thinking amid complexity

setting a context for systemic thinking

Reality—real life—is complex, more complex than has been imagined or can be imagined. The majority of our pressing challenges or issues of concern are overwhelmingly complex in overwhelmingly complex environments and contexts. People are more complex than appreciated or understood. Complexity is the essence of being human, of life, of existence.

When there isn’t the competency or ability to deal with complex situations, they are referred to as being too complicated and ‘wicked’ — e.g., ‘wicked problems’. But the perceived ‘wicked’ quality of a situation is actually a reflection of a change agent's inability to engage successfully with the complex situation at hand. As Annis Nin observed, “We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are.”

Unfortunately, the characterization of a situation as wicked rather than the competency of a change agent to successfully engage with complexity short-circuits the selection of appropriate methods of inquiry, replacing them with more simple or simplistic methods of inquiry.

Many types of reductive, simplified inquiry have gained eager acceptance by professional, academic, and political decision makers. An example is Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky's postulations on the nature and role of thinking in decision-making. Kahneman postulates that there are two systems of thinking: ‘fast thinking—system 1’ and ‘slow thinking—system 2’.

Slow thinking is a process of careful analytic, rational, and logical consideration. It is reductive, reactive, and limited — but essential and necessary when dealing with complexity. It is bounded or limited, as Nobel Laureate Herbert Simon points out, by logical and rational limits.

Bounded rationality describes a wide range of descriptive, normative, and prescriptive accounts of effective thinking that depart from the assumptions of idealized rationality.

The limits to reason were pointed out by Kant, a philosopher from the eighteenth century. Other scholars and practitioners have pointed out similar understandings over the intervening years. Unfortunately, their insights have been glossed over, forgotten, or dismissed by the modern champions of slow thinking.

Kant asks whether reason can guide action and justify moral principles. “Empiricist” philosophers claimed that only feelings can motivate us to act; reason cannot. In Hume’s famous words: “Reason is wholly inactive, and can never be the source of so active a principle as conscience, or a sense of morals.”

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

AI (artificial intelligence) is slow thinking on steroids and speed. It is hyper but not complex — just complicated. AI is not a replacement for human intelligence because it is not a form of intelligence. The hype declaring that most human involvement in decision-making and change will be replaced by AI shortly is just that: unsubstantiated hype. AI is a form of automated cynicism as defined by Oscar Wilde: “The cynic is someone who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.”

NI (natural intelligence) is a nuanced conjunction of fast thinking and slow thinking plus other essential qualities. NI was made for dealing with complexity because its design evolved in complex contexts and environments.

Fast thinking can be experienced as unreflective impulses expressed in the popular tech world’s mantra to “move fast and break things”. This indiscriminate use of cleaver and sledge in making decisions and making changes — as occurring in American politics — is a concrete example of the dangerous and harmful side effects of unfettered, simplistic, fast thinking added to the other concerns delimited by Kahneman and Tversky.

Fast thinking, as postulated by Kahneman and Tversky, casts ‘judgment’ as unreliable — it is just guessing at what is true, resulting in high error rates. Fast thinking’s assigned notion of judgment is based on quick, intuitive responses based on emotion, experience, and gut feelings. Declaring fast thinking to be a kind of judgment that is unreliable, biased, and error-prone when positing answers to rational scientific questions dooms any appreciation for professional judgment, such as systemic design judgment, an a priori nonstarter for dealing with complexity. However, judgment is an excellent example of a highly successful strategy for dealing prudently with all things complex.

Another book dealing with the unreliability of judgment is one by the popular author Malcolm Gladwell, _­­titled Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking, which focuses on the assumed inherent shortcomings of judgment as well. This book, too, has gained popularity and influence because it is an entertaining access to a complex subject.

Much more nuanced forms of inquiry, designed to deal with complexity, exist but are not well developed as of yet. But it is crucial to do so. This era of championing STEM strategies — science, technology, engineering, mathematics _­­programs — is focused on normative slow thinking for good reasons, but slow thinking needs to be augmented by a focus on another type of slow thinking. A type of slow thinking that is broader and deeper — systemic thinking. This approach enables human agents to understand and engage with complexity at the requisite level. Additionally, slow thinking needs to be partnered with a more nuanced form of fast thinking.

Building on Kahneman’s popularized approaches to thinking we could say that in a more nuanced way that there are two types of slow-thinking (Kahneman’s System Two) — type C and type D and we can say that there are two types of fast-thinking (Kahneman’s System One) — type A and type B.

Slow thinking type D is inquiry based on reason, ethics, aesthetics, and desires. This type of thinking, essential for good design inquiry and action, will be explored more fully in subsequent Stack posts, but not just yet.

When the intentions are to secure improvement and progress in the human condition, complexity can once again short-circuit agents’ efforts, redirecting them to reductive and reactive inquiry (e.g., problem-solving) and action. Agents are presented with clear and urgent problematic necessities rather than design opportunities. Here, ‘environmental fallacies’, as C. West Churchman labels them, make their problematic appearance:

There are urgent necessities, but:

· different folk have different ‘urgent necessities’

· if you treat the symptom without understanding the context, you will often get into a mess (‘the environmental fallacy’).

· Anger is OK to start with, but the ‘systems hero’ wants to tackle it in a sane and rational way, by trying to analyse the wider context.

· No problem can be solved simply on its own basis. Every problem has its own ‘environment’ to which it is inextricably united.

· However, his reasonableness makes him compelling, but not necessarily right or infallible.

The particulars of Churchman’s understanding are somewhat problematic in today’s world, but the underlying insight remains sharp and clear. Actions are taken in complex environments and not just in isolated contexts.

However, there are effective and fitting strategies for dealing with complexity without the loss of fidelity from oversimplification. The challenge is that the context for complex systemic thinking is difficult to work in because of the noise and bias toward normative decision-making championed by influential academics and professionals influenced by thinkers like Gladwell and Kahneman, for example. This has done damage to the utility of judgment as a legitimate and necessary form of decision-making in complex situations, constraining it to a process of guessing ‘right answers’ to rational questions rather than creating responses of integration and unification to design challenges.

Systemic thinking is, in part, a conjunction of Kahneman and Tversky’s postulated two systems of thinking — fast and slow. Their ideas have become popular among professionals, academics, and politicians because they simplify thinking about complexity into an accessible, simple binary schema. Systemic thinking, however, is inclusive of a rich compound of schema designed for dealing adequately with complexity.

Systemic thinking — a good approach for dealing with complexity without loss of fidelity — is a conjunction of both fast and slow thinking but with a difference that makes a difference. The reduction of thinking to binary choices lacks nuance, particularly systemic nuance. Systemic thinking brings breadth and depth to thinking, transcending the constraints of slow thinking and the emotionalism of fast thinking. Systemic thinking, in conjunction with systemic design, is a prudent and pragmatic means for dealing with complexity. In complex systemic strategies there are no given or deterministic directions to take for making decisions or choices. There are, however, a variety of means for obtaining desirable outcomes.

I will not expand further on the two types of slow thinking at the moment, but I do want to expand on type B fast thinking in my next two Substack postings — Sudden Understanding and Sudden Wisdom. These examples of fast thinking are holistic forms of inquiry informed by imagination, intuition, reason, feelings, and acts of ensoulment.