Complex Conservatism: The math behind "The Great Relearning"

There are a couple of things that I take for granted, assuming that everybody knows, but that may not be the case. For example, conservatism in my mind consists of a set of truths or rules or lessons that have guided society and that every generation should learn. I almost wrote "must" learn but the need not learn these rules, but if they don't, the trouble will almost certainly result. These rules used to go by the name of Western Civilization or Christianity. Now not all the rules are "true," but they are very good, and the rules are ignored or disobeyed at society's peril.

However, the academy is populated by innovators who make it their life's work to analyze, criticize, and disobey this received wisdom. However, this has been going on long enough that there is a record that can be evaluated, and the long-term viability of these innovations has been found wanting. Tom Wolfe wrote about this memorably in "The Great Relearning," (TGR) which looks at the unintended consequences of AIDS brought about through the sexual revolution. Now these unintended consequences are brought about by the complexity of the social system, especially when contrasted with the human mind - the key insight being that the complexity of the social system is much greater than the human mind can comprehend. However, if people concentrate on evaluating these consequences, then patterns can be discovered over time. These semi-unpredictable dynamics over time take on the character of evolution, containing certain elements of predictability and unpredictability. Viewed from this perspective, The Holy Bible contains the life lessons from previous generations being passed down from forefathers who love their children and don't want to see them get hurt. However, passing down tightly argued "proofs" tend not to be convincing or memorable to children, so these lessons have been passed down in the form of stories. What makes these stories valuable and worth preserving is their viability over time and their value in constructing viable societies. So rather than religion competing with evolution, religion actually depends on and explains evolution insofar as it articulates regularities and lessons.

With the advent of powerful computers, the contours of these complex social systems can begin to be articulated. Jay W. Forrester, in his "Counterintuitive Behavior of Social Systems," begins to articulate some of the lessons learned from evaluating the consequences of policy implementations. First, social systems are inherently insensitive to most policy changes that people choose in an effort to alter the behavior of systems. This indicates that changing social systems is much harder than it might first appear, which explains the failed social experiments described by Wolfe in TGR. Second, social systems seem to have a few sensitive influence points through which behavior can be changed. Moreover, the places where social systems can be influences tend to be non-intuitive, so ways in which society can actually be changed appear to be unimportant, and ways that appear to be obvious tend to be ineffective. Third, social systems exhibit a conflict between short-term and long-term consequences of a policy change. So policies that appear to be beneficial and effective in the short-term may in fact turn out to be costly and ineffective over the long-term. Conversely, policies that appear to be counterproductive and costly in the short-term may turn out to be beneficial and effective in the long-term. These observations can prove especially problematic in a democratic age in which emphasis is place on the intuitively convincing and short-term rather than the proven and long-term. This might help explain why failed policies continue to be repeated, precisely because they "seem" right.

Forrester developed a simulation methodology that captured what he meant by "complex," which is important because mostly such terms go undefined and unspecified. Forrester defined complex social systems as marked by nonlinear, stock-flow, and feedback causal relationships. Each of these are confusing to the human mind, and together they can be mystifying. Recently, network relationships should be added to this list. However, the policy consequences remain the same: these system features are ignored to a society's peril. And the ongoing record of failed social experiments indicates that people should be more circumspect of social innovation - that is, conservative. Wolfe ends his essay by saying that this process of realizing the value of and relearn these lessons will be known as The Great Relearning, "if anything so prosaic as remedial education can be called 'great'."

Policy excellence 1

I today’s media saturated age, it’s difficult to know what “politics” really means anymore. Is it elections? Is it government institutions? Is it a TV debate? What politics should constitute is the study of rightly ordered personal relationships, but despite all the expended argument, emotion, and “rationality,” it seems that things are getting worse rather than better. Pick your measure—government debt, crime, mental health, graduation rates, environmental degradation, nuclear proliferation—the trend seems to be in the wrong direction. How could so much time, money, education, and energy be expended with such piddling results? This is the fundamental question behind this blog, what I call the policy problématique. That is, how can we move from what we have, policy failure to policy excellence.

But is the term “policy failure” too harsh? Is it, in today’s vernacular, unfair? If it evaluated in terms of pursuing actions with the plan of achieving intended and desirable results, then in too many instances it is all too accurate. Much of the reason has to do with they pay politics is pursued and scored. It is based on persuasion rather than accuracy; on the short rather than long-term; on emotion rather than logic; on simplicity rather than complexity. In other words, we no longer pursue ethics traditionally understood; we pursue the advertising ethic which holds that, “The truth is that which sells.”

The argument proceeds by recognizing that politics is complex. So far as the policy problématique is concerned, the difficulty of pursuing courses of action that achieve their intended effects is driven by the complex of system being influenced. Were the system simple, then the consequences could be easily predicted. However a complex, social system yields unintended consequences. Achieving policy excellence therefore requires addressing, acknowledging, and accounting for the complexity of social systems. The question is, how best to do this? The current answer is democracy, having people vote and the majority rules. We live in a democratic age, and this seems so normal, so right, so stable, and so reified that how could it be any other way? However, Tocqueville pointed out the costs of democracy and noted that in a democratic society, it is difficult to imagine anything else. Moreover, once the majority have pronounced their judgment on an issue, it is absolute. But democracy need not be reified because, as Herbert Simon points out, there are multiple ways to reach policy decisions. The most important thing, recognizing the complexity of social systems, is to find a way to address the complexity. Democracy is naturally flawed because the very notion of complexity is measured against the well-known limitation of human rationality. So fundamental is this limitation that Simon coined the term bounded rationality to describe it. The key problem with democracy is that it is fundamentally driven by a collection of limited human brains, and increasing their number can help but ultimately brains will not do what they cannot do. Also, in a media age, there is an argument to be made that increasing that democracy results in demonstrably worse policy outcomes.

So how can the complexity of social systems be addressed? Recognizing the cognitive limitations associated with bounded rationality, it is natural to seek a cognitive prosthetic—that is, a way to supplement and assist the brain, and one way to do that is through a computer. Three challenges and observations immediately present themselves. First, how does one actually execute computer-based policy, both the creation of the computer model and its implementation within an organization? Second, pushing some of the decision making responsibility to a computer works against the democratic ethic, which, because it has devolved in the advertising ethic, is actually beneficial from a policy excellence perspective. Third, recall that the genius of The Constitution was a stepping back in 1787 from the ineffective Articles of Confederation which had been in place since 1776. So perhaps, what is being recommended here, is correcting a political system that has been pushed out of balance by information technology—that is, today’s media—with the application of another technology, the computer-aided quantitative analysis. 

AFG 1

As the US military's effort winds down in Afghanistan and their elections approach - which are supposed to solve many problems but won't - now might be a good time to engage in some reflection on the engagement. The military have an acronym for this, as they do for most things - AAR or "after action review." First, let me state my opinion that the Afghanistan hasn't worked out that well, so there has to be a mismatch between expectations and outcomes, especially with regard to execution. Second, this is in no way a criticism of the people in uniform, though i may be critical to their leaders and policy makers.

Because I was feeling that Afghanistan was turning into a modern-day Vietnam, I revisited A Bright Shining Lie and found some criticisms by LTC Daniel Davis who complained loudly that the war in Afghanistan was failing. He made several arguments as to why including the corruption of the Afghans, the failure to report status and progress accurately, and wasted aid money. Even though LTC Davis traveled widely around Afghanistan, those who defended our efforts said that he had a distorted and limited view of the situation. We;;. sounds like these critics are defending, because for what analysis can't that be said? Davis to me said some pretty reasonable things because I had similar experiences there. There was this curious dynamic in which people in uniform would take me aside and vent about what was going on in the vague hope that I, as a civilian, could influence what was going on.

So I could indeed add my personal observations to the list of people coming back from Afghanistan, but those too could be semi-easily invalidated by a government official who has access to greater information and the news media. However, Davis offered a pretty insightful observation, that there has been no clear articulation of the long-term strategic objectives, and that matches with my experience. I heard one general say that going to Afghanistan was in America's national interest, but that struck me as wrong. Why do we need to go, and possibly die, in an impoverished, land-locked, and resource-less country on the other side of the world. To my way of thinking, that's the opposite of national interest. Of course we had to go there in 2001, but for such an extended time to the tune of $700 billion? I don't get it. And when I got there, another general told me that in ten years, when Afghanistan was a great, modern, and successful country, then we'd understand why we were away from our families. That struck me as almost Obama-esque levels of aspirational as opposed to realistic language.

In opposition to these aspirational or purportedly inspirational arguments, Davis asked three strategic questions: (1) What metrics characterize Afghanistan? (2) How should the change over time? and (3) How do US military missions contribute to these metrics? This seems to be baseline and fundamental level of analysis before committing thousands of Americans and hundreds of billions of dollars, but apparently that wasn't done, especially as aspirational and inspirational rhetoric is easier to generate, more convincing, and less rigorous.

So how does one go about creating a quantitative strategic analysis that stands up better under criticism and informs operations? First of all, you can check out the book Estimating Impact by Kott and Citrenbaum, but I'm going to try to apply that framework to Afghanistan over the next few months as a way to improve policy because, while I greatly admire the efforts and bravery of my colleagues in Afghanistan, I don't they were as effective as they might have been because they were not well led.