Applied Complexity with Joe Norman on The Stoa

Who: Joe Norman, The Stoa, Naryan Wong, Peter Limberg

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pyaGt1p5XI8

• 0:00
  • The Stoa
    • digital campfire, wisdom gym, communal podcast
• 2:00
  • Intro by Naryan Wong
• 3:15
  • Intro of Joe Norman
    • applied complexity scientist
    • instructor at Real World Risk Institute
    • Founder of Applied Complexity LLC
    • lives on homestead with wife
  • What is complexity (complex systems science)?
    • Looking at how things interact and how those interactions give rise to properties and behaviors of systems that you won’t be able to discover or observe if you break the system down into isolated components
    • contains the complement to reductionist approach to science
    • when you dissect a system and you don’t allow components to interact you destroy a lot of the info about the system
    • complexity is the study of organization as such
      • not necessarily studying biological systems, or chem systems or social systems – you’re looking at each in a particular medium how it’s arranged or composed or organized and trying to understand how the interesting/relevant properties are coming out of that org or interactions – complex systems theory
• 7:50
  • rationality vs applied rationality
  • how can we spot a complex situation?
    • “you know it when you see it”
    • complexity should be the general case (it’s a non-isolated system)
      • every problem we are looking at in the world is a complex problem (parts are interdependent)
        • 23:30
          • discussion of tail-risks
            • COVID is just a preview
            • personal redundancy (and self-sufficiency)
              • don’t depend on what’s produced halfway around the world (fall back on local resources)
                • gives better odds
            • scaling up of reliance should happen dynamically in response to needs, not as a norm.
              • we now depend on certain scale in an existential way
      • things in general are not isolated
  • what are some of the tools an applied complexity wizard may use?
    • modelling tools
    • less about which you use, more about how you use
    • must question your own assumptions
      • agent-based models
• 13:00
  • what is a complex problem Joe has worked on?
    • recent example of coronavirus issue
    • in January wrote a paper with Nassim Taleb and Yaneer Bar-Yam
    • most take very seriously
    • assumptions
      • dynamics are multiplicative
        • one person gets sick, more than one person gets sick, and more then one person gets sick
      • world is very closely interconnected
        • few hops between two people
    • must take precaution
      • freeze in place non-essential travel (for time being – adaptive decoupling)
      • become more sensitive (re resources)
      • green zone/red zone strategy (clear zones and expand in which you are clearing)
    • testing, contact tracing, etc. should come after the precautionary actions
• 17:00
  • special operations – work
    • bureaucratizing (/centralizing) due to more monetary resources
      • standardization removes value. value was maintaining independence amoung individuals, teams, approaches and operations
        • success was undercutting value
    • fight for $, but maintain independence
• 19:00
  • aha moment from reading ‘sync’ (book) by stephen strogatz (on the throne!)
  • music primed Joe to see complex systems
    • relationship between major and minor chords
  • JJ GIbson
    • perception as perceiving opportunities for action
      • action for the agent
• 25:30
  • regenerative agriculture
• 28:00
  • no projection of complex systems education at scale
    • must come to it independently
  • what is meant by reductionism?
    • once grasped, can better see the compliment
    • failure of reductionism
      • emergent properties
  • mobius strip example
    • every part of system is 2 sided
    • global piece is 1 sided
  • self-organization
    • organization that arises spontaneously
      • not dictated by planner, constructor
• 32:00
  • infinite number of perspective of complexity
    • each perspective highlights or hides things
    • no end to the process
  • studying complexity is the ultimate humility inducer
• 33:45
  • highly non-linear interactions when speaking to one another
  • two-way communication: everyone is a broadcaster and a receiver
    • broadcast media is unnatural
    • social media is great for figuring out things (from communication standpoint) — Seems like this really plays true with Twitter
• 38:00
  • fundamentally incapable of making recommendations or comments on large scale educational approaches
• 40:00
  • apprenticeship
    • high bandwidth communication that subtle embodied details transfer from one to another
• 42:30
  • Stew Kaufman
    • adjacent possible
    • evolution as a non-ergodic stepping into new possibility space all the time
  • Chris Alexander
    • “Timeless way of building” (book)
      • the way in modern times that we design and construct buildings is fundamentally different than we’ve done in history and alienating
  • Robert Rosen
    • “Life Itself” (book)
      • model natural systems with formal language and how those interrelate
• 46:00
  • doesn’t look like the US has learned to deal with the pandemic at all…
    • if this was worse, how screwed would we be. what could we do differently? (see above)
  • economic interdependence of goods and services
    • negative externalities produced by globalism
  • changes one can make to become more ‘local’
    • change the way you grocery shop
    • order from small handmade creator
• 50:00
  • intervention
    • what kind of system am i working with?
    • what is the intervention i’m proposing?
    • if something went wrong with the intervention, what would be the scope of harm that i can expect?
    • what puts the upper-bound on the scope of harm?
  • intervening is an uncertainty injection
    • rather than hoping there’s a shortcut, make a decision to understand there is not and thinking in terms of ‘how do i select’ and ‘how do i fail?’ and what kind of failures can i tolerate and what kind of failures can i not
  • no way to learn about complex system without ‘poking it’
  • can choose to not intervene
  • constant intervening is a guarantee that we will never find equilibrium. it will continue to destabilize the system