Applied Complexity Science | Substack

To paraphrase David Epstein, to become better strategists and problem solvers we need to learn to “dance across disciplines”, to develop a "high tolerance for ambiguity" and to hone our "ability to connect disparate pieces of information in new ways", because “our greatest strength is the exact opposite of narrow specialization. It is the ability t... See more

We have achieved mastery of the linear domain, and attempted to expand that domain to cover the universe. Most real-world systems, however, including living organisms, are hopelessly nonlinear. From this realization will arise a new approach to engineering and to problem-solving in general that does not start by breaking the problem into pieces. Ou

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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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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