An Ocean Inside A Bubble: Disarray, Complexity, Mathematical Models & Reality
Disruption, chaos and complexity are amongst the most important subjects of study in the modern era. They are profoundly important multifaceted concepts. However, they are very less understood.
Einstein’s ‘Theory of Relativity’ shredded the concept of absolute time and space. Quantum physics took us beyond controllable measurement processes. Studying chaos shows us a world beyond deterministic predictability.
Chaos has beautiful and intricate patterns. Irregular order can seem like chaos.
We have to identify and understand non-linear patterns. The world is dealing with a pandemic and cannot make sense of it because our capacity to model non-linear systems is poor. Be it the weather, the economy, traffic, a set of random numbers, landslides, the shape of natural objects, stars in the sky, or a series of stock prices, chaos is about pattern and probability.
The brilliant French mathematician Henri Poincaré (1854-1912) is, in some ways, the father of chaos theory. His central insight is that of the ‘sensitive dependence on initial conditions’. Many physical systems exhibit sensitive dependence on arbitrary initial conditions, and are therefore essentially unpredictable. The classic example is the weather. In 1972 Edward Lorenz, of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, wrote a paper - 'Predictability: does the flap of a butterfly's wings in Brazil set off a tornado in Texas?" The paper did not provide the answer. That was the point it wanted to make. It showed that weather occurrences obeyed certain mathematical rules, but never repeated themselves within any finite period of analysis. Even tiny changes in a couple of variables, extrapolated over a month or beyond, could produce dramatically different results. The weather makes itself up as it goes along.
Complex systems like the weather, economies, astral phenomenon, animal kingdom, our brain’s impulses and the internet are not stable. Our reflex, when confronted with non-linear systems, is to attempt to solve them by substituting linear approximations. Regularities that get detected in this way are totally counterintuitive.
In the 1970s, Benoit Mandelbrot, a mathematician working in IBM's pure research department analyzed cotton price data with massive computing power. He showed that there was an unexpected order within the disorder. He coined the very useful word 'fractal' to describe things that are very similar to each other, yet not identical. Things like cotton prices, rainfall, earthquakes or vegetation. Patterns are endlessly repeated but in an interminable and unpredictable variety of ways! Business is fractal: no situation is quite like another, but there is a limited set of key factors that always resemble each other. Business outcomes are utterly unpredictable. A proven science of management giving universal laws may never be possible. Just like we may never learn the best way to prevent, or manage pandemics even though the patterns seem to be familiar.
The useful lessons for life, brands and business may be spelt out as :
1. Look for pattern or order in apparently random or disordered data. Patterns exist. The only question is whether we can detect them. All markets generate patterns of behaviour and response.
2 Linear analysis is not the way of finding the hidden order if the system is reasonably complex and interdependent. The human brain has the flexibility and imagination to discover the pattern.
3. Simple systems do complicated things. Conversely, complex systems can give rise to simple behaviour A few key things when combined with chance can lead to incredibly varied outcomes. Try to isolate the key variables, the main causes that interact with each other. Look for characteristic and reliable patterns of simple behaviour
4. Chance or luck has an impact on our lives and this world. Just because cannot be modelled doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. We have to always expect unexpected things and also factor in the unknown.
Lastly, we should build flexibility into our plan by changing the things that we can control.
It also brings up the need to have alternatives, contingencies and multiple strategies.
There is a Farsi verse in a couplet by a famous Sufi that says ‘Een turfa tamaasha been Darya ba hubaab andar’ – ‘Behold the spectacle, an ocean is inside a bubble’
Life is in many ways a bubble in a churning ocean. Live it.
