A complex adaptive system has three characteristics. The first is that the system consists of a number of heterogeneous agents, and each of those agents makes decisions about how to behave. The most important dimension here is that those decisions will evolve over time. The second characteristic is that the agents interact with one another. That interaction leads to the third—something that scientists call emergence: in a very real way, the whole becomes greater than the sum of the parts. The key issue is that you can’t really understand the whole system by simply looking at its individual parts.
All posts filed under “Notes”
What’s Known vs What’s Unknown
The difference between what the most and least learned people know is inexpressibly trivial in relation to that which is unknown.
Progress and Change
Life Without The Dull Parts
Investing Is Connecting The Dots
Investing is kind of a game of connecting the dots. The nice thing about it is the longer you are in the business, as long as you are intellectually curious, your collection of data points of dots gets bigger and bigger…Being a successful investor you need to be hungry, intellectually curious, interested, read all the time. Read a lot of newspapers. You need a certain level of randomness in order to connect things that might give you an insight into where a business is going in five years that somebody else might not see.
Freedom
Freedom is the only worthy goal in life. It is won by disregarding things that lie beyond our control.
Titles and Leadership
Your title makes you a manager. Your people will decide if you’re a leader, and its up to you to live up to that.
Fixing Problems
What is working poorly is usually either uncorrectable or 10 times harder to correct than you may think.
The Purest Form Of Disruption
The purest form of disruption is when an incumbent invests in its own demise because their business model leaves them no choice.