When I was a graduate student in economics in the late 1970s, we were trained as if the economy is complicated, but not complex. We were told that if we learned enough mathematics and statistics and applied these tools, then eventually we could predict and control economic outcomes.
In fact, economic behavior is complex. There are too many causal factors, feedback loops, non-linear effects, and unprecedented phenomena involved to enable economists to control the economy precisely and reliably.
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“In these complex fields, we should be humble about how much we know and cautious about predicting our ability to attain full understanding.”
Shout it from the rooftops.
“In the case of complexity the optimal choice [is] … to become responsive.” To become adaptable.
Darwin argued that the most adaptable creatures would be the more likely to survive. In the economy, the most adaptable workers and businesses are more likely to survive. Perhaps both nature and our own experiences are trying to tell us something.
Adaptable is not the same as changeable. To be cynical, adaptable is changeable that succeeds–which is only knowable after the fact. Often it pays not to change.
There also could be a temporal dimension, i.e. what seems “complex” at one point turns out to be ultimately knowable, just more complicated. I’m thinking of the early astronomers who thought bodies moved in almost-circles (complex), before discovering they were really ellipses (more complicated). Or early efforts in chemistry.
We only request the economist find bounds on the chaos.
The economist finds a point in commerce, a trade that is a point of symmetry. The economist might say, ‘that large city is short some auto lenders’, implicitly pointing out a balance point to banks. But in the lending pit the economist says nothing, the chaos must self sort because there is no reference.