“Hi, I’m Nicky Case,” he began, “and I explain complex systems in a visual,
tangible, and playful way.” He did exactly that with 207 brilliant slides and
clear terminology. What system engineers call “negative feedback,” for
example, Case calls “balancing loops.” They maintain a value. Likewise
“positive feedback” he calls “reinforcing loops.” They increase a value.
Using examples and stories such as the viciousness of the board game Monopoly
and the miracle of self-organizing starlings, Case laid out visually the basics
of finessing complex systems. A reinforcing loop is like a ball on the top of
a hill, ready to accelerate downhill when set in motion. A balancing loop is
like a ball in a valley, always returning to the bottom of the valley when
perturbed.
Now consider how to deal with a situation where you have an “attractor” (a deep
valley) that attracts a system toward failure:
The situation is precarious for the ball because it is near a hilltop that is a
reinforcing loop. If the ball is nudged over the top, it will plummet to the
bottom of the balancing-loop valley and be stuck there. It would take enormous
effort raise the ball out of such an attractor — which might be financial
collapse or civil war. Case’s solution is not to try to move the ball, MOVE
THE HILLS — identify the balancing and reinforcing loops in the system and
weaken or strengthen them as needed to reconfigure the whole system so that the
desired condition becomes the dominant attractor.
Now add two more characteristics of the real world — dense networks and chaos
(randomness). They make possible the phenomena of emergence (a whole that is
different than the sum of its parts) and evolution. Evolution is made of
selection (managed by reinforcing and balancing loops) plus variation
(unleashed by dense networks and chaos). You cannot control evolution and
should not try — that way lies totalitarianism. Our ever popular over-emphasis
on selection can lead to paralyzed systems — top-down autocratic governments
and frozen businesses. Case urges attention to variation, harnessing networks
and chaos from the bottom up via connecting various kinds of people from
various fields, experimenting with lots of solutions, and welcoming a certain
amount of randomness and play. “Design for evolution,” Case says, “and the
system will surprise you with solutions you never thought of.”
To do that: “Make chaos your friend.”
—Stewart Brand
s...@longnow.org <mailto:s...@longnow.org>
A linkable version of this summary is on Medium, here
<https://medium.com/@stewartbrand/how-to-finesse-complexity-5376c65a47f5>. The
audio and (soon) video versions of Case’s talk are at Long Now, here
<http://longnow.org/seminars/02017/aug/07/seeing-whole-systems/>.
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