How to deal with complex situations

For this article, I am quoting from an article by David Segal in the 5/2/10 issue of The New York Times (“It’s complicated”), with a few comments. Quotes from the article are in italics.

First, a few words to explain what "complex" is in contrast to "complicated":

“It’s complicated to send a rocket to the moon — it requires blueprints, math and a lot of carefully calibrated hardware and expertly written software.
“Raising a child, on the other hand, is complex. It is an enormous challenge, but math and blueprints won’t help.
“Performing hip replacement surgery is complicated. It takes well-trained personnel, precision and carefully calibrated equipment.
“Running a health care system, on the other hand, is complex. It’s filled with thousands of parts and players, all of whom must act within a fluid, unpredictable environment.”

From this, you get the message that “complicated” is relatively simple compared to “complex”, because “complicated” is more predictable and can be addressed with the right blueprints and equipment.
Hence the conclusion:
“To run a system that is complex, it’s not enough to get the right people and the ideal equipment. It takes a set of simple principles that guide and shape the system.”

I want to emphasize the phrase “it takes a set of simple principles”. This may sound like an invitation to be simplistic. It is actually an invitation to use an approach that has a lot in common with the spirit of scientific inquiry.

Figuring out “a set of simple principles that guide and shape the system” means coming up with a theory of how the complex system works. This is what physicists do when they come up with equations that express the laws of physics. This is what economists do when they build economic models. In other words, this simplification of a complex reality is not something to be believed in as dogma. It is something to be tested, to see how accurately it reflects reality.

In other words: To deal with complex situations, you have to build a relatively simple mental model of the situation, and test it over time.

This is very different from simplistic thinking, which reduces complex situations to simple "truths". The key differences is: We are not reducing the complex phenomenon to a simple model, just using the simple model for its predictive ability.

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