Complex Systems and Emergent Behavior: Most simply, a system is a collection of parts or pieces that interact, affecting each other over time. Each piece (more . . .)

Fear of Emergence from Complex Systems: The most fascinating aspect of the behavior of units once connected is that they behave in ways not predicted by (more . . .)

Methods of Prediction: Systems theory can be more frightening than illuminating. If the simple act of linking one event to another can result (more . . .)

About this site

Essays

Current Working Notes

My personal website is at ODBlog . I write about decision theory at my site On Deciding . . . Better . This site is a hyperlinked set of essays using Tinderbox.

Syndication available

Decision Theory uses the mathematics of probability to guide decisions. But setting the odds and making sense of the numbers requires imagination, not computing power.

When I first started On Deciding . . . Better a few years ago, I had just discovered the analytic tools of Decision Theory. The concept that probability represents the chance of occurrence of future events was a revelation to me. The analytic tools like decision trees, modeling and simulation were useful both as ways to make decisions and as ways to stimulate imagination.

In the last year, I've had less need for the analytic tools and have become more interested in techniques of intuitive decision making. I've read poetry, Buddhist writings and David Allen, while I've researched a different set of tools.

The problem with analytic methods is that they often lead to bewildering number of possible futures. While you can calculate the probability of each, compounding of uncertainty decreases the usefulness of the calculations. I've usually found that an analytic discussion on a whiteboard with two uncertainties is the limit of usefulness. And that will often take 30 minutes to walk through, about the limit of a group's patience.

The most useful alternative for me has been scenario building. After uncertainties (or risk) has been understood, its usual possible to lay out 3 or 4 possible futures that represent general themes. Often one or another set of outcomes are similar enough that they lead to the same kind of future. I find writing in a journal or taking notes in a meeting to be a useful way of letting intuition create stories that represent these possible futures. I then use these stories to influence both my present decisions and those of others.

Tinderbox has been a part of my scenario building recently. Keeping short related notes together in a place they can be surveyed as information accumulates is an aid to seeing the patterns and pulling out the decisions and next actions on projects. Since Tinderbox is more than an outliner, I should be doing more than outlining. I hope these Tinderbox based knowledge sites help me create similar working documents for my projects at work.

Copyright 2003 by James J. Vornov