Navigating Complexity: The Epistemic Middle Way

It's clearer now than ever how complex environmental, social, economic and political issues divide us as families, teams, organizations, communities and societies.

In one direction, there is the tendency toward apathy and nihilism. We become overwhelmed by uncertainty and we give up on trying to make sense of it. We resign ourselves to the role of passive observer or dismissive critic.?

In the other direction, there is the reductionist tendency to isolate certain variables and oversimplify. As a result, solutions get pushed through that produce unintended consequences due to a lack of understanding of the system as a whole and how different elements relate to one another.?

Often our motivations for these fragmented solutions are driven by identification: appearing a certain way to others, or reinforcing our own sense of being one of the “good guys.” The unexamined need for belonging leads to collective delusion reinforced within echo chambers.

These two directions correlate to two ends of an epistemic spectrum between extreme skepticism and extreme dogmatism.?

The idea we’ll explore here is that our capacity for managing complexity requires navigating the epistemic middle way between these two extremes.?

Without this capacity, we drift toward the ends where effective dialogue and sense-making become increasingly impossible.?

How does the nature of our work change when we aim deliberately at evolving this capacity through a developmental process??

Different stakeholders will have different centers of gravity within this spectrum. It will also vary depending on the issue at hand.?

How can we shine a light on this center of gravity and its impact, both within ourselves and with our stakeholders??

How can we best support ourselves and others to make a shift toward the epistemic middle way, where we are able to more effectively manage complexity and uncertainty??

One useful starting point is with First Principles Thinking.?

What are we most certain about? What is least controversial?

On this foundation of first principles we can begin to engage with ideas that we are less certain about.?

A good frame for this is called Bayesian Inference. Simply put, we can assign a rough probability to the validity of a specific idea, based on our current level of understanding.?

For example, I might ask myself, “on a scale of 1-10 how certain am I that this idea is valid?”?

This line of inquiry leads naturally to examining the sources of our thinking: where did the idea come from? How trustworthy is the source? What influences may be motivating the message? Where on the skepticism vs dogmatism spectrum is this source coming from??

This may sound complicated and like a lot of work, I know. But based on my own experience, what begins as something requiring some effort starts to come more and more naturally over time and through practice.?

This reflective and critical way of thinking allows us to hold multiple perspectives with what Adam Grant calls “confident humility.”?

We become confident in our ability to figure it out, while remaining humble in holding our ideas and tools loosely, recognizing they may be either partially or fully misguided.?

We learn to dis-identify from our ideas—identification creating an attachment that is difficult to let go of even when the evidence becomes clear we should.?

As we work to develop our understanding, we adjust our levels of certainty accordingly. In this way we can avoid the pitfalls of black and white, skepticism vs dogmatism divide. We learn to skillfully navigate our way through evolving shades of gray.?

What effect would developing this ability have on our capacity to address highly complex environmental, social, economic and political issues?

How might it lead to the type of productive and insightful dialogue that is at the heart of such capacity?

How might you practice finding this epistemic middle way today??