Complexity

Complicated and complex are often used interchangeably but they mean different things. A mechanical watch is complicated, an ecosystem is complex¹. A mystery is complex, a puzzle is complicated².

The difference is the opacity of causal chains. In complex systems, they become evident only in hindsight. While in complicated systems you can know the causal chains and hence know what the outcome will be given the inputs.

Complex systems have emergent properties. Things like Conway’s Game of Life are a demonstration of this. Systems wants to leverage emergence than fight it. Nature does this by evolution.

Many contexts we encounter are complex and much suffering is created by treating them like complicated ones. More broadly, ignoring complexity is what gives rise to a stunning lack of nuance.

"Tyranny is the deliberate removal of nuance"– Albert Maysles

I see the wu wei ideology of Tao Te Ching as trying to address complexity and arriving at the idea of acting at the points of highest leverage (Leverage Points).

I feel complexity becoming central to my world-view. Usually such an overarching idea would be a bad thing. Keep your identity small. But the argument that Paul Graham uses to absolve the identity of scientists is valid here too. Complexity makes you not hold other beliefs too strongly because most systems are essentially not ‘knowable’. And this makes you more agile overall. The way I see it, it’s at the heart of anti-dogmatic doctrines like OODA Loops.

Resources:

• Books
  • Thinking in Systems
  • Think Complexity
  • Cracking Complexity
  • Modeling and Simulation in Python
  • Meltdown
  • Chaos, James Gleick
  • Nonlinear Dynamics and Chaos by Strogatz
  • natureofcode.com
  • agentmodels.org
  • https://www.goodreads.com/shelf/show/complexity
  • https://bookauthority.org/books/best-complexity-theory-books
  • https://necsi.edu/dynamics-of-complex-systems
  • A New Kind of Science, Stephen Wolfram
  • Hidden Order: How Adaptation Builds Complexity, John H. Holland, Heather Mimnaugh
  • The Sciences of the Artificial, Herbert A. Simon
  • Making Things Work
  • Hidden Order
  • https://necsi.edu/books
• Links
  • https://complexityexplained.github.io/
  • https://taylorpearson.me/complexity-science/
  • https://www.complexity-explorables.org/
  • https://www.santafe.edu/engage/learn/courses
  • https://www.systemsinnovation.io/

  • Map of the Complexity Sciences

    Related:

• Systems
• Software Complexity
  • Essential - Accidental; Incidental - Accidental
  • Domain - Architecture - Development (Eric Normand)
• Thin simplification, Seeing like a State, James Scott
  • Imposition of complexity reducing rules on illegible cultures lead to pain.
  • “Top down ideas for change inspired by high modernism often fail because they don’t accurately reflect the organic nature of networks and people.”
• Spontaneous Order
• Michael Polanyi
  • “polycentric spontaneous order to intellectual inquiry were developed in the context of his opposition to central planning”
  • “Any attempt to organize the group … under a single authority would eliminate their independent initiatives, and thus reduce their joint effectiveness to that of the single person directing them from the centre. It would, in effect, paralyse their co-operation.”
• The use of knowledge in society, Freidrich Hayek
  • It is impossible to centrally plan economies and price is the way participants in the market co-ordinate.
• I, Pencil, Lou Reed
  • It is a miracle that you even have a pencil because no one can make it on their own.
• Man of System, Adam Smith
• Team of Teams, Gen. Stanley McChrystal
  • Organically connected small teams
  • Leading is like gardening
• Alan Kay
  • References compexity in the context of human bodies and cities and relates it to the internet and Smalltalk. He sees Smalltalk as being objects interconnected by messages.
• Radical Uncertainty: Decision Making For An Unknowable Future, John Kay and Mervyn King
• A city is not a tree, Christopher Alexander
• Rich Hickey
  • Simple Made Easy
    • complexity is about interleaving not cardinality
    • intertwined things must be considered together
    • we can only consider few things at a time
    • complexity undermines understanding
    • simplicity often means making more things, not fewer
    • simplicity is the ultimate sophistication - da vinci
• Zach Tellman
  • States and Nomads
    • Rhizomatic vs arborific structures
    • ![[statesnomads.png]]
    • Complexity is the number of moving parts; Randomness is how independent they are
    • Low complexity and randomness. Formal Analysisl; High randomness. Statistical Analysis.
  • Ashby’s Law: “when the variety or complexity of the environment exceeds the capacity of a system (natural or artificial) the environment will dominate and ultimately destroy that system”. So to deal with the variety of problems thrown at you, you need to have a repertoire of responses which are at least as nuanced as the problems you face. The more variable the operational environment, the more flexible the systems need to be.
  • Complex Adaptive Systems - Dave Snowden - DDD Europe 2018

Quotes:

• The whole is more than the sum of its parts – Aristotle
• A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a simple system that worked. The inverse proposition also appears to be true: A complex system designed from scratch never works and cannot be made to work. You have to start over, beginning with a working simple system. —Gall’s law

• “Simplicity is the hallmark of truth, but complexity continues to have a morbid attraction” — E.W. Dijkstra