[FRIAM] On Emergence and Decision Making in Complex Systems

[Jochen Fromm]

I guess what you are interested in the management aspect:
what do you do as a manager if you are faced with a complex system 
in a concrete real-world situation, and how do you find the 
right decision to manage a complex system.  You might be 
interested in Dietrich Doerner's book "The Logic of Failure - 
Recognizing and Avoiding Error in Complex Situations".
Doerner is a Germany psychology professor, and his
recommendations for the right decisions are simple.
We should be aware that our cognitive models are wrong and our 
thinking shortsighted: "An individual's reality model can be right 
or wrong, complete or incomplete. As a rule it will be both incomplete
and wrong, and one would do well to keep that probability in mind."

Doerner further argues that there is no standard solution, silver
bullet or one-size-fits-all solution in many comlex situtations, 
because every complex situation is different (complexity has many 
varieties, but simplicity has a unified form). Our ordinary common 
sense is probably the best tool we have to solve complex problems.

Finally he recommends the use of simulations and suitable models 
in order to deal with complex systems. This is especially recommendable
for systems with a high probability of emergent properties. It is of 
course important to find the right level of detail, too little details 
means oversimplification, too much details means the model is too 
complex and one easily drowns in data.

The answer of Stephen is interesting. Do all examples of 
emergence involve some form of spontaneous symmetry breaking ? 
If you think of emergence as a process of pattern formation,
then the new pattern obviously breaks the symmetry that existed 
before the pattern appeared. Yet often for every symmetry that 
is broken a new symmetry seems to appear.

The classical examples for swarm formation and swarm 
intelligence are flocking and (ant) foraging, respectively.
Further popular examples are pile building termites
(if you find a chip then pick it up unless you're already 
carrying a chip in which case drop it), Langton's ant 
and Schelling's segregation model.

Can you find a symmetry breaking in all these examples ?
Probably yes, but one can find often both, a symmetry 
breaking and a symmetry making at the same time.
A shoal of fish for example may show more or less 
translational symmetry before the creation of the flock 
(in the disordered state), and rotational symmetry afterwards 
(in the ordered state, for instance in a spherical flock).
The same argument applies to pile building termites:
first the translational symmetry seems to be broken,
and then a new local rotational symmetry appears in
for of spherical heaps, see
http://ccl.northwestern.edu/netlogo/models/Termites

-J.