Yaneer Bar-Yam – Science Friday
An understanding of quantum field theory apparently demonstrates that in large convoluted organisations, hierarchical structures with one person in charge can’t work, because the level of complexity becomes impossible to manage. That’s essentially the long standing perspective of systems thinking – if you want to change a system, you have to change the system – and while it’s entertaining to see the point made from a different standpoint, the real question is not whether this approach can provide a diagnosis, but whether it can offer a prescription for change.
It’s almost certainly unfair to make a judgement about that on the basis of the transcript of a short radio interview, which is what this is, but what’s striking is how quickly the prescription becomes a platitude. If political decision making were more distributed, as decisions in the brain are distributed between neurons, better decisions would result. That may well be true, but doesn’t get us very far. Part of the suggestion here seems to be a form of subsidiarity, which is a good start, but one big reason politics is hard is because decisions really are interdependent. What we have to do, apparently, is create mechanisms whereby participation translates into actual decision making. Well yes (or at least, well maybe), but asserting a solution falls a very long way short of describing it.
It’s included here despite all that for two reasons. The first is as a reminder that politics is hard and that insights from other disciplines are unlikely to provide magic answers to long standing and intractable problems. The second is that problems of political decision making are long standing and intractable and answers, ideally less magical, are still very much needed.