Predictably Unpredictable

My agenda is like anyone else’s these days, to find better ways of understanding and making better decisions in a world where recent experience suggests we are failing to get to grips with the existential poly-crises facing us and maybe some meta-crisis that might underly these. My focus being the latter, means my interest is unashamedly abstract and conceptual, philosophical and even metaphysical, rather than the physical and human world details of any one crisis. Although I obviously engage with these too, as empirical examples.

One way or another my own deliverable contribution is a better “model” of the world, how it works and what we can know and predict about it. So, both ontological and epistemological, and it so happens, with an information-process-relational metaphysics rather than a conventional object view of things. That’s a whole thesis I won’t attempt to elaborate here.

One thing’s clear, if we’re talking about how “we” best understand and deal with global polycrises, we’re talking about systems and situations as complex as conceivable. Populations of psychologically intentional human agents, with aspirations and foibles, individually and in any number of overlapping groups and organisations, interacting as part of our local and cosmic ecosystems. There can be nothing more complex. Life, the universe and everything as I often say. And, as I posted recently, it is moot whether we talk primarily in terms of “systems” or “complexity”. We need the pragmatism to recognise both communities of ideas, all societies of minds. Requisite diversity.

Although my thesis is vast, commensurate with the topic and mostly nothing new under the sun, I have for a couple of years been blocked by one important assertion that fails to stick. I do regularly get people to agree that we’re talking about “more than science“, but as soon as discourse proceeds to preferred theories, models and methods, those same people almost invariably continue to talk exclusively in terms of, this, that or the other “science(s)”. I say “Systems Thinking” some insist on “Systems Science(s)”. Why? baffles me.

Now, there’s nothing “anti-science” or “post-modern” here. I’m an engineer grounded in the physical sciences and the closing summary from my last significant presentation on the topic is “as scientific as possible”. Post-post-modern, “3rd culture” if anything. I’m simply saying, faced with such complex realities, it is more honest to recognise that our knowledge, decision-making and actions must involve more considerations than the sciences.

Who is Our Audience?

Now, any theorist or specialist practitioner in the Complex Adaptive Systems space, and indeed any practitioner in the sciences generally, will recognise as we go from from physical sciences to biology to psychology that predictability and repeatability get less and less, even if all the processes and content are scientifically explicable. We – specialists – don’t stop calling them science, we just accept that the predictable outcomes on which we base our best decisions with the best information currently available get less and less certain, and that how certain may get less and less quantifiable. We may even adopt stochastic methods and heuristics that recognise previously experienced patterns of uncertainties.

But this is a one-dimensional view of uncertainty in the real world and there are more meta-levels to consider in more abstract conceptual dimensions. (Using real and conceptual in a natural language sense here, obviously any eventual ontology will address these too.) Some many-layered emergent outcomes are only predictable in kind and in patterns of kind – that is at multiple conceptual levels removed from the actual. Individual real-world outcomes are not usefully predictable at all. Actual decisions depend not just on the available science and objective evidence, formally modelled and empirically documented, but also on the trusted judgement and the situated-&-embodied experience of the humans involved in context. Wisdom in a word.

Now whilst systems and complexity-scientific specialists can all understand where predictability of outcomes become less and less valuable, compared to recognising that which emerges into the real world from the evolutionary processes at both conceptual and real levels, with only limited enabling and guidance, we are not really our own audience.

The real audience needed, if sophisticated systems and complexity considerations are to help with real world actions to solve our existential polycrises, are politicians, leaders and servants in organisations and governments, judiciary, journalists and – in democracies – public electorates.

Without the acknowledgement and acceptance that “good decisions” require those aspects more than science above, the enormous success of science to date means these constituent audiences have become trained to expect only objective evidence and causal logic to back up proposed actions. No trust without these.

So What’s New?

Yesterday at short notice I attended a Complexity Lounge talk by Chris Mowles, Professor at the Complexity and Management Centre at the University of Hertfordshire. From the introduction I picked-up a question directly related to my agenda above:

“A radical interpretation of the complexity sciences”
[and]
“things we aspire to, but even our aspirations will evolve and change in our interactions with each other and the world.”

Suggesting that maybe we could agree the latter – interactively evolving aspirations – were “more than science”? If unpredictability is all we can predict, we need more than (scientific) predictions to make good decisions?

I found it a very refreshing take from Chris. Many sources beyond complexity sciences – ethical politics, philosophical pragmatism and literature. I didn’t make enough notes, so I will need to pick-up the slides from the recording – see post note below.

What I did do is I already obtained a copy of his “Complexity – A Key Idea for Business and Society“. The “and” in the sub-title is key. The chapter headings are all I could hope for. More later no doubt – further reference after reading, here.

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Post Notes:

Chris also has his own blog.

As well as being active on LinkedIn.

And, here is a PDF of Chris’ slide deck.

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