Embracing Complexity

Dr. Richard Smith, FSC Chairman

A Note from the Chairman: Embracing Complexity

Dear FSC Friends,

From our founding, the FSC has been concerned with a bigger picture about how we understand our world and how we make decisions – individually and collectively. At the heart of that concern is a sense, as Dewey put it, that “something is missing” from our current analytical approaches.

I was reminded of that this month when I interviewed prominent climate scientist Dr. Judith Curry (premieres Sat., Mar. 29, at noon ET). Like Dewey, Dr. Curry is a consummate and accomplished professional in a scientific field that is characterized by deep complexity. Dewey’s field was economics. Dr. Curry’s field is earth and atmospheric sciences – aka climate.

What Dewey saw in his time and what Dr. Curry sees today is that scientists are people too and that people are inescapably political. Politics, by its nature, tends towards oversimplification because people want certainty – they want answers. Politicians, of course, are happy to oblige, even if the answers aren’t certain at all.

Real problems arise when politicians invoke science as a justification for policy because you can rest assured that there’s more politics involved than science. As John M. Barry says in his #1 New York Times bestseller, The Great Influenza, “When you mix politics and science, you get politics.” Politics demands simple causal explanations of things. It demands the idea that the politicians are in control and can effect change. Meanwhile, the real world is more complicated and doesn’t often comply with simple command and control solutions.

A case in point is the findings of both Dewey and Dr. Curry that a lot of the changes we observe in complex systems, like economies and climates, can be explained by natural variability. When it comes to climate, for example, there are regular oscillations in ocean currents and there are regular oscillations in solar activity.

Neither Dewey nor Dr. Curry claim that natural variability is the sole causal explanation for changes in economies or climates. Both just gently encourage an exploration of natural variability as part of the model building in their respective fields.

Yet, an emphasis on natural variability is routinely minimized in causal explanations where science and politics inevitably mix. Why? Because natural variability, as an explanation, doesn’t lend itself to the political messaging of, “I can solve this problem for you.” It doesn’t drive votes, dollars, status, or power.

Dewey and Dr. Curry, and many other scientists like them today, understand that we need both classic linear mechanistic science as well as a science of natural variability – i.e., a science of cycles.

I’m proud of the market-focused research of the FSC, including our cycles technology, this newsletter, our YouTube content, and our upcoming conference. Frankly, there’s not a better value out there for the money. I’m also excited about the opportunity to slowly but surely expand the FSC’s focus to the bigger question of how we can make great individual and collective decisions in the face of real-world complexity.

Time rhymes,

Dr. Richard Smith
Chairman of the Board and Executive Director