The creation of fields such as complexity and chaos studies is perhaps the most straight-forward admission that we (humanity) do not understand the big picture anymore. Not only do we not understand the macro picture of war or economics, we do not understand how to govern the inner-workings of large corporations, cities or large language models such as Chat GPT. If there was ever really a time when a single reasonable man or woman could offer ten simple rules (or commandments) by which everyone could live life, that time is gone and seems unlikely to return. But how did we get here? And how do we move forward?
Complexity and chaos emerge from the application of simple rules over and over again. In human affairs, the simple rules come from mimetics or mimicry of the behaviors we see in the environment around us. By mimicking the behavior of our parents, we learn to walk and talk. The rules of mimicry are simple: watch, imitate, and look to those you copy for approval.
Mimicry is, thus, a powerful tool for both the individual learning from her/his teachers and for the teachers for enforcing conformity. Mimicry also explains why there is no way to engage with the information environment without also being shaped by it. Every time we posit an idea to solve a problem, we are reliant on an outside source - in many instances the problem we are trying to address - to affirm the validity of our actions.
Therefore, we can blame the mimetic feedback for a broad range of human behaviors from group think, to conspiracy theories, to the perpetuation of ideologies and ideological conflict, to nepotism (also known as family business), and the narrow list of jobs that we all enter straight out of college.
The mimetic feedback loop has limits, however. Even if you follow your dad into dentistry, it is unlikely that you practice the same methods or in the same town. This narrow divergence when applied across a human population of eight billion members creates an almost unimaginably diverse set of career outcomes. And, since careers are effectively forms of analysis, you produce an endless stream of models and analytical adaptations.
But what happens if you diverge wildly from your parents? To that response, I would ask the following question. When you effectively breakup with your parents or spouse or political community, to whom do you turn for consoling? I think you turn to a group of like minded individuals. Thus, swapping your parents/spouse/political community for a new model of behavior to mimic. Further, since the internet provides an endless supply of communities willing to affirm the validity of your beliefs, it seems likely (at least to me) that the mimetic feedback loop is accelerating divergence in human belief structures and life choices.
So what does this all mean? Well, there are several lessons that we can learn from the simple rules described above. One, it is truly rare to find an individual that breaks with one group without attempting to find another form of belonging. Two, the rate of branching in human endeavors is accelerating as result of the exponential growth in online and offline communities willing to affirm a broader set of beliefs. Third, and most importantly, there is no single solution to your problems!
It is the last of these three lessons that is most obvious and, simultaneously, the most difficult for us to deal with. From my reading of history, its been a long time since we lived without prophets, kings, presidents, or news anchors. We are not accustomed to a world without one person, preferably, perched in a pulpit, balcony, podium, or news room telling us about the narrow range of things we should do to be happy. To me, it seems obvious that no single ruler ever had the right answers. I mean, I can’t predict whether I will need to stop and pee on a long walk, how could I or anyone like me offer you life advice.
More importantly, when we accept that there is no single answer coming from a uniquely capable person, we give ourselves permission to try a myriad of potential solutions. This is both a comforting and terrifying lesson to learn. The ups and downs of such an approach hit me hard in the fall of 2020.
In October 2020, in the midst of a pandemic, my dad fell into an abysmal physical state. My mom, dealing with my dad’s immobility on a daily basis, fell into an equally bad condition. So, I had to go get my dad and take care of him for a couple of months.
After moving my dad from South Dakota to Texas, I set my mind to curing all of his ills. I took him to a bevy of doctors. I tried a myriad of medicines to improve his mobility and address his pain. And, miraculously, he recovered. Then, ten days later, he returned to the immobile almost catatonic state that he had been in when I picked him up. Because I had tried so many different remedies to cure my dad’s physical maladies, I had made him better. Now that he was declining, the number of cures I had tried made it impossible to isolate the one that worked.
In my mind this is the future that we face. We will slowly transition from cumbersome institutions that attempt to find singular solutions to unknown or unknowable problems, to adaptive communities that try a broad range of fixes to to the same issues. The second approach will produce better but less replicable outcomes.
Thought-provoking, Jesse. How do you define divergence? My dad was a hippie, so I diverged from the family business in a sense. But my dad was also a member of a profession, and so am I.