Man-made systems are getting more complex -- from the products and services we consume to the financial, economic and social systems we inhabit. Our desire for instant gratification is growing and reflects in our systems through more short-term focused competition.
Our coping mechanism has been a state of blind trusting ignorance in the face of complexity. Worse yet, we appeal to the authority of the experts and the ease of the unifying black box metric and then diligently listen to the oracles and watch the ticker-tape of metrics in real time to feel on-top of the situtation.
But improbable events perturb the system and suddenly our crutch of experts and metrics don't deliver. The financial crisis of 2008 saw the failures of ratings agencies/research analysts (experts), VaR (risk metrics), and buy & hold (strategies). The inability to be resilient to a shock to the system erodes our blind trust, and the final recognition of fraud in the system (Madoff, Satyam) drives the final nails into the coffin. Having lost our crutch, our blind trust, we are finally forced to build an understanding of the system -- to force ourselves to put in the work to get the gratification!
My intent with this blog is to focus on synthesis; not just analysis of isolated problems but looking holistically across the system to understand the broader context and implications. And to engage in discussions with you to collectively pierce this veil of collective (blissful) ignorance. My background is in finance, business, and technology but will explore interesting issues agnostic of their provenance.
