Worlds Hidden in Plain Sight: The Evolving Idea of Complexity at the Santa Fe Institute, 1984–2019 (Compass)

Simon formulated the notion now known as bounded rationality: we cannot possibly measure and assess everything as if we were a computer; we therefore produce, under evolutionary pressures, some shortcuts and distortions. Our knowledge of the world is fundamentally incomplete, so we need to avoid getting into unanticipated trouble. And even if our k

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A technologically advanced culture cannot flourish without getting better at anticipating the future. That’s why science fiction matters. That’s why scenario planning matters. That’s why complex software simulations that enable us to forecast things like climate change on the scale of decades matter.

And here I want to bring us back to another idea... See more

Leverage Often Comes from New Ways of Thinking In human systems, people often have potential leverage that they do not exercise because they focus only on their own decisions and ignore how their decisions affect others. In the beer game, players have it in their power to eliminate the extreme instabilities that invariably occur, but they fail to d

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