Surfing Complexity

The new science of complexity echoes the wisdom long passed down in the poetic tradition. The way to build a poem or a lifelike and useful system is to fold meaning into the simplest elements and allow complexity to emerge from their natural self-generation. Deal with many simple elements instead of one complex system. Think locally, act locally, i

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Complexity science, also called complex systems science, studies how a large collection of components – locally interacting with each other at small scales – can spontaneously self-organize to exhibit non-trivial global structures and behaviors at larger scales, often without external intervention, central authorities or leaders. The properties of ... See more

Perhaps the greatest “phase transition” in our thinking that such an approach could engender is the maturation in our willingness to live with relatively high levels of uncertainty in the domains of complex phenomena—and thus give up on ideas like complete “cures,” the elimination of “risk,” the design of perfect “stability,” and achieving total “s

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