Some of this is opaque to me, and some of it is very clear. I’ll keep working on it, but apart from the idea that complexity can be easily ‘reduced’, and that approaches to problem solving can be integrated and aligned within complexity (assuming I read them correctly), this seems very useful. And showing that people may not want to fully recognise the issues around complexity is also useful – assuming again, that I have read them correctly.
It is taken from:
Claes Andersson, Petter Törnberg “Wickedness and the anatomy of complexity”. Futures 95 (2018) 118–138 with occasional comments in [ ]s
If this in anyway compromises intellectual property or is found exploitative, then please let me know and I will remove it.
Andersson & Törnberg begin:
We may now identify a number of general conclusions – to be read as a sequence of very short aphorisms – about the constraints that exist on understanding and intervening in wicked systems. We will offer suggestions about future pathways for developing such capabilities, as well as integration and confirmation of some existing pathways and insights.
1. Wicked systems are so strongly and heterogeneously connected that it is impossible to exhaust even small portions of them empirically to produce a “realistic picture”. [Complex systems are too multiply interlinked to comprehend completely.]
2. “Pictures” must therefore be perspectives, rarely subject to universal agreement. [‘Pictures’ is a term for a model, or a vision. The point is the standard one, that “the map is not the terrotory” and there is unlikely to be a shared realistic picture or undestanding.]
3. Even if we could obtain a “realistic picture”, this would frequently not help much since the system changes unpredictably over time – including as a direct result of us interacting with it. [Any model or understanding, not only carries only a small part of the possible information about the system, but it is likely to be out of date, being made sometime earlier. Furthermore, interaction with reality can change the workings of reality, and hence alter the accuracy of our models. Attention to what happens in interaction is vital.]
4. Uncertainty includes not only foresight but also e.g. what the problem consists in, what tools are available, what actors to include. [Uncertainty about almost everything is fundmental to our interactions with a complex world and they rightly point to uncertainties around understanding the nature of the problems, the set of tools we have available, and which actors should be including in solving the problem as some are likely to be invested in not solving, or ignoring, the problem. Interactions and models which insist on certainty, or insist that they are certain, are delusional and probably harmful. We should alwats be on the lookout for ‘unintended consequencs’ when complexity escapes us.]
5. “The game” and its rules frequently change dynamically on similar time scales. [The strong form of this proposition is Whitehead’s question, “do the laws of nature themselves, evolve?” In other words even if we understand the rules of the system correctly, we cannot say the rules will not change. As complex systems evolve, they almost certainly will change.]
6. The usefulness of models and theory hinges critically on whether, how, and to what extent it is realistic to decouple the game from its rules. [I think this means reality is more important than our rules for reality. There are situations in which people have to act, irrespective of their prospects for success as not acting appears lethal. We always risk decoupling the system from its real rules.]
7. Since this is more likely to be realistic for basic, slow-changing, features (e.g. physiology, logical dilemmas, strongly locked-in features, etc.), useful general regularities tend to be highly abstract [and thus not very useful 🙂 However, tipping points do not allow us to assume that apparent general regularities cannot change rapidly. Slow changing features may not be permanent. This prospect cannot be ignored in any succesful problem solving.]
8. Every wicked problem, however, is critically unique in its details. Interventions to address wicked problems must therefore be designed in the form of meta-solutions that scaffold the generation of actual solutions. [Wicked problems are defined in many different ways. They say “An attribution of wickedness to a problem illustrates a feeling that the problem almost seems to avoid resolution and/or that attempting to solve it keeps generating hosts of other and seemingly unrelated problems.” Other ways of looking at wickedness are as extensions of complexity. Wicked problems are problems in which there may be no agreed upon problem, no agreed upon cause, no agreed upon trends (limited predictability), and no agreed upon solutions. Wicked problems are complex problems, they may well be (apparently) new problems with no established technique of procedure, and uncertainty is fundamental.
[I’ve No idea what the second sentence of the above proposition means. It sounds over-optimistic]
9. Navigating innovation pathways in everyday sub-wicked systems is congruous with doing so in wicked systems: an iterative and reflexive process of alignment, integration and problem solving. [They define sub-wicked systems as “wicked systems that have not outgrown our capacity to design and govern them – a capacity that it is no coincidence that we possess: we are adapted specifically for dealing with sub-wicked Systems”. This could be hopeful more than probable. What evidence counts to suggest some wicked problems are not real wicked problems? It is safest to assume they are wicked/complex and work on them as if they were wicked (we cannot fully understand them, we are uncertain about them etc), and as if they are able to escape us. I’d suggest that we deal with wicked problems and complex systems all the time; from talking to our friends to getting the family out of the door on time, so this is not necessarily bad or impossible. Remember most succesful policies, such as neoliberalism, function because they reduce complexity to harmful simplicity, and hence have the bias towards ignoring complexity, even when it bites back – hence we have a bias towards determining problems are not wicked, or that they can be integrated, which may not be justified. It may just be a delusion.]
10. Policy can be formulated in the likeness of this capacity rather than of our capacity to design complicated artifacts (designed, assembled and launched). [I’m going to assume that this means negotiating wicked systems in an ‘ok manner’ can often be easier than designing working artfects, or solving the problem completely with technology, or othewise, but I don’t know if that is what they mean.]
11. Reducing wickedness to sub-wickedness is attractive since this preserves more of its ontological and epistemological features [Preserves more than what? What convinces us that the reduction is realistic and preserves the characteristics we need to face. Sure it might be easy to pretend we have done this reduction and don’t have to deal with uncertainty and unintended effects, but what checks are there, other than failure to process when it occurs?].
12. What we need to pay particularly attention to in such a reduction is:
- Incomplete and biased perspectives on the wicked system from sub-wicked perspectives that reflect how we are embedded into the seamless web (culture, education, roles, interests, power).
- Wicked systems exhibit more complexity than we can handle: we have an eminently poor – even outrightly misguiding – intuition for complexity. [These points seem to be implying that reducing wickedness to sub-wickedness might be prone to errors of optimism, which I can agree with, but lose any understanding of why they have been so focused on the possibilities of reducing complexity, or gaining alignment.]
13. The suggested response is to:
- Prioritize the integration of different perspectives.
- Integrate the use of models as crutches for understanding complexity. [No idea what this is supposed to meam. It sounds management gobble, or like prozac leadership, to me. It does not seem to deal with the fundamental issues of uncertainty, incomplete models or the social distribution of incomplete models]
14. Also sub-wicked systems are constantly under the threat of misalignment. We need cooperation for aligned and directed action and so alignment should also be prioritized [Alignment of what? People? Knowledges? Maybe it would be better to knowingly keep incompatbilities and rough edges in order to preserve remembrance of the complex reality, and to gain diverse viewpoints, rather than ignore it to make things more uniform.]
15. Alignment is also important normatively (deciding what we want to achieve) since, by contrast with engineering problems, goodness cannot be integrated uniquely at a top level with respect to external functions. Wicked systems are good or bad in relation to the components that they contain – components that are, in many ways, in competition – and a “good arena” might have qualities such as sustainability (inequity and other problems do not amplify) and a balance between goodness from local perspectives that is acceptable to most. [Wicked problems are not evil, or deliberately malicious. Non-wicked problems are not good. This seems to be a misplacement of language]
16. Narrative and negotiation have strong aligning and integrating functions and can form the “glue” in iterative cycles of sub-wicked approaches. [They also have strong forgetting and misdirectional functions.]
17. Due to uncertainty and dynamics any propositions and goals should be treated as tentative. [Yes]
18. Dynamic exploration must include components that are actually or potentially part of the process:
- We cannot know in advance what parties to include or leave out, nor what roles they should or will play. [True. However it might easily appear that some parties or policies seem harmful. what we do about those policies and the power of those advocating for them is difficult. It might appear that some people would rather suicide and take the system down with them. It is doubtful that helping them to kill the system without change is useful, Hence alignment is not always possible, and we need to be aware of cultural, or political, bias which keeps potentially knowledgable people out of the discussion all together.]
- Components in a seamless web are subject to substantial uncertainty; they cannot be sufficiently declared in mission statements, CV’s etc. [Also social conflict]
19. Large black-box models (such as detailed predictive planning models) are hard to integrate into seamless webs: they cannot intermix with the viewpoints, knowledge and experiences of the participants (e.g. Klosterman, 2012).
20. Many wicked problems are so unique and contingent that modeling makes no sense. Complexity remains important, however, and simple, pedagogical models could be important for building a better intuition for complex dynamics [Yes. but this goes back to the problem. what is the way we should deal with a complex, conflictual mess?]
To make these linked points easier to overview, we will now boil them down to three main themes:
- 1. Uncertainty is intrinsic to wickedness and the issue should not primarily be how we reduce it but how we deal with it. Dealing with uncertainty is at the core of what dealing with wickedness is about. [italics added]
- 2. Integration of interests, models, tools, viewpoints, expertise, capacities for action (e.g. authority), and goals is essential, both instrumentally and for normative reasons. [They never explain how all conflict can be intergrated away. I personally think this is unreaslistic and dangerous. We have to solve the problem despite the social conflict, or be prepared to recognise the irriducible problems]
- 3. Alignment is tightly tied to integration and is essential for maintaining the direction and integrity of efforts. [It is nice if people agree on the problem and that it is necessary to fix that problem, but the point of wicked problems is that this unity is unlikely. Climate change is a classic example. some people want to pretend it is not a problem at all, and that nothing should be done which risks contemporary profit or order.]
- 4. Dynamics/emergence is at the core of innovation and wickedness, giving rise to uncertainty and other wicked phenomena. Interventions must therefore be dynamically intermeshed with the unfolding dynamics. [A simpler way of expressing this, is that unintended consequences, unexpected results and suprises, will occur. Look out for them, and be prepared to change actions, by their observed results.]
Tags: complexity
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