Through a Glass Darkly - A complex systems approach to Futures

Humans tend to focus only on the near future, missing complex patterns and unexpected possibilities. This work uses complexity science and narrative to better understand and manage social systems and their futures. It emphasizes seeing multiple perspectives and mapping current conditions to improve decision-making and foresight.

Midgley (2001) has suggested that the Cartesian separation of the body from the soul was motivated in part by the desire to create a space for practitioners of science that would not be subject to the fates of Bruno and Galileo

We may be better at firefighting (literally and metaphorically) and writing building regulations, but the hope that with rational and reductionist science we could overcome the multiple and fractal realities of human evolution (please note the avoidance of the term human nature) has proved to be false.

With climate change the myth, and it was always a myth, of steady progress towards greater levels of civilisation is finally shattered.

Naturalising sense-making is one of five acknowledged schools of sense-making (Urquhart et al. 2020) and asks the question: How do we make sense of the world so we can act in it? With that phrase comes a concept of sufficiency: given the level of our knowledge what decisions can we make?

Known as in-attentional blindness the phenomena can be summarised as we do not see what we do not expect to see. The reasons for this lie in energy efficiency. We can’t afford to scan all available data before we make a decision so we privilege the association of a limited scan of available data with first-fit pattern matching to individual and collective memories and imagination.

In a complex world, hindsight does not allow for better foresight, if anything it makes it worse.

We need an objective way of determining coherent from incoherent insights

complex adaptive systems theory (CAS)

When we get to the use of ‘complex’ as a word in ordinary language we have even greater ambiguity. Historically complex has been used as a synonym for complicated but a variety of authors have increasingly made them antonyms and the difference is best understood in terms of their origins.

The Latin root of complicated lies the idea of something that is folded, and by implication can be unfolded while remaining largely unchanged. Complex, on the the other hand, has a Greek origin in the idea of entanglement and any attempt to untangle it will create something different and the entanglement will never happen quite the same way twice, although there will be discernible patterns.

in a CAS there is no material linear causality

In literary theory, an actant can mean a person but it can also mean any object which plays an active role in any narrative. So all actors are actants, but not all actants are actors.

If I focus on trying to predict future states I am doomed to fail but if I can observe the current state and if I control enough of the magnets then, by real-time action I can influence and possibly even control what patterns emerge.

Emergence is one of the most critical aspects of CAS and is frequently one of the most commonly misunderstood, and abused; too often used as an excuse for doing nothing. The emergent properties of a system cannot be attributed to the properties of the parts or the interactions which produced it and any perceived coherence will be retrospective in nature. There are three necessary but not sufficient conditions for emergence to occur:

1. There must be a significant number of actants.
2. The actants are characterised by rich, highly local interactions to which they adapt.
3. No actor is aware of the system as a whole.

In seeking to manage a CAS all we can do is create or influence actants and their interactions and rapidly deploy energy to emergent patterns we consider beneficial while withdrawing it from those that could be harmful.

Stuart Kauffman’s (2000) notion of the adjacent possible.

At any given point in time, a system may re-orientate itself to possibilities that are adjacent to current reality, but not those which are distant from it.

concept of exaptation in which a trait that was selected according to one function under conditions of stress exapts, rather than adapts for a completely different context. It initially changes function but not form, but with the new function, subsequent changes in the form will arise through adaption: dinosaurs’ feathers which were selected for sexual display and/or warmth then exapt for flight; the cerebellum which evolved for fine-grained muscle control for feeding exapts to handle grammar in human language.

Snowden (2000) and colleagues created the term anthro-complexity to distinguish the study of complexity in human systems from computational complexity with its focus on modelling. It argues that complexity in human systems differs from that elsewhere in nature by virtue of:

1. Intelligence: Humans have the capacity to reflect on their world and to work with abstractions, we can shape our world physically and spiritually.
2. Identity: Humans constantly shift between identities based on context, something that is not the case for insects and reptiles (putting the higher apes and octopodes aside for the moment). Those identities can exist within and between individuals and are not always bounded by time or space which makes the parameters for modelling and the necessary reduction involved problematic.
3. Intention: Humans, although definitely also subject to influences that do not arise from conscious intent, can also act intentionally, even against their own interests. Humans are the only species to demonstrate altruism and/or a willingness to sacrifice, outside of a kinship group, or to an abstraction.

5.1.4 Assemblage Theory and Narrative

An assemblage is an ensemble of heterogeneous elements which compose a territory. Assemblage is a slightly problematic term in English as it doesn’t mean an assembly of parts.

it is ‘not a unified whole, but more a heterogeneous co-existence

Patterns of similar micro-narratives form through conversation into patterns of sense-making which act rather like attractors in determining what is paid attention to or believed

New Materialism

sees humans and all other entities as relational ‘having no ontological status or integrity other than that produced through their relationship to other similarly contingent and ephemeral bodies, things and ideas.

In an assemblage, there is no “subject” and no “object”, and no single element possesses agency. Rather an affect is a “becoming” that represents a change of stage or capacities of an entity’.

Affective flows can comprise elements from many levels, from the grand narratives of strategy to the anecdotal accounts of human experience at the school gate or in the pub after work. They are a network of multiple connections that are not arborescent but are deeply entangled and rhizomatic in nature

They don’t just impact on common perception but also on those engaged in futures work in both academe and government. They are not something we can be trained out of, they are a part of reality.

So how do we address futures work in a world where the future is inherently unknowable and there are major issues with the human capacity to even understand the here and now?

In a complex adaptive system there is no linear material causality (Juarrero 1999) so, a priori, making predictions is problematic. Forecasting and backcasting both assume a degree of predictable relationship between cause and effect; so in the field of anthro-complexity, we focus on ‘side casting’ (Snowden 2012), casting around in the present to discover opportunities. That leads to mapping the affordances of the current state. The more accurately we can understand where we are, the more we can manage the evolutionary potential of the present.

we need to de-territorialise the dominant patterns of interpretation. In general, humans will always assess the current situation based on how they have already decided to act.

Conflict is inevitable in terms of macro-level actions so we need to avoid and hint of the desired outcome at this stage.

The name for this framework and linked methods is Estuarine Mapping

A counterfactual is a statement about which transformations are possible and which are impossible in a physical system. A transformation is possible when you have a ‘constructor’ that can perform a task and then retain the capacity to perform it again.

The essence of a constructor is that it enables a transformation in a replicable way.

To break or exploit fundamental beliefs and attitudes we have to first map what exists, not create a vision of what we would like it to be. We then have to see what is stable and to what degree. We can then micro-nudge the system to a more favourable state.

We are not forecasting, we are finding new ways to pay timely attention.

The map allows decision-makers to select a pattern seen as more positive and ask: ‘How would we create more observations/narratives such as these …’ and then select the dominant pattern and ask ‘… and fewer like these’

If we start journeys with a sense of direction we are open to novel possibilities on the pathway. If we are wedded to specific outcomes or forecasts, then those weak signals may well be missed.