Thinking in Pictures by Michael Blastland

Author:Michael Blastland
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Atlantic Books

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All you need do is work out how to change one little thing. Off you go! Spot a lever. Just don’t mess with anything else. Looking at this, I almost think that if I do eat the nutri-bollocks wonderfood and it makes sod-all difference – which tends to be the case – I should think myself lucky.

I’ve picked up an annoying habit (only one?): when someone says, ‘All we have to do is…’, Roche’s metabolic pathways come vaguely to mind. In a system, it’s not easy to do ‘all we need to do…’ And after a while you suspect it’s systems, and systems of systems, all the way down – not much that isn’t in a web of some kind. ‘Systems thinking’, by the way, is a whole world of books on its own.10 You might think from the way I’ve described it that it makes life hopeless, but it’s not resigned in the face of complexity, and it would be wrong to characterize it as pessimistic. In fact it spends most of its time trying to find rules that govern complexity.

Overleaf, a few more systems: the coast (an ecosystem), snowflakes (every one unique, as you know, formed by complex physical systems), Pumpkin the dog (a system like any creature), a university (a social/educational system), the weather (part of the climate, an environmental system we worry we might have broken), a hospital (one part of a health and social-care system), a town lighting up at dusk (a power-generation and distribution system, among other things), and a few institutions. Is any of these systems less complicated than Roche’s metabolic pathways?

I’m vaguely involved with a few of these systems and sometimes wonder: ‘Why does it seem so complicated?’ With the massive power of my hyper-rational intelligence, I’ve concluded: ‘Maybe because it’s complicated?’ Sure, not all systems are equally elaborate – and how much we want to mess with them also matters. Little answers to little problems in simpler systems tend to bring less kickback than big answers to big problems (see Peter Sims’ book Little Bets, for the case for keeping your meddling small and incremental). We could give Pumpkin the dog a trim without upsetting the rest of her too much. We could change the BBC logo without any material effect on anything, as companies do. We could put a simple new bike chicane in that town there and…

Ach… nearly forgot. As we do. Even small tweaks can run into complexity, they’re just less likely to be the end of the world. Thinking of change in isolation and ignoring all the potential varieties of kickback is another of those intellectual economies because we can’t think of everything, but it might leave us looking simple-minded. Secondary and system effects are not the first thing on our mind. Nor should they be, often. But if you act without thinking about them at all, you’re not thinking – you’re wishful thinking.

Since you’re reading this book, you might have come across the Trolley Problem.

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