Complicated systems, ritual, and the common cold

Ashby writes this wonderful stuff arguing for complex systems: "Science stands today on something of a divide. For two centuries it has been exploring systems that are either intrinsically simple or that are capable of being analysed into simple components. The fact that such a dogma as "vary the factors one at a time" could be accepted for a century, shows that scientists were largely concerned in investigating such systems as allowed this method; for this method is often fundamentally impossible in the complex systems." W. Ross Ashby. An introduction to cybernetics. L. Chapman Hall LTD (1956) p.7

What I really liked about it was its implications for some biases in non-scientific thinking. Because people interacted with complex systems before science. I've got a cold right now. If I want to cure it scientifically I could vary the factors one at a time. I could try lemon for a week, then ginger for a week, then cayenne for a week, then echinacea, garlic, tea, vitamin C, prayer, etc etc. I would see what works, remember it, and save effort on the next cold.

But a cold is too rare and brief for that methodology to work. But what about clinical trials? Clinical trials organize the efforts of thousands of individuals and create space for understanding a cure for the cold one variable at a time. What is the effect of using this methodology on a complex phenomenon? Equivocal results: a lot of things maybe work a little, or work well but just on symptoms, and there are a few things that don't work but taste good. Citing the Mayo Clinic, the Wikipedia article on the common cold says "There are currently no medications or herbal remedies which have been conclusively demonstrated to shorten the duration of illness."

But for the many many folks cures, the cost of adding an ineffectual herb to your nostrum is low enough to be worth the chance that it is doing something. And if it tastes good, it is a ritual that isn't harmful.

So I'll just try everything at the same time in an uncontrolled manner until I get better, and when I get sick again, I'll try everything again. There is a lot of room here for superstition to find a home in ritual. In a psych lab, you might provide a subject with both prayer and a hammer. If they use both to get a nail in, and then conclude that both work a little, you will call that person irrational. But the failure of people to use the right reasoning back to what really worked might be OK. The occasions where this right reasoning works are so rare in the real world that people can be excused for missing it. Those aren't the tools to apply to the mundane low-cost problems people face in a complicated-but-forgiving world.

The engineering methodology help people achieve goals in simple environements: environments that are static, manipulable, and well understood. We need a different methodology to achieve goals in complex environments: those that change and are poorly-understood. My old boss at NECSI(.org) crafted the ideas behind evolution into an engineering methodology for complex environments. That is a part of the complex systems toolkit.

It might be that some other heuristics are in the kit as well: uncontrolled, partly ineffectual, net-useful rituals, and trying everything every time.