Obstacles to Accessing Supercomplex Knowledge

“Sometimes the enemies are among us and even within us.”

Obstacles to Accessing Supercomplex Knowledge

The obstacles to understanding, accepting, and committing to Supercomplex Knowledge include:

1. Limitations of Current Thinking Styles: Binary thinking, singular thinking, superficial thinking, linear thinking, and simplistic thinking, which are so common today, hinder the emergence of the SK. The tendency to prefer simple, causal, linear, or monocausal explanations can make it difficult to accept complexity and interconnectedness. Norms, values, and beliefs deeply rooted in society can act as barriers to adopting new approaches or paradigms, like the SK, especially when they challenge traditional conceptions of knowledge and reality. 
2. Limitations in the Conception of Science: Traditional science, with its emphasis on the search for universal laws and constants, may not always be suitable for capturing the dynamics of complex systems, which are inherently of multiple and changing causality. It employs reductionist approaches that break systems into manageable parts to study them in isolation, assuming that the whole is the sum of its parts and tending to favor static and deterministic models that assume systems operate according to fixed rules that can be fully understood and modeled.
3. Limitations in Human Cognitive Capacity: Our brains may be inclined towards simplification and categorization, which can make it challenging to address the inherent complexity of complex systems. Indeed, we believe that complexity and supercomplexity are counterintuitive and "counter-cerebral." Neuroscience has studied the "confirmation bias," which leads people to pay attention only to information that aligns with their pre-existing beliefs, ignoring data that could reveal greater complexity. On the other hand, apophenia, or the tendency to perceive patterns, may unjustifiably trigger the projection of correlations or connections where none exist.
4. Limitations Among Complexity Scholars: Sectarianism, lack of dialogue, presumption, and intolerance are some of the issues that have circulated among complexity scholars, creating discomfort within the paradigm and driving away those who approached it with legitimate and sincere interest. The repetition and multiplication of analyses (usually from the founding leaders of each school within Complexity Theories) that dissociate without associating and disaggregate without aggregating impoverishes the paradigm. In more everyday situations, for example, we have found resistance to including the microparticle macrosystem or using discoveries from neuroscience or data science (with due criticism for their specificity and limited objects). Scientists, philosophers, and especially complexity scholars should abandon paradigms based on absolute certainties and adopt paradigms that combine provisional certainties with uncertainties that are progressively unveiled.