Working With Complex Systems #

Systems of a sufficient complexity are hard/impossible to intuitively reason about, or become an expert in. One way to think about these systems is as “low validity environments” as described in the Veritasium video on experts.

This means that predicting the future state of a complex system like the economy, the health of a human, or a political system is extremely error prone. That doesn’t mean we should attempt this prediction, but IMO it does mean that putting a lot of faith in predictions is a mistake. It might be a better strategy to have different plans of action for different possible outcomes.

Categories: Understanding The World

Backlinks: Predicting The Future, What To Believe,