"Managing Complexity"--what does it mean--or rather how should it be
interpreted?
ANSWER: It means to modify substantially the capacity of human beings to
understand what is going on in their world.
How to do that?
ANSWER: Stop letting our adaptive systems (e.g., Congress) impose
undesigned or poorly designed systems, created without any significant
comprehension of the impact on the individual of the conjunction of
multiple badly-designed systems at the human level. Start designing
systems carefully using the best of systems science thinking.
How to do that?
Stop succumbing to fads and study a lot of what has already been
accomplished that greatly enhances the capacity to design complex systems,
and thereby to understand them. Most importantly, begin to take seriously
Ashby's Law of Requisite Variety.
JOHN WARFIELD
Jwarfiel@osf1.gmu.edu