Wild Minds Weekly: You are not a machine

Hello friends,

What do modern medicine, mainstream nutrition, the 'science' behind climate change, and our current models of business have in common?

They view the world as a complicated system instead of a complex one. 

What happens when we get the two mixed up?

Treating complex systems as complicated ones can have huge consequences because we don't understand the full impact of our actions.

If you're wondering what the difference is, don't worry, that's what we're exploring today. 

I'll give you an example of this way of thinking that you'll be familiar with:

Earth is getting hotter. One of the possible reasons is that greenhouse gases, like methane, in the atmosphere trap heat and the Earth grows hotter as these increase.

Cow farts produce methane.

So, some people conclude that cows drive climate change and we should cut down on our beef consumption so that we don't need so many cows, and the earth will cool.

Now besides the fact that this is a narrative only the most indoctrinated would believe, what's wrong with that view of farming? 

The model completely disregards the complexity of all the interconnected relationships.

For example, the fact that the carbon that cows release is from the grass that would have ended up in the atmosphere anyway, or the fact that cows boost soil bio-diversity and make it healthier, healthy soil absorbs more carbon from the atmosphere, and so on.

Only a tiny portion of the system is looked at and understood - how much methane cows produce - and that is mistaken for the full story.

It's this flawed point of view that makes it easy for the pharmaceutical and military-industrial complex to convince people that:

• the sun is bad for you (when actually, sun avoidance is as harmful as smoking)
• statins prevent heart disease (when heart disease is a result of metabolic dysfunction)
• red meat is harmful because it "causes cancer" (when it's one of the most bioavailable sources of nutrition available)
• the success of a company is measured in stock price, and the success of a country is measured in GDP (when going to war also increases GDP)
• mass industrial farming is a good idea because it produces more food and better profit margins (at the expense of topsoil). 
  
  

What's the common thread between all of these viewpoints?

They are narratives constructed from one tiny aspect of the full picture.

Last week we talked about one of the two causes the problems that we currently face (I'll link this below).

Today we're going to talk about the second: Complicated Open Loop systems vs Complex Closed Loop Systems. 

So what's the difference between complicated and complex?

I used to think there was no difference, in day to day conversation they're the same - they both refer to systems with many interconnected parts.

But there is a fundamental yet subtle difference.

I'll break it down.

A complex system has many interconnecting parts that behave in an unpredictable way, and the interconnected nature of these systems is 'emergent' - it grows from all these interactions, but are not present in a single part.

Here's what that means:

From simple building blocks, complex interconnected relationships emerge.

You are the perfect example of this.

How did you begin? 

I would assume, with the meeting of a sperm and an egg cell.

And what do we have now?

An incredible being, with a brain (an amazingly complex system on it's own), emotions, strange tendencies, and deep relationships to other people.

We are complex systems.

And while we may follow certain patterns, nobody can predict with 100% certainty what we will do next. We cannot be controlled in the way we might steer a car (have you tried getting a baby to do anything you want?), we can only be poked, nudged and influenced in a particular direction

At every scale, we are part of a complex system. Our local ecosystem, our country, our continent, our earth, our solar system... you get the picture. Complex systems, all of them.

The thing about complex systems, is they are born, not built. With the right conditions, they grow become self-sustatining and anti-fragile. These systems are self-organising, and self-repairing.

The whole is greater than the sum of its parts. You are more than just a collection of cells and organs.

In contrast, complicated systems are built (typically by humans).

They also have many interconnected parts, but they can be completely understood and broken down into their individual parts, and an understanding of each individual part leads to an understanding of the whole system.

They are predictable, fragile, and not self-sustaining. Have you ever seen a car, or a computer, self-repair? While that may not be too far off, but I don't think we're there yet.

So that's the difference between complex and complicated systems. 

But that's not all there is to it.

The second part of the idea is the difference between open and closed loop systems.

The difference between these is more obvious.

Open loops are fixed, the output does not change the process.

You put the same things in, you get the same output. You press the pedal down, your car speeds up. You release the pedal, it slows down. If the system is working, this will predictably happen everytime. 

In a closed loop however, the outputs are fed back into the system and influence the behaviour of the system.

So what's an example of a complicated, open loop system?

Picture the process of manufacturing a car. Raw materials are extracted from somewhere else, then they're passed into a fixed, very complicated, process where individual parts are assembled in the exact same way everytime.

And unsurprisingly, unless there's an issue with the process, the exact same thing comes out. 

It's consistent, it's predictable, and by changing the way the individual parts work, you change the whole. 

But the problem is, these processes produce a product and waste, which is then discarded after use, I'll touch on the impact that has below.

What we need is a closed-loop process.

The best example of a complex, closed-loop system?

Mother Nature.

From simple beginnings, emerge beautifully complex ecosystems with a web of interconnected relationships.

Plants and animals are born, they grow, then they die and are broken down to sustain the growth of the next generation, no external inputs required and no waste produced, everything is fed back in.

The system evolves with feedback over time, and new properties emerge that could never have been predicted. 

Now, these types of systems are self-repairing and self-sustaining which means they have a certain degree of anti-fragility - they can bounce back from chaos.

But that doesn't mean they're indestructible, and that's the problem.

The toxicity and waste that is produced from our complicated, open-loop processes, builds up and throws our complex systems so far out of balance that it makes it increasingly difficult to recover from.

You do not have to search far to find examples of this. 

• Bodybuilders taking steroids to get huge, and destroying their natural hormone production and fertility in the process.
• Nuking our digestive system with antibiotics to killl an infection, and obliterating our microbiome in the process.
• Pesticides increasing yields one year then resulting in superweeds that drain yields every year after.
  
  

We cannot treat complex systems like complicated ones.

You are not a car engine, a farm is not a factory, and the Earth is not an office that you can just change the temperature of.

So what can you do?

The first thing you can do is choose complex over complicated wherever you can. And by that I mean things like:

• Questioning complicated solutions. Anytime someone tries to sell you a complicated solution that solves all your problems, think about the complex relationships involved. What's the bigger picture?
• Buying from a local farmer that sees themselves as part of ecosystem, not a production line.

But this is more than an individual movement. No single person can optimise their life to fix this problem. Relationships are the foundation. This needs to be a collective movement. A restructuring of our society as a whole.

So, then the question is, what does a good model of the world look like? How can we structure society differently so that we aren't chasing the wrong numbers and pushing ourselves to the edge of societal collapse?

We'll dive into that next week.

Hint: It looks something like a collective movement of communities built around regenerative agriculture. 

To a brighter future,

Rob (find me on X)

Wild Minds Community

PS.

👉Click here to read last weeks newsletter about how Rivalry Dynamics X Technological Advancements create the conditions for societal collapse (sounds gloomy I know, but we can't build a solution until we understand the problem)

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