Essay · Field notes

Complexity is not complicated

SUMMARY What is harder: a holiday on Mars, or becoming market leader? Mars is complicated: folded, so it can be unfolded. A market is complex: woven, and it keeps weaving while you watch. The difference is not how hard a problem is, but how it answers back. Researchers have been saying so for nearly eighty years. So why do we keep describing complex problems as complicated, and what does that choice cost? (2900 words)

What is harder? Going on a holiday to Mars, being a market leader or improve a nation's economy? The answer will make people scoff, initially: an interplanetary journey is complicated, markets and economies are complex. The difference between complicated and complex issues (or jobs) is more than just a semantic distinction. It turns out to have consequences for how we describe, approach and ideally solve it - if we can solve it at all. But one thing is worth saying first: relax, complex problems are not so complicated after all.

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