Making sense of Chaos

Complexity economics, which applies complex-systems ideas to economics, is a revolution-in-progress whose moment is about to come. (From the prologue)I’m a fan of J. Doyne Farmer, what with him being one of the founders of complex systems science, and building computers into his shoes to beat roulette, and whatnot. I love his latest book, Making Sense of Chaos.I think of complex systems as being about emergent behaviour, coming from the interactions of individual parts. In other words, seeing macro behaviours (flocking, thinking) appear from many micro activities (bird behaviour, neurons firing).It makes a lot of sense to apply complex systems thinking to economics: there are many agents, exchanging information, with booms and busts emerging.Before reading the book, I hadn’t properly connected climate models (a complex system) to economics (a complex system) in quite this way:But climate models can inform us only about the consequences of our actions; they don’t tell us how to solve…