Building a Viewpoint Tower
Looking out into a complex world, I sometimes imagine myself in a viewpoint tower. Built from the bricks I have picked up on my journey through life.
Continuing to explore my many stories about complex systems. See this first post for an introduction
Looking out into a complex world, I sometimes imagine myself in a viewpoint tower. Built from the bricks I have picked up on my journey through life. The more varied and numerous the bricks, the wider view of the world I can see from my tower. In this image, each person’s tower is unique. Each tower gives a view particular to each individual. As we go through life, we find some new bricks that help us build a more expansive and robust tower. My aim in this blog is to offer you a few bricks that have worked in my tower, and hope they help construct yours.
Of course, some of my bricks won’t fit for you, or require too serious a rebuild to use. Even then, I believe you might make some use of them. Bricks that don’t fit your viewpoint tower can still be used to imagine someone else’s tower. To see the world from their viewpoint. An empowering stance in my experience.
As an example, I will describe a brick I just added to my tower. Thanks to the Nonzero substack linked below. The brick is labeled “The attribution error”. A psychology concept that goes back to 1977. The attribution error is a cognitive bias. a predictable misjudgment us humans make when faced with a complex situation.
The attribution error is a misjudgment that occurs when trying to explain another humans behavior. Any human action is shaped both by Intention and circumstance. No matter how strong your intention, you can’t fly across the Atlantic without an aeroplane. Once you are airborne across the Atlantic, having a change of mind in mid flight is not going to stop you from arriving. Circumstances dominate here. Taking a sip of coffee as I write this, intention dominates.
Us humans show a bias when deciding how much intention counts, and how much circumstance.
Faced with a negative action by a stranger, we likely ascribe it to bad intention on their part. The cause of their action is a personality defect rather than circumstance. Our own negative actions, or those of our allies, get a more positive framing. We are good people, in a situation with only bad alternatives. Circumstance is the culprit, not our character.
In a complex world, I believe both circumstance and personality play a part in my decisions. And the “attribution error” bends my assessment of the balance between them. Mind you, calling this bias an “error” is a bit extreme for me. To fit this new brick to my tower, I need to shave off the sharp edge implied by “error”, and smooth it to something softer, “bias”.
Why bother? Isn’t life simpler if you keep it simple? Us good guys do good stuff, Bad guys do bad stuff. Some truth in that. But such a simplification is disempowering. If bad guys can only do bad stuff, you have no power over them. If both good and bad are limited by circumstance, a bad guy will still be bad, but changing the circumstances can change their options.
Such a view does mean letting go of a simple, mechanical view of causation. Changing the circumstances does constrain the possibilities for other actions, but doesn’t dictate them. A current example would be the role of NATO policy in shaping the actions of Putin in Ukraine. Some say NATO policy “caused” the invasion, others that NATO policy had no effect whatever.
While I know little about the detailed story, from a complex systems perspective, there is likely some truth in both views. Putin has responsibility for his actions, but others have responsibility for the constraints they placed on his actions. In a complex world, the good news is my actions can usually have some effect. The bad news is, I bear some responsibility for those effects.
Taking more responsibility for my actions, and understanding their effects, requires some climbing of other viewpoint towers. Making the effort to see another’s viewpoint is often framed as making a concession to them. Some truth in that, but I also experience it as empowering myself. Having the understanding that my actions shape or constrain others responses reveals my actions are more powerful than they first appear. In a simple world, my actions do or don’t cause you to do something. In a complex world my actions constrain your options, shift the probabilities, but don’t dictate results.
That looks like reduction in power if you demand absolute results, predictability and safety. A reasonable demand if you are flying a plane or running a nuclear power station. But when I step into the vibrant and complex aspects of my life, my sense of my actions shifting the world around me is empowering. Trading certainty of result for a distant chance of large effect. At least, that’s how it looks from my viewpoint tower. Does this odd shaped brick have any place in yours?
Attribution error post on Nonzero Substack
See the first post for an introduction to this series. See the home page for previous posts on the topic. Of particular relevance is this one on Emergent Properties. For more about the author, see the About page.