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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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I happen to belong to the 'list of people who were recommended Complexity by

on Twitter', and he should've attached a warning to it, or something.

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Replying to @ejames_c @KrisAbdelmessih and @mjmauboussin

Complexity way better than chaos.

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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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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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Third, because you are now distrustful of mechanistic explanations, you find that your thinking about CASs (the economy, business strategy, network effects) become irreparably changed. You no longer believe you can predict the future. You can’t go back.

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Turned this into an essay:

What I Learnt From Complexity

M. Mitchell Waldrop's book on the Santa Fe Institute is a gateway drug to a powerful if subtle idea. Here's why it matters.

5:45 PM · Nov 9, 2021Twitter Web App

Replying to

so one great way to 'predict' or 'solve' complexity is to model them as games

such as EIP1559 in Ethereum :)

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barnabe.eth (Hiring!)

Replying to

and

I haven’t read that “Complexity” book but generally SFI/complex systems approaches permeate the way many think about decentralised + autonomous systems :) modelling as games doesn’t exactly solve them but it manages (sometimes) to highlight which micro-mechanisms…

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You might enjoy Changing Conversations in Organisations by Patricia Shaw — no big new concepts, but an account of her experience making organisational change with a complexity-informed mindset. Her idea of "acting-in" really stuck with me as a technique.

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