A Personal Story:
I work in a school where 100% of my students have what could be called, to use a highly politically correct term, ”behavior issues”. As a result the administrators of this school are often creating plans to manage the behaviors of the students in such a way as to turn them away from negative social behaviors, and turn them towards pro-social behaviors. These plans tend to be, in my opinion, be overly verbose and lacking in elegance.
When I’m lucky, which is not as often as I would like, they tell me about these plans before putting them into effect.
My response when these plans are presented to me is to…
1. Raise my hand, possibly move it around to assure that I have gotten the attention of the presenter.
2. Watch the presenter roll his/her eyes when they see my hand up, and graciously await for them to acknowledge that I should state the reason for my hand being raised.
3. When permission has been granted for me to speak I stand and say “WHAT ABOUT THE MALCOM EFFECT!?!” If I’m feeling punchy I’ll add, ”Don’t you see you have been spending so much time thinking about what you could do, that you never stopped to consider if you should even do it in the first place!”
My co-workers have grown to both hate and adore my typical response to the plans the administrators (sometimes) present to us.
You know about the Malcolm effect, right? Well just in case you don’t, let me explain it to you…
My Explanation:
There are simple systems and complex systems. Simple systems, because they are simple, are (obviously) easy to predict, manage, and plan around. One can normally prevent something from going wrong in a simple system, and when something does go wrong it can quickly be diagnosed and resources deployed to fix whatever the problem may be.
However, as a system becomes more complex (as it grows in size, steps, parts, spawns sub-systems, etc.) a few things happen…
1. The more complex a system becomes it also becomes harder for humans to predict how the system will behave. This in turn leads to difficulty in managment of the system.
2. The more complex a system (the more parts, steps, sub-systems, etc.) involved the greater the potential that something will break, or go wrong. i.e. the more parts there are, the greater the potential for one of those parts to malfunction.
3. When something goes wrong (when something breaks or there is some sort of malfunction) in a complex system it is more difficult to diagnose and (chances are) the greater the resources that are necessary to fix whatever has gone wrong.
In short: the more complex a system the more likely it is that something will go wrong, and that said something will go very wrong.
It should be obvious that people can’t plan for everything that can go wrong, but the more complex a sytem becomes the greater potential there is for something to go wrong, and it is more difficult to see (and thus more difficult to create contingency plans) for when a malfunction does (inevitably) occur.
[Side Note: I know this might be beating a dead horse, or preaching to the converted, but I just can't help myself... See the second law of thermo-fucking-dynamics!]
Ergo: There is a clear benefit to creating simple systems as opposed to complex systems. Simple systems are easier to predict, maintain, and repair.
Do I think that a simple system should always be used? No. There are times when a complex system is necessary. However, when those situations arise / have arised it is important… no VITAL… that we realize and recognize (rather than ignore) the inherent flaws of complex systems.
Or to put it another way, when working with / within a complex system never assume the system is perfect. When something goes wrong, as it inevitably will, realize that chances are your system is screwed up someplace. Then start the difficult task of error detection and correction. Gather data and use it to improve your system. Also, remember that the best improvements move a system towards simplicity and away from complexity.
One Web Explanation States:
Pay attention and start the difficult process of diagnosis.
the malcolm effect states that small changes in a complex system can change rapidly and unpredictably.
ex. you are sitting on a shoreline and you see in the distance a storm coming slowly closer. It’s heading right for you. You see lightning flash out across the water and the waves come towards the shore at an increasingly violent rate. At this point the storm has two options. One would be that the storm would race straight towards shore and continue its rampage there which would seem to be the logical choice. Instead however, before the storm reaches land it changes it’s direction and shoots down the shoreline instead. This is the malcolm effect, you cannot predict how the storm will react because it is a large complex system dependent on very small changes that it encounters in the natural environment.
Other Links of Interest:
1. Economic Equilibrium, Chaos and the Malcolm Effect
2. The Malcolm Effect on Flickr.
3. Wikipedia on Dr. Ian Malcolm.
4. Wikipedia article on Chaos Theory.
