Journal on Policy and Complex Systems
Almost every event in social life is produced by rare but consequential shocks and jumps ; all the while almost everything studied about social life focuses on the ‘ normal ,’ particularly with ‘ bell curve ’ methods of inference that tell you close to nothing . Why ? Because the bell curve ignores large deviations , cannot handle them , yet makes us confident that we have tamed uncertainty . Its nickname in this book is GIF , Great Intellectual Fraud . ( Taleb , 2010 , p . xxiv )
This is an important caution that must be taken seriously wherever statistical analyses assume normal distributions .
4.2 . Social Feedback
Another characteristic of complex systems is feedback . Feedback in systems refers to the characteristic of a system to recursively make use of its own outputs as new inputs . When feedback amplifies existing signals , it is referred to as positive ( regardless of whether it is desired — e . g ., feedback in a sound system is very irritating , but is considered to be formally positive , given that it amplifies a given system signal ). Negative feedback , on the other hand , mutes a system ’ s given direction or process . Feedback of this sort is not characteristic of linear systems , but is common in social systems at all scales ( Simon , 1962 ). An example of this can be found in research on innovation in organizations where corporate processes designed to promote high margin products internally will “ kill off ” innovative new products that fail to meet that margin , even if those new products could , over time , dramatically outperform existing products ( Christensen , 2011 ; Christensen , Baumann , Ruggles , & Sadtler , 2006 ). The built-in logic of corporate processes constitutes a feedback mechanism that “ mutes ” anything that does not fit the mechanism ’ s logic . Universities and other common types of organizations , such as municipal bureaucracies , function in a similar way ( Blais , 2010 ; Christensen & Eyring , 2011 ). Living systems typically interact with both higher order and lower order systems , thus incurring a degree of novelty and a means by which even small changes within or adjacent to one system are fed back into that system , generating high sensitivity to initial conditions , as noted above ( Batty , 2012 ; Buchanan , 2000 ).
In social systems , such as those that constitute the conditions for social capital formation and function , agents within the network of the system can and do change and influence it from within . When a higher order system influences the sub-systems that form it or with which it interacts , it is referred to as “ supervenience ” ( Murphy , 1997 , pp . 22-23 ). The above noted example of corporate processes generating feedback loops optimized for one type of product profit margin at the expense of another is an example of supervenience : formal company policy or embedded policy in the form of corporate culture rewards certain types of agent ( employee ) behavior and punishes divergent behavior . Top-down causation is a means by which the characteristics of a larger system constrain the range
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