[TechTalk] The Illusion of Control: What Brexit Teaches Us About Complex Systems - EP074

But it's important that we understand that, of course, Brexit is still going on, right? And in a way, it's something that will carry on.

So in this specific context, case, we are really looking at a very interesting article from the New York Times where it talks about 10 years after Brexit, the dismal verdict is in.

And this article came out about, you know, early this week and it's really trying to figure out, okay, as it says, you know, 10 years ago this week, Britain threw away its geopolitical compass and voted to quit the The Club of European Nations, it had been a part of for more than 40 years.

Leaving the European Union was supposed to allow Britain to take back control and its destiny.

The world had really mattered in that campaign.

The word that really mattered in that campaign was back.

The trick was to look backward, to reimagine the future.

not for nothing that has tunneled Trump's promise of the past decade being, you know, make America great again.

Brexit, as Britain's exit from European Union came to be known, was supposed to be the vessel in which Britain could return to the decades after World War II, when Winston Churchill could pretend just about that Britain still counted as a global power.

And of course, it goes on and on and on.

Now, it is incredibly important that when we look into this lens, we realize there's a couple of things I would like to do with this anchor story.

I think the first and foremost, the central idea of taking back control assumed that Britain could independently shape its economic and political future.

That was the premise.

The premise was we, as Britain, can take back control.

However, Britain's economy, trade, security, immigration, and diplomacy remain deeply interconnected with Europe and the wider world.

So there was a dichotomy.

There was a sense of diverging values.

We want to be completely taking back control of whatever that means.

But yet everything that that control is dependent on really was someone else's control on someone else's control.

So the lesson here is not political.

The lesson here is systemic.

Complex systems don't become simpler just because we want more control.

It's incredibly important to say that again.

Complex systems Don't become simple just because we want more control.

So it's really about that.