Complexifiers

7. Massively Parallel Roles & Tasks

This introductory article was written by ChatGPT at the direction of Heidi Burgess, who reviewed, edited, and approved the final content.
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July 15, 2026

Complexifiers help society understand and manage problems that cannot be reduced to a simple contest between two sides. Modern democracies are vast, interconnected systems. A policy that helps solve one problem may worsen another, while an intervention that works in one community may fail under different conditions. Even intelligent, well-informed, good-faith people see only a small part of this larger picture. Complexifiers therefore examine how different forces interact, challenge overly simple explanations, and help decision makers anticipate trade-offs and unintended consequences. Their goal is not to make every issue seem hopelessly complicated. It is to develop explanations that are sufficiently accurate to support wise and equitable action.

We divide complexifiers into seven overlapping groups. Political thinkers examine how democratic institutions can be adapted to changing social conditions while preserving such core principles as political equality, individual rights, and accountable government. Behavioral thinkers ask how democracy can function better given the realities of human psychology. People are influenced by fear, group loyalty, motivated reasoning, and other cognitive tendencies that can distort political judgment. Behavioral thinkers seek ways to design institutions and public discussions that limit these vulnerabilities without assuming that citizens can be made perfectly rational.

Communication thinkers study how information moves through society and how that process might be improved. They explore ways to help people listen across differences, recognize cognitive biases, and distinguish reliable information from dis- and misinformation or deliberate deception. Social thinkers focus on relationships among diverse groups. They examine the forces that produce exclusion, resentment, distrust, and polarization, while also looking for ways in which different communities can cooperate and benefit from one another. Both groups recognize that disagreement is not caused solely by bad information. It is also shaped by identity, social experience, power, and the human need for dignity and belonging.

Technology thinkers examine how innovation affects prosperity, political power, social equity, and everyday quality of life. Artificial intelligence is now an especially important concern because its capabilities and adoption are advancing faster than many of the institutions expected to govern it. AI may expand access to knowledge and increase productivity, but it may also displace workers, facilitate manipulation, concentrate power, and alter how people form relationships or understand reality. Economic thinkers address a related set of questions. They consider how market incentives can generate innovation and broadly shared prosperity while limiting monopoly power, instability, environmental damage, and extreme concentrations of wealth.

System thinkers connect these different kinds of analysis. They examine feedback loops, delayed effects, relationships among institutions, and the ways in which problems that are usually handled separately influence one another. As the OECD explains in its work on systemic thinking for policymaking, this approach helps decision makers look beyond disciplinary and institutional silos and better anticipate the consequences of policy interventions. No single group of complexifiers can understand the whole system, and complex analysis does not eliminate the need for moral judgment or political choice. It does, however, help society avoid attractive but simplistic explanations (for instance "it's their fault!" and simplistic solutions. By combining different perspectives and making trade-offs more visible, complexifiers improve the chances that democratic decisions will address the real problem rather than merely the most obvious part of it.

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This page was created by ChatGPT in response to this prompt. It was then reviewed, edited, supplemented and approved by Heidi Burgess. More information about how and why we are using AI in this way, and about the growing number of ways in which Beyond Intractability is using ChatGPT, Claude and other AI systems to generate content and build out the BI system, is available on our BI/AI Overview Page.