Oltre i cigni neri. L’urgenza di aprirsi all’indeterminato

The hyper-technological and hyper-complex civilisation is a civilisation of total rationality and control that continues to represent itself, to self-represent itself and to be represented as an increasingly advanced civilisation capable of simplifying everything, as well as eliminating Error and unpredictability from our lives, through automation and simulation processes. 

The underlying hegemonic paradigm carries with it a series of grand illusions intimately linked to the possibility of marginalising the Human, delegating its choices and responsibilities to artificial intelligence (?) systems and interconnected technological devices. 

We continue to believe that we know/can control and predict, even pre-determine everything, instead of trying to learn, precisely through error and unpredictability, how to inhabit hypercomplexity and open up to the indeterminate. 

The systemic and cultural confusion between 'complicated systems' (mechanisms) and 'complex systems' (organisms) continues to have profound consequences, at all levels. The scientific discoveries and technological innovations of the last few decades have not only offered us extraordinary opportunities to determine even the mechanisms of biological evolution, but have also made us definitively enter the time of maximum unpredictability, uncertainty and obsolescence (of knowledge and skills). Systemic and, by now, even existential dimensions. 

On the other hand, the Human, the Social, the Vital and, more generally, 'complex systems' are neither reducible nor simplifiable, much less measurable, predictable, manageable to the full. 

Consequently, what is needed is a profound rethinking of the epistemologies and methodologies that shape and characterise teaching, education, training, research, overcoming fractures, separation logics and confinement of knowledge that have shown all their limits and our inadequacies, even during the pandemic.