In environments characterized by high uncertainty, incomplete data, or excessive complexity, traditional analytical approaches often fall short. This digital garden is an open-ended investigation of how Abductive Heuristics and their associated Tactics are used in collaborative settings to navigate complex adaptive systems (CAS).
This project is undertaken within the Synthesis Center at Arizona State University.
Abductive Heuristics (AH): These are concepts to keep in mind when looking at a complex system, organization, or situation. Skilled navigators, business leaders, and creative executives (should) use heuristics where there’s no model, inadequate data, too much data, or where key factors are effectively invisible to the standard way of managing a situation. Experience helps. The AH toolkit condenses experience and knowledge from studying complex adaptive systems, chaotic human behavior, and more than human ecologies and evolutions.
Abductive Tactics (AT): These are ways of accomplishing things when confronted with navigating uncertain circumstances beyond anyone’s control but in which you have a stake. AT generate:
- Facts of a different order than the facts given
- Hypotheses and propositions on what to do or think that are always “best fit” and never final
The current toolkit includes AH and AT from the following thematic sources:
- Indeterminacy
- Complexity
- Resilience / Ecological viability
- Social capital
- Incommensurate values