Pandemic Lesson #2: The Complexity Ocean

The second of five lingering thoughts that I'm taking away from the pandemic: have we hit a tipping point in complexity?

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Imagine that in December 2019, we assembled a conference of 1,000 experts from a broad range of disciples. The goal of the conference would be to make predictions about the coming decade.

At the very first session, we'd inform them that the first two and a half years of the 2020s would see:

A global respiratory pandemic that killed over 1,000,000 Americans and 12-18 million globally, the largest economic contraction and highest unemployment rate since the Great Depression (below), record drug overdoses, a widespread surge in homicides and automobile fatalities, nationwide racial justice protests, one of the most contentious presidential elections in American history, eventually leading to an insurrection at the US Capitol that contributed to the death of multiple police officers, the first open warfare between European nation states since World War 2, historic wildfires and heatwaves in the American west, a historic ice storm shutting down Texas' electrical grid, the highest levels of inflation since 1981, record high oil and gas prices, and two stock market corrections.

Source: Federal Reserve Economic Data

Given that information, how likely is it that the 1,000 experts would've predicted:

Unemployment near 70 year lows (above), labor participation rates near pre-pandemic highs, a stock market up ~20%¹, record housing prices and equity, record state budget surpluses, record economic well-being of US households, a decrease in household debt service as a percent of disposal income, the most rapid vaccine development in human history which has remained effective against multiple more transmissible and/or more lethal variants, a massive increase in retail sales, all-time high domestic investment, the largest ever decline in the federal deficit, and that despite political conservatives generally being more germophobic, vaccine safety being widespread and apolitical², and a Republican president funding vaccine development by American private businesses, and both the clinical trials and the results released during his presidency, that the American Right would reject those vaccines in mass (below).

Source: NPR

I highly doubt that the 1,000 experts would’ve predicted this confluence of events. If anything, they probably would've thought you were a lunatic. Yet every one of those good and bad things happened/is happening.

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The modern world is very complex. Even more complex than that. And yes, even more complex than you’re now thinking after I’ve said “more complex” twice.

The Human Genome Project was completed in April 2003.³ Lately, the microbiome has been the hottest health trend. And while both are important, a more complete synthesis of human health looks something like this:

Source: Individualized Medicine from Prewomb to Tomb

Needless to say, there isn’t a single person, or even groups of experts, that truly understands any of these individual layers, let alone how they all fit together.

To focus on just one: here is an incredibly-detailed chart (yet incomplete) of human metabolism. And while we do know a great deal about the human metabolism, 41.9% of American adults are obese.

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E.O. Wilson, one of America’s preeminent biologists, is famous for saying, “The real problem of humanity is the following: We have Paleolithic emotions, medieval institutions and godlike technology.”

Consider all of the different agents, institutions, and systems that interacted (and are interacting) throughout the COVID-19 pandemic: local and state and national and international leaders, governments, and politics, scientists and the production, dissemination, and interpretation of scientific knowledge, traditional media, social media, supply chains, business owners dealing with an unknown operating environment and new regulations, public health agencies and mandates, economic shutdowns, clinical trials, mass psychology, macroeconomics, work-from-home, remote education, strained healthcare systems, both lay-people and experts filtering a slew of information through their own perspectives, cognitive biases, and philosophical frameworks, all while dealing with a novel, unknown, and chronically-intense situation, etc., etc.

And at every moment, even now, each and every one of these agents, institutions, and systems is interacting with other agents, institutions, and systems in a complex, chaotic, and ever-growing web of patterns and feedback loops that create constantly-changing and unpredictable dynamic equilibriums at local, national, and global levels, simultaneously.

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Le Chatelier’s Principle, a principle in chemistry used to predict the effect on an equilibrium, states: “When any system at equilibrium is subjected to a new force, the system changes to a new equilibrium and this change partly counteracts the applied change.”⁴

More simply, “Any change in the status quo prompts an opposing reaction in the responding system.”

So according to Le Chatelier’s Principle, not only is every interaction between people, institutions, and systems altering our global equilibrium, but the change in that equilibrium itself results in a new force that resists this new state, creating an endless ripple effect of interactions and reactions, pushes and pulls.

And in the modern world, with furthering globalization and interdependence, these interactions and reactions stretch broader and are ingrained wider. With faster communications, the interactions and reactions occur faster. Despite the world broadening, with increasing career specialization, the focus and understanding of experts has narrowed. With deeper investigations into the physical and biological sciences, our toolkits have expanded both larger and smaller. With exponential generation and access to information and content, there is also exponential more sorting and filtering and storage. And with these layers and layers of systems and institutions and knowledge, we’ve all become increasingly interdependent.

This all makes me wonder if we’ve hit a type of tipping point or carrying capacity with respect to complexity. Where the interconnections and feedback loops and chaos are all so entangled and interwoven, that modern society has entered a brand new dynamic, one that is different in subtle and deep ways that we’ve only just begun to notice. We are swimming in new waters; it’s like we’re adrift at sea.

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The Complexity Ocean

Imagine that human civilization is a boat and the world a river.

Long ago, we were a simple raft with a small number of passengers. We had little understanding of the river, but with everyone’s effort, we floated nonetheless.

Slowly, as human society developed (agriculture, architecture, etc.) we added new capabilities to the ship, such as sails and rudders. These new capabilities not only allowed for a steadier voyage, but also allowed for more passengers on the ship (population expansion).

Eventually, the ship expanded in capability to the point that not everyone was directly involved in keeping it afloat and some passengers (scientists, priests, philosophers, etc.) began exploring the river. Through both happenstance and genius, we began to understand the currents of the river and the knowledge it held (metallurgy, logic, mathematics, astronomy, etc.).

Population growth continued and the ship became larger and larger. This allowed for both more people to be involved in the maintenance of the ship and for more to explore the river. The ship gradually became more complex (aqueducts, trade routes, warships, etc.) and the river’s currents more known (the printing press, medicine, diplomacy, etc.)

This process has continued through today, where today’s ship is more of an aircraft carrier (holding over eight billion passengers) with capabilities (instant communication, stocked grocery shelves, antibiotics, etc.) that would’ve been considered magic by previous generations. And our understanding of the river has never been deeper (biochemistry, particle physics, weather prediction, ecology, neuropsychopharmacology, etc.).

But if you sail along a river long enough, eventually you get to the ocean. This is the complexity tipping point.

Human civilization still exists; the boat still floats. But maybe we’ve passed through the mouth of the river and entered a whole new world: the ocean. Here the currents are different, the depths are deeper, the storms are stronger.

Meanwhile the boat is larger than ever before, all the passengers have more knowledge of and influence on the workings of other parts of the boat (instant communication, global supply chains, etc.), while simultaneously understanding less and less of how the boat actually works⁵ (specialized careers, information overload, etc.). Our leaders must navigate these new waters while avoiding new obstacles that weren’t present in the river, such as hurricanes and icebergs, all while handling the chaos of a large and ever-growing ship with layers and layers of interacting groups. And again, the ship is so large and complex that no one really knows how it completely works. Meanwhile, capabilities that have benefitted the ship can be exploited by bad actors that seek to undermine it (communication vs disinformation, biotechnology vs biological weapons, etc.). And everyone on the ship is relying on a massive web of others so that their own personal little lives and corners-of-the-ship continues to operate.

What do we do when we’ve entered these new waters and no person is steering the ship; we’re all steering the ship? When no one person knows how the boat operates; we’re all maintaining and repairing our own parts of the ship? When parts of the ship you’ve never been to and/or have no knowledge of come out of the woodwork⁶ to turn your life upside down?

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Whether or not the world has entered a complexity tipping point, the modern world is clearly more complex than prior centuries. And unless you’re willing to join the Amish or move to the tundra, the world isn’t getting any simpler. Thus, the question becomes: how do we deal with complexity?

Well, I don’t really know. But some advice anyway:

Don’t fall prey to indecision or nihilism. No matter how complex the world is, we still have to make decisions. Indecision is itself a decision, and doesn’t get anyone anywhere, so might as well play our cards and move from there.

Strong beliefs, loosely held. Everyone needs to take a massive dose of humility. Nobody has any idea what is going most of the time. No one can predict anything most of the time. Ideas and opinions are not The Gospels; it’s perfectly fine to change them. Actively seek out information that contradicts or is outside of your beliefs, think deeply and critically about that information, and synthesize it into your beliefs, even if you don’t change them.

Simplify your life. Unsubscribe from those emails that clutter your inbox. Take an hour and clean out that storage closet. Stop reading that just okay book. Stop watching that just okay show. Stop attending that group/club/event/etc. that always annoys you when you go. There is literally no reason any one person should have a Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Tik Tok, Snapchat, Pinterest, Reddit, and WhatsApp, etc. Seriously, delete most of them and you’ll be happier. Honestly, I’d bet the average person has 10+ apps on their phone that they could delete and be no worse for wear. Turn off all notifications too.

Don’t believe everything you read on the Internet. Including this newsletter. But seriously, Gell-Mann Amnesia is real.

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Pandemic Lession #1: Ashes to Ashes, Dust to Dust can be found here.

1. Yes, even with the recent drop. The S&P 500 index was ~3,350 in February 2020. Today, May 26th, 2022, it closed at 4,057.

2. The linked 2015 Pew Research survey found that 89% of Republicans and 87% of Democrats considered vaccines safe.

3. It wasn’t actually completed until March 2022.

4. A simple example is that when someone drinks alcohol, their body responds by upregulating the enzymes that breakdown alcohol. The act of getting drunk results in it being harder to get drunk. Eventually, this causes one to build a tolerance to alcohol (and other drugs).

5. Could you explain, in detail, how food is produced and distributed? How electricity is generated? How buildings are engineered? How Tylenol treats both headaches and fevers? How Netflix is able to feed you high-definition content with the click of a button? The diplomatic relations between China and the United States? Etc.

6. A reminder that CoV-2 is now the third novel coronavirus to jump into humans since 2000.