Dear Jonas,

Thanks for your note. Perhaps this is so.
Depending on how one defines complexity, one can
postulate a wicked problem that remains wicked
even though everyone may agree on issues of
politics or taste. That's not quite Rittel's
definition, though: the core of the wicked
problem Rittel defines it involves politics,
ethics, taste or other areas of disagreement.

It seemed to me that Parag was speaking of
complexity in terms parallel to complex adaptive
systems. So far, these kinds of systems seem to
defy our analytical abilities, but this may not
be due to wickedness. The effort to understand
complex adaptive systems (CAS) has been important
and fruitful even though we have much to learn.
My mathematical skills are not good enough to
allow me real insight into the deep abstract work
on CAS, but CAS theory and basic findings from
CAS have extremely useful applications in
designing organizations and human systems of
other kinds and I have used them there. In
different ways, we have derived similar kinds of
benefits from different areas of systems theory,
fuzzy logic, and chaos theory.

We get to this kind of understanding by
struggling through the effort to sort out cases,
to see where we can and cannot find ways to model
processes using clear definitions and clear
process descriptions. This occasionally leads to
progress or development. More often, it teaches
us what doesn't work. I'd describe much of my
life as a process of finding out what doesn't
work while learning and occasionally finding a
process or an approach that does work.

You've suggested here that I have not considered
"the possibility that the world is not separable
into nicely cut pieces that can be identified by
means of nice, seemingly clear definitions and
put together into a complete whole without any
remaining gap or overlap." I am well aware that
we cannot separate the world into discrete
fragments that we can identify and model through
clear definitions that join up to form a complete
model without gaps or overlapping areas. The
world doesn't work that way. Even when there are
no gaps, there are often overlaps.

My view is that part of the work we need to do
involves generating and testing models, large and
small. One way to do this is to seek postulates
and definitions. Some work, some don't. One of
the interesting aspects of working with wicked
problems is that we can (and sometimes do) make
slow progress in finding ways to sort out things
that look like wicked problems but aren't.
Another important aspect of working with wicked
problems is finding ways to render wicked
problems less wicked by developing ways to reach
agreement despite differences in political
opinion or taste. Wicked problems paralyze many
organizations simply because people refuse to
agree -- finding ways to reach fair and
considered agreements with opportunities to
revise during iterated solution attempts is an
area that generates real value for human beings
who must work together. Developing these
approaches requires us to understand the core
issues in what makes a wicked problem wicked.

There are several approaches to understanding
these issues. Some approaches offer possibilities
that are inaccessible to those who work with
different approaches or methods.

The struggle to create useful formalisms does not
imply the belief that we can say everything about
any system in one, complete formal statement.
Gödel's Theorem demonstrates that we cannot do so.

The effort to find formal and informal models is
nevertheless an important area of research. As I
see it, this work has been fruitful for those who
reject the effort, if only because it has
encouraged them to clarify their vocabulary and
state more clearly what it is that they are about.

Yours,

Ken



Wolfgang Jonas wrote:



Dear Ken,

a short comment:

You write:
"The core issue in a wicked problem is not complexity, but disagreement."

There is certainly something right in this statement, but:

what about considering the possibility that the
world is not separable into nicely cut pieces
that can be identified by means of nice,
seemingly clear definitions and put together into
a complete whole without any remaining gap or
overlap?

Rather than separating the 2 concepts by means of
exclusive definitions I find it much more
productive to relate them and reflect upon the
consequences...

.. every new relation changes and shifts the
meaning of the terms under consideration.
Regarding complexity (in relation to
disagreement) you may try this definition (thanks
to Keith Russell for the hint!):

"Complexity is the property of a real world
system that is manifest in the inability of any
one formalism being adequate to capture all its
properties. It requires that we find distinctly
different ways of interacting with systems.
Distinctly different in the sense that when we
make successful models, the formal systems needed
to describe each distinct aspect are NOT
derivable from each other."

Best wishes,

Jonas

Mikulecky, D.C. (2003) "Definition of
complexity",
http://www.vcu.edu/complex/ON%20COMPLEXITY.html