longk

The Law of Unintended Consequences: 20th Century and Beyond

James: as always, thought provoking. a few observations:

1. the political system is hardly simply. In fact it is a very subtle complex social system for accomodating as manny views and opinions as possible in order to avoid violence. Its hard to look ata flow chart for the main processes of any of the 3 branches of government and find simplicity. In fact the system is intentionally complex by design, in order to prevent simplicity which leads to rash bold decisionmaking. See: totalitarianism, which when it gets it wrong, is a disaster

2. In fact, chaos theory and complexity theory lead you to develop simple control systems with rapid feedback loops and adaptive cycles precisely to reflect the uncertainty of outcomes.

3. It is confirmation bias and hindsight bias to find"causality" after the fact in a lot of "unintended consequences". Just because things happened chronologically doesnt mean that happened with causality. Because complex adaptive systems have unpredictable consequences, simplicity and flexibility (a=but mostly humility) should be sought.

4. Complexity IS an argument for distributed government and free markets. In fact, free market theory is a powerful argument that simple systems are best at managing/co-existung with complexity (the infinite variety of dynamic human needs, circumstances and resources)