The Illusion of Control

Societies are built on illusions.¹ Simple illusions like “it” will last,² “it” being conditions of stability, or well-being, or, ironically, health; and complex illusions like the invisible hand (Smith 1776),³ or progress, or that we, as individuals, organizations, or governments, are in control.⁴

The illusion of control points to a pattern of thought that entices us to believe that we can control the emergence of our future. COVID-19 punctured that illusion. The uncertainty that resulted from the pandemic enables us to think about our future as a context over the emergence of which we cannot have control. In that context, narratives are important. They express the cultural, institutional, social, and environmental embeddedness of our human decision-making (van der Leeuw, Forthcoming) and, as such, play an important part both in generating illusions of control and in extending their “lives.”

The past, as well as the context for our future, evolved and evolves over time, partly because of natural evolution and partly in response to changing societal needs. Meeting these needs requires a certain amount of stability.

Evolution “equipped” beavers with the capability to create a stable environment (Odling-Smee 1988).⁵ They can build a dam that creates a pond in which they can build a lodge, find food, be protected against predators, and reproduce. Of course, the stability of this environment is limited by external events, like floods, over which they have no control.

Humans have the illusion that they can create such stability with knowledge. And for limited amounts of time, they can indeed create a sense of stability. That sense triggers us to believe that we are in control.

For many individuals, the illusion that they are in control is a lifelong reality. We do not realize that what we control is a simplified world, a small part of an infinitely larger and complex world. Controlling that simplified world interferes with its complex reality.

Because of the limited predictability inherent in complex systems, this interference will cause system responses that are unpredictable, in terms of both when they will happen and how they will happen. We cannot control these responses. The reason is that the world, which we spend a relatively short time in, is too big and complex. We cannot trace (even a minuscule part of) all the cause-and-effect relationships that evolved in the universe to form that world. We need to simplify it because we cannot know all the causes and effects, let alone influence them.

So, what did humans do? They did different things in different cultures.

In Western cultures,⁶ they simplified the world by reducing it to abstractions, universal laws, and general truths. They focused on linear cause-and-effect relationships, through which they could hope to understand the world around them and exercise the control by which they “… fill the earth and subdue it.” Plato was a leading philosopher, monotheism was a key mover, and science added the illusion of objectivity and truth. During the last four hundred years, reductionism has dominated Western thinking.

In other cultures (Henrich 2021)—for example, the Chinese—they used patterns to simplify the world. Patterns constitute complex combinations of many cause-and-effect relationships. Such patterns in the Chinese culture have crystallized over millennia. Inspired by Lao Tze and Confucius, maybe, but without a single, creating deity or a reductionist science looking for general truths. Identifying (with) complex patterns has always been part of Chinese thinking.

Both simplifications are based on an illusion—namely, a sense of certainty that the simplified world represents reality. Humans need that sense of certainty. And, when changes are slow compared to the average age of humans, the future seems predictable, even certain. But simplifications also create new illusions—namely, the ones that follow from the uncertainty that is inherent in the differences between the continuously changing reality and that sense of certainty. It seems to be in the “nature” of humanity at large to ignore that uncertainty, essentially due to the fact that the human mind can deal only with a very limited number of dynamic sources of information, compared to the almost (?) infinite number actually interacting in the real world. As a result, most of the dynamics humans are part of remain unobserved and ignored by them (e.g., Taleb 2006 on “black swans”—sudden, dramatic events emerging completely unexpectedly in dynamics that humans consider “under control”).

Nowadays, we cannot say any longer that changes are slow. In fact, human societies and the ecosystems they depend on are going through momentous and “explosive” changes,⁷ mostly generated by human activities themselves. How to understand these and meet the challenges they pose have become existential questions for humanity. In trying to find answers to these questions, we must deal with two fundamental aspects of life: the certainty of change and the uncertainty about how and when change will take place.

Whether through patterns or through reductionism or in other ways, control has always been an existential part of human life. We cannot live without it. Whether we are hunter-gatherers or city dwellers, we need to exert some element of control over our surroundings to ensure we have food, water, and shelter as well as a mate with whom we can procreate. In that sense, humankind does not differ from other living beings on our planet, such as beavers. Where we do differ is that we strive to control the natural evolution of our surroundings, both our direct surroundings and those beyond our direct reach.

Doing that, humanity accumulated a lot of experience and knowledge on how to effect change. It also created the illusion that it can control change. Control, rather than adaptation, became a leading reaction to change.

By taking control, humanity started to adapt the environment to its needs.⁸ Prior to that, natural evolution took place—on a timescale of millions of years—as a continuous interplay between changing environments and adapting needs of living systems. Once humanity took control, it started to adapt the environment on a timescale of (tens to hundreds of) years. These adaptations were not the result of a continuous interplay with natural evolution, but a result of linear interference in it.⁹

Natural evolution takes place in a complex adaptive system in which interactions between and adaptations of innumerable agents determine how the system will evolve and how new properties will emerge. There is neither predictability nor any predetermined direction.

In the Western way of thinking, human control by “imposing change” or by “reacting to change” is a linear interference in such a system with the purpose of moving natural evolution in a desired direction with a predictable outcome. To measure the results of its interference, humanity needed to make values¹⁰ explicit that are implicit in complex adaptive systems. Paradoxically, that created the need for more control, and the basis for illusions.

The fundamental reason for this is that, as humans try to control a complex adaptive system, that system reacts in unforeseeable ways. The only way humans have to control these reactions is to add more controls. Controlling nonlinear systems with linear means is bound to fail. That leaves only the illusion of control, until humans find a way to counteract nonlinear behavior with adequate nonlinear reactions.

As argued before, societies are built on illusions that are the inevitable consequence of the simplifications that humans need to make sense of their world.

The statement “Everything must be made as simple as possible. But not simpler” is attributed to Albert Einstein, and Murray Gell-Mann introduced the concept of a “Crude Look at the Whole.” Both, statement and concept, deal with simplification.

Both warn against oversimplification, but how do we know that we are oversimplifying?

Murray Gell-Mann answers this implicitly.

“Take a crude look at the whole and allow possible simplifications to emerge from the work.” Obviously, that is the opposite of the reductionist approach in which you take the complex system apart, study the subsystems separately, and let the whole emerge from the subsystems.”

Christoph Adami, in his review of John Holland’s book Signals and Boundaries, is a little more explicit. “If taken apart complex systems lose precisely the character that makes them complex. The essence of these systems then, seems to lie not in the nature of their components but in how the components interact—across different hierarchies, in synergistic and antagonistic manners” (Adami 2012).

In other words, if a system falls apart after simplification, we have oversimplified.

If we want to briefly paraphrase the above, one might say: illusions are the inevitable result of simplifications. We cannot control our world without simplifications because the number of interrelated cause-and-effect relationships in the real world is way beyond the comprehension of humans. So, in simplifying that world in order to control it, we create illusions of control. That is and has always been part of human life.

Humanity has lived “in harmony” with such illusions for practically all of its existence (Agosta and Brooks 2020).¹¹

“Harmony” in this case refers to the phenomenon that, as the ecosystem that humans lived in changed (over a period of many generations), the simplifications changed with them, and so did the illusions that they were in control.

Until about a hundred years ago, changes in human ecosystems took place over many generations. By the beginning of the twentieth century, such changes happened within only a few generations. In the last hundred years, enormous changes in the human ecosystem began to happen within a generation.

One may argue that the harmony between humans and the illusion that they can control their world started to become disturbed around the time when science introduced abstractions, universal laws, and general truths as a means to simplify the world.¹² Universal laws and general truths do not change with changing environments, and as a result the illusions of control started to become disconnected from the changes in the human ecosystems.¹³ At the same time, the increase in scientific knowledge became a major driving force behind those changes.

In the early days of the scientific revolution, science aimed at understanding nature, with the purpose to control it (Bacon 1620). The day-to-day practical world presented the problems that science aimed to understand. Practical problems were leading in the development of scientific theories. Theory followed practice. That was the case until deep into the nineteenth century. But by the end of that century, theory began to run ahead of practical problems, and the relationship between science and practice increasingly became dominated by scientific disciplines and specializations. Practical questions no longer gave direction and content to the development of scientific knowledge, but scientific disciplines started to give direction to practical applications—that is, the development of technologies.¹⁴

The change from science following practice to practical applications following scientific knowledge¹⁵ marked the creation of a context in which the speed at which new technologies are developed is no longer determined by the task or the wish to solve practical problems,¹⁶ but by the creativity with which engineers and product developers can use scientific knowledge to satisfy their fantasies—and their greed.

The fantasies propel ideas that individuals can be in full control of the world around them, satisfying any need they may have (material, convenience, information, health, or wealth). That is all an illusion, of course. Out of greed, those fantasies often focus on needs that can most easily be exploited. Together, science-induced fantasies and greed provide bases for runaway illusions, easily controlled by ruthless advertising practices and agencies.

Humanity cannot live without illusions of control. For thousands of years, we have managed to control those illusions by making them part of our ecosystems, through narratives that express the cultural, institutional, social, and environmental embeddedness of our human decision-making, or otherwise. One way in which this embeddedness expresses itself is trust.¹⁷

But now it seems we are losing control. Human ecosystems are changing too fast, narratives that created and preserved stability in our societies are changing in ways that make it more difficult to govern (Lewis 2021), and organizational monopolization of data (data-opolies) manipulate narratives and create runaway illusions that serve their business interests at the expense of societal stability (Stucke 2018).

On top of that, we now have technologies like ChatGPT (Wikipedia contributors 2023) that create artificial illusions that are based on the almost infinite power of modern computers to combine data into stories, mimic human conversations, compose music and fairy tales, generate business ideas, and play games. Based on the ultimate level of reductionism (the whole world reduced to zeros and ones), it interferes with the complex adaptive systems that make up our societies and our world. We know that such interference leads to overall unpredictable consequences. These may lead to good and bad effects for individuals, but it leaves societies without ways to serve the general well-being of all their citizens.

One direct victim of the developments sketched above is trust. Trust in institutions, governments, financial systems, big companies, science, narratives, and illusions that we can control.

It is much easier to analyze what possible causes may lead to an observed effect than to create a desired effect from multiple possible causes. This is true for particle physics, and it is even more true for real life.¹⁸ Real life can be seen as an aggregation of interacting complex adaptive systems. In reducing these systems to the sum total of their agents, we take away the “magic” capability of these systems to let new properties emerge, to adapt, to self-organize, or to create diversity. The “magic” results from the interactions between the individual agents and the capability of the agents to learn, adapt, develop mechanisms, and form hierarchies (Holland 1995).

Trust emerges from such interactions. If we take away the interactions, trust disappears. Narratives are essential mechanisms in developing trust. To rebuild trust where it is lost, existing narratives must be changed, or new ones developed (van der Leeuw and Folke 2021).

In order to do that, we must deal with obstacles that prevent us from realizing the desired changes. Obstacles manifest themselves when humans want to make change happen, especially when they want it to happen faster than the natural evolution of the systems that are affected by the changes (Vasbinder and Sim 2021). Introducing new technologies that affect established patterns of thought or behavior can generate such obstacles. These may manifest themselves as runaway illusions of control that hamper the harmonious coexistence between humanity and the illusions over which it has control.

How to regain control of these illusions, or the narratives that support them and the trust “without which we cannot stand”?

There is a way and a warning. The warning is that evolution is relentless. It conserves nothing. Living systems, among which are human societies that do not adapt to changing conditions, will go extinct (Agosta and Brooks 2020).

The way is to find natural routes around the obstacles. In looking for such routes, humanity may focus on the natural harmony with nature that exists in small communities and that seems to have gotten lost in cities. Such small communities can adapt quickly and harmoniously to change, or at least they can have the illusion that they do.

The next paper (van der Leeuw and Dirks) sets the stage, arguing for a generalized perspective on the emergence of the illusion of control. The other papers in this special collection highlight how the illusion of control plays out in different domains—from the fishing industry (van Santen) to the emergence of corruption in ex-colonial territories (Feikema), from politics (Cleary) to business (Obolensky) and finance (Sheng). They highlight the individual perspectives of the authors of the papers, which range from the humanities (Nowotny) via biology and epidemiology (Brooks and Agosta) to the cognitive sciences (Iriki and Tanaka).

In organizing this special collection, we have deliberately kept the papers in the same order as at the conference. The purpose of the latter was to elicit questions and comments by presenting the contributions in a way that stimulated cross-fertilization. The results of that attempt can be found in the discussions at the end of each presentation, and in the general conclusion, on the website of Para Limes (https://www.paralimes.org/past-events/conference-illusion-of-control/).

The authors have no competing interests to declare.

Jan Wouter Vasbinder did his BSc in shipbuilding engineering and his MSc in nuclear physics. He started his professional career as a researcher in a Dutch nuclear laboratory. In 1981 he was appointed Attaché for Science and Technology in Washington and Ottawa. In 1985 he returned to the Netherlands, to head an organization responsible for developing large and long-term cooperative-industry-university research programs. Subsequently he became member of the management team of the Dutch organization responsible for executing government innovation policies. In 1995 he cofounded Prisma & Partners, a firm dedicated to finding, strengthening, and mobilizing the innovative capacity of companies, government (related) organizations, and regions.

His career took a drastic turn in 2004 when he initiated Institute Para Limes (IPL) in Europe. IPL was founded in 2005 by twenty-five founding fathers among whom were six Nobel laureates. IPL set out to be the European version of the Santa Fe Institute in New Mexico. Its founding manifesto stated four needs it would address:

• to ask the unconventional questions.

• to stimulate encounters across disciplinary boundaries.

• to challenge the established ways of thinking.

• to open unexplored, yet promising, avenues for research.

The 2009 financial crisis brought that ambition to an abrupt end. However, in 2011 the activities of IPL were continued at the Nanyang Technological University (NTU) in Singapore under the name Para Limes. Initially Para Limes focused on developing the first institute in Southeast Asia dedicated to research of complex systems. The Complexity Institute was spun off on 1 April 2014, and Para Limes refocused its activities on organizing high-level conferences, workshops, and projects, getting together world-class scientists, philosophers, artists, and people of practice to identify essential questions in society and explore ways to address them. In 2019 Para Limes resumed those activities in Europe.

During his stay at NTU, Jan W. Vasbinder initiated, organized, and chaired more than twenty high-level conferences and workshops, involving world-class scientists and thinkers from six continents. He initiated and organized a series of lectures by (the late) Sydney Brenner and W. Brian Arthur and a workshop on Grand Challenges in Science in the 21st Century. He was also responsible for the organization of the series of lectures initiated by Sydney Brenner, resulting in the book 10 – on - 10, the Chronicles of Evolution.

Jan W. Vasbinder has written and edited more than ten books, most of them in the series Exploring Complexity, published by World Scientific Publishers (WSP).

The joy in his work comes from exploring new, potentially powerful, combinations of knowledge, arts, philosophy, and practice and from developing projects and programs to make such combinations useful.

His motto is “the value of knowledge is in its use.”

He is married and has four children.

Sander van der Leeuw. An archaeologist and a historian, Sander van der Leeuw pioneered the application of the Complex Adaptive Systems approach to socio-environmental challenges, technology, and innovation. He coordinated the ARCHAEOMEDES research program (1991–2000) using the CAS perspective on sustainability challenges in S. Europe—the first of its kind worldwide. He held teaching positions in Amsterdam, Leyden, Cambridge, and Paris (Sorbonne) and was founding director of Arizona State University’s School of Human Evolution and Social Change and dean of its School of Sustainability. He is Fellow of the AAAS, Honorary Fellow of RIHN (Kyoto, Japan), External Faculty Fellow of the Santa Fe Institute, and Corresponding Member of the Royal Dutch Academy of Arts and Sciences. He held a Chair at the Institut Universitaire de France. In 2012, he was awarded the title “Champion of the Earth for Science and Innovation” by UNEP, and in 2023 the lifetime research award of the Shanghai Archaeological Forum of the PRC.

Social Sustainability, Past and Future: Undoing Unintended Consequences for the Earth’s Survival, Cambridge University Press: https://www.cambridge.org/​core/​services/​aop-cambridge-core/​content/​view/​811395DC3A8D82EAD39C45657B2FD1AD/​9781108498692AR.pdf/​Social_Sustainability__Past_and_Future.pdf?event-type=FTLA

Victor Galaz is Associate Professor in political science at the Stockholm Resilience Centre (Stockholm University), and programme director of the Beijer Institute’s Governance, Technology and Complexity programme. His research explores the political and governance challenges created by rapid global change, including globally networked risks, governance dimensions of “planetary boundaries,” the interplay between financial systems and Earth system dynamics, and the sustainability implications of novel technologies such as artificial intelligence. Among his publications are articles in journals including the Lancet; Technology in Society; Nature Sustainability; Global Environmental Change; Lancet Planetary Health; Public Administration; Governance; Complexity, Governance and Networks; Nature Climate Change; Science; and others. Galaz is also the author of the book Global Environmental Governance, Technology and Politics: The Anthropocene Gap (Edward Elgar, UK/US, 2014), and editor of Global Challenges, Governance, and Complexity Applications and Frontiers (Edward Elgar, UK/US, 2019).