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The cat, the cake, and complexity: a short guide to systems intelligence
Remember The Cat in the Hat?
Two kids stuck at home on a rainy day, everything neat and quiet — until a striped-hat-eerie-smile-wearing cat bursts in, full of tricks and good intentions.
He tries to fix their boredom with games and balancing acts, but every solution creates a new mess. He cleans one thing, and knocks over another. The more he tries to manage it all, the more tangled it becomes.
My kids love the movie! They find it hilarious.
While I am not a big fan of the movie, I love the story. It reminds me of how we tend to deal with complex situations today.
We jump in with good ideas and linear fixes — treating complex, tangled up challenges like flatpack furniture: Pick a framework, follow the steps, tighten the bolts, job done.
It’s a mindset that many of us are taught from a young age, at school and by society: break things down into parts, isolate the parts, focus deeply on your part and fix it. From a young age, we learn to value simplicity and shun complexity.
This way of thinking — known as reductionist thinking — has its place. In fact, many of the breakthroughs that have improved our lives, from vaccines to microchips, are built on that…
