The Routledge International Handbook of Complexity Economics covers the historical developments and early concerns of complexity theorists and brings them into
Why embracing complexity is the real challenge in software today
In the midst of industry discussions about productivity and automation, it’s all too easy to overlook the importance of properly reckoning with complexity.
The Compendium
A compendium of insights about complexity structured as inter-linked cards by Alex Komoroske
All you need is data and functions
It's really easy to tend towards complexity as engineers. I think on some level, we love complexity. There are obviously bad types of complexity, but I think there are other types of it that we seek out, because there's something satisfying about wrapping your head around it; and I think a lot of that kind of complexity ends up in our programming languages.
Unsimple Truths: Science, Complexity, and Policy
Amazon.com: Unsimple Truths: Science, Complexity, and Policy eBook : Mitchell, Sandra D.: Kindle Store
The Unaccountability Machine: Why Big Systems Make Terrible Decisions—and How the World Lost Its Mind
Longlisted for the 2024 Financial Times Book of the Year. How life and the economy became a black box—a collection of systems no one understands, producing outcomes no one likes. Passengers get bumped from flights. Phone menus disconnect. Automated financial trades produce market collapse. Of all the challenges in modern life, some of the most vexing come from our relationships with automation: a large system does us wrong, and there’s nothing we can do about it. The problem, economist Dan Davies shows, is accountability sinks: systems in which decisions are delegated to a complex rule book or set of standard procedures, making it impossible to identify the source of mistakes when they happen. In our increasingly unhuman world—lives dominated by algorithms, artificial intelligence, and large organizations—these accountability sinks produce more than just aggravation. They make life and economy unknowable—a black box for no reason. In The Unaccountability Machine, Davies lays bare how markets, institutions, and even governments systematically generate outcomes that no one—not even those involved in making them—seems to want. Since the earliest days of the computer age, theorists have foreseen the dangers of complex systems without personal accountability. In response, British business scholar Stafford Beer developed an accountability-first approach to management called “cybernetics,” which might have taken off had his biggest client (the Chilean government) not fallen to a bloody coup in 1973. With his signature blend of economic and journalistic rigor, Davies examines what’s gone wrong since Beer, including what might have been had the world embraced cybernetics when it had the chance. The Unaccountability Machine is a revelatory and resonant account of how modern life became predisposed to dysfunction.
The Fractal Organisation Manual: How to diagnose & design organisations using the Viable System Model | SCiO - Systems and Complexity in Organisation
RRP: £12.99; Paperback: 192 pp; Publisher: SCiO; ISBN 979-8250847018
Algorithms As a Vehicle to Reflective Equilibrium: Behavioral Economics 2.0
Founded in 1920, the NBER is a private, non-profit, non-partisan organization dedicated to conducting economic research and to disseminating research findings among academics, public policy makers, and business professionals.
Complexity and biases
We examine experimentally how complexity affects decision-making, when individuals choose among different products with varying benefits and costs. We find that complexity in costs leads to choosing a high-benefit product, with high costs and overall lower payoffs. In contrast, when complexity is in the benefits of the product, we cannot reject the hypothesis of random mistakes. We also examine the role of heterogeneous complexity. We find that individuals still (mistakenly) choose the high-benefit but costly product, even if cheaper and simple products are available. Our results suggest that salience is a main driver of choices under different forms of complexity.
The Complexity of Simplicity
The Complexity of Simplicity
Power: A Primer for Perplexed Economists
Let's Assume an Unfettered Marketplace of Ideas! Or Actually, Let's Not.
Design Rules, Volume 1: The Power of Modularity
We live in a dynamic economic and commerical world, surrounded by objects of remarkable complexity and power. In many industries, changes in products and t
Competitive Cognitive Artifacts and the Demise of Humanity: A Philosophical Analysis
David Krakauer seems like an interesting guy. He is the president of the Santa Fe institute in New Mexico, a complexity scientist and ...
Co-Creation: Systems Thinking Beyond the Machine
Complexity thinking is all the rage — in the arts and sciences. Yet, there are two different strands of thinking about complexity, which are often confounded. The first comes from cybernetics, focussing on control in complex situations. The second is ecological, aiming at sustainable participation in a reality beyond control. Their difference rests on a fundamental distinction: is complexity rooted in feedback regulation or collective co-creation? While feedback remains mechanistic, co-creation generates new spaces of possibilities. We need it to understand life and its evolution. And it empowers us to rewrite our future, to escape our mechanistic cage without abandoning scientific rigor. In this paper, we illustrate how we implement these powerful yet abstract principles through our artistic and philosophical practice.
Ergodicity Economics – Formal economics without parallel universes
Does the way we look at a problem – over time or across an ensemble – change what we see? The main insight from Ergodicity Economics is that when ergodicity […]