Conversation

Cedric Chin
@ejames_c
Complexity by M Mitchell Waldrop is one of those weird books where I finish reading it and think "ahh, that was a good yarn, it's totally not useful" and then proceed to have my entire worldview changed in the subsequent months. Just. What.
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Cedric Chin
@ejames_c
To be precise, here’s what the book does, at least to my brain: First, it hammers home the concept of a complex adaptive system, giving you the tools to recognise it in the wild. It does so in story format, making it far easier to remember. So you start seeing CASs everywhere.
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Cedric Chin
@ejames_c
Second, it tells you all the ways that mechanistic methods of thinking about CASs fail. It does this subtly. Mostly through stories. So now you can recognise when someone is using a mechanistic explanation to reason about a CAS and feel very uncomfortable.
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John Allspaw
@allspaw
Replying to
@ejames_c
“How wonderful that we have met with a paradox. Now we have some hope of making progress.” (Niels Bohr) Welcome to the Can’t Unsee club! 😀
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Richard Hughes-Jones
@rhughesjones
Replying to
@ejames_c
Its a wonderful book and agree, you can never go back 🐇🕳🤪 Professionally, I'm most interested in what it means for leadership - navigating a complex, rather than a complicated world. Hope you don't mind me sharing:
richardhughesjones.com
Using the Cynefin framework to become a better leader in a complex world
Scaling technology businesses aren't complicated, they're complex, and that requires a different approach to leadership.
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Fitzy
@CMChatter
Replying to
@ejames_c
Grr, another thing to read thanks to you sir. Have you dabbled with the Cynefin framework? Relevant to handling complexity, knowledge mgt, CTA etc.
@snowded
is worth a YouTube dive.
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Partnership Investing
@PartnershipInv
Replying to
@ejames_c
Agreed. Learning about CASs and the concept of emergence made me question how to think what the behaviour of individual agents tell us about systems and vice versa. Will read the one by Waldrop soon (read the book from Miller and Page).
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swyx 🔜 Dev | Writers | Miami
@swyx
Replying to
@ejames_c
i actually dont find the inability to predict a good thing. people really want predictions. personal outcomes really depend on weighting probabilities right. its not enough to sit back and say “ah look everything is so complex it all depends”. you have to *do something*.
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Thomas Depierre
@Di4naO
Replying to
@swyx
and
@ejames_c
No but now you can make story they want to hear for the purpose you need instead of basing your own view of the world on them. Having the ability to understand the *context* of these stories help a lot.