Rainbow: Worlds of color or black and white

This post is one more attempt to bring out the delightful though sometimes annoying difference between complex and simple systems.

Continuing to explore my many stories about complex systems. See this first post for an introduction

This post is one more attempt to bring out the delightful though sometimes annoying difference between complex and simple systems. This time, by comparing it to worlds of color, versus worlds of black and white. After this, my posts will be moving more to reflections on random topics. Topics that take my interest. Topics that show some complexity. Complexity that is easier to live with once you accept the multiple stories complexity will generate.

Worlds of color, or worlds of black, white and maybe grey. For me, that image resonates well with the contrast between simple and complex systems. Simple systems have an obvious order from best to worst. Black moves to white in shades of grey. Very satisfying if you want easy decisions.

A world of purely black and white would be a dull place. One dimensional and certain. Yes or No. A world of color is multidimensional, dependent on context, often subjective not objective. So too are the many stories to be told about a complex system. Claiming one view of a complex system is the only true one, is for me like calling red the only true color. Blue and green have their moments too.

As any artist knows, the story a color tells depends on context. A shade of green with a black background can be perceived differently when surrounded by a red background. The history of any country is seen very differently, depending on the background you contrast it with. In my colorful world, there isn’t one true history that makes all others false.

The effects of context on color can vary enormously from person to person. A famous case of this was “The Dress”. Some people saw this photo as a white gold dress, others saw it as blue and black. Many people were astonished that some friends and relatives saw that image so differently. One factor making a difference in perception was if you are an indoor or an outdoor person. A classification we are all familiar with. But not one we would expect to change the color of a dress so dramatically.

I think such divergence of viewpoint is more common than usually believed. You can’t entirely trust the evidence of your own eyes. The logo for this Substack is the . (which might be difficult to see at small scale). That can be seen as the image of a vase, or of two identical faces staring at each other. About the simplest example I could find of two stories that both have some truth in them.

For complex systems, one story does not make all other stories false. That implies that for complex decisions, one decision is not the completely right decision that makes all other decisions wrong. I’ll talk some more about that in the next post.