Theft at the Public Till
How we deal with information overload - with complexity -- is critical to understanding what is happening in the breakdown of our governmental processes. I am going to argue that while we may all possess the skills nec- essary to deal with this information load we fail to use that skill. We analyze the problem from the wrong framework and reach the wrong conclusions. Our model for dealing with complexity is science. We take complex problems apart -- focus on the parts we understand -- and assume that by adequately dealing with individual parts we have adequately addressed the whole. But what is missing is the Gestalt of the whole. Our world is too complex to be dealt with this way. Instead while we claim to be addressing the whole, we limit ourselves to some selected part. In our individual lives this may suffice, but in our collective lives it produces gross failures. Government ossifies the pieces and fails to address the whole. The concept of finding our way through this maze of information data and complexity is intimately tied to what it is we see as we attempt the jour- ney. I have this arcane belief that at all times all of our decisions already exist and must be only revealed or changed. In this belief inertia is a powerful component as is one's willingness and ability for articulation of an already made decision. This belief of mine is based on a few basic ideas: In life, I believe we have a virtual infrastructure of ideas and policies needs to be managed as if it were an actual landscape. That is in our minds we all perceive what scientists call "phase space" -- a landscape of possibilities (all possible states or phases in the scientific term). Underneath this land- scape as if it were a video game lies a plane of measurement. In biology this concept is known as an epigenetic landscape. In biology, C.H. Waddington developed this concept into a dynamic model of embryonic development. In my conception it is the model for all of our decision making. The model imagines a ball that represents a decision rolling down through a curved landscape with hills and deep separated valleys; these correspond to differ- ent developmental paths for the decision at hand. Under the terrain there is a network of influences (resources, constraints, actions by others) that together determine the height of each of the hills and thus influence the ease
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