an evacuation drill, a false bomb threat, etc.) or an actual threat, the Aesop’s cry wolf effect (repeated false alarms decrease order compliance) can severely affect his/her likelihood to evacuate. To analyse this key unsolved issue of evacuation research, a game-theoretic approach is proposed. Game theory is used to explore mutual best responses of an evacuee and an authority. In the proposed model the authority obtains a signal of whether there is a threat or not and decides whether to order an evacuation or not. The evacuee, after receiving an evacuation order, subsequently decides whether to stay or leave based on posterior beliefs that have been updated in response to the authority’s action. Best-responses are derived and Sequential equilibrium and Perfect Bayesian Equilibrium are used as solution concepts (refining equilibria with the intuitive criterion). Model results highlight the benefits of announced evacuation drills and suggest that improving the accuracy of threat detection can prevent large inefficiencies associated with the cry wolf effect.

The villagers, over time, developed fatigue because the boy lied twice. Some might say that the villagers didn't tell the boy to lie or encourage him to lie. Yes, the villagers were angry. However, as actions speak louder than words, the villagers encouraged the boy to lie because of the lack of clear boundaries. What the boy did wasn't a simple prank or a simple lie. The boy crying wolf was scolded, but there was one thing lacking: the bigger consequence. The villagers deployed their resources to stop the wolf. The boy got a laugh, probably just laughed, every time the villagers scolded him. This wasn't a simple prank but a disturbance of the public peace. 

The boy's job was to watch over the sheep. It's a serious job. However, the boy never took his job seriously. Shepherds were often hired to watch over the community's sheep. The community focused on band-aid solutions for the false alarms. If we put the villagers' response to every false alarm the shepherd boy made, the Fire Safety Event Europe has this to say:

Every false fire alarm is costly, disrupting schools and businesses, placing unnecessary strain on our emergency services, and reducing the public’s faith in fire alarms.

A false fire alarm is: any fire alarm signal other than a genuine fire or signal test. The cause of these false fire alarms can be as a result of human behaviour, either good intent or malicious, or due to apparatus.

‘Good intent’ are calls made in good faith with the belief that there really is a fire, for instance a customer in a shop sees what they believe to be smoke and activates a manual call point.

Conversely, ‘malicious’ activations are made with the intention of getting the fire and rescue service to attend a non-existent incident, for example when someone breaks the glass of a manual call point despite knowing there is no fire.

‘Due to apparatus’ false alarms are incidents initiated by a fire alarm and fire-fighting equipment activating, such as by burnt toast or steam in a kitchen.

Whether the incident is a crime or a fire, crying wolf causes social disruption. You can imagine what the boy's lies caused. The village would've abandoned whatever they were doing because the wolf is a major threat. That should've been a hint to fire the guy. Instead, they kept him around for "whatever reason". Tolerating false alarms by not giving appropriate punishment, the same harmful pranks can be used over and over again. It's no longer a joke when it causes harm. A joke is meant to be enjoyed in good fun. However, the boy's pranks were harmful because they disrupted the social order.

The boy should've been fired even during the first prank. The prank threatened both the life and the economy. The people should've fired the shepherd. Instead, by choosing to let him resume his duty twice, they indirectly enabled him twice. It doesn't mean you don't give permission to an offense or command the offense that you don't enable it.