Routines and mental simplification are universal cognitive strategies for managing complexity

Evidence

In everyday life people seek to simplify their tasks and narrow their range of perceptions in order to process the information they receive and develop responses to it. They create routines to make tasks manageable. They mentally simplify the objects of perception to reduce the complexity of evaluation. They structure their environments to make tasks and perceptions more familiar, less unique. Routines and simplifications aid the management of complexity; environmental structuring limits the complexity to be Bureaucrats develop routines to deal with the complexity of work tasks. — Michael Lipsky, Street-Level Bureaucracy, 617

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Other minds as alter egos intensify complexity, requiring language to reduce it; Slur vocabularies’ cognitive complexity tracks how simplified outgroup mental representations are — , Rudman, Laurie A - On the Nature of…, 1281; Structural differentiation, meant to manage complexity, scatters the very knowledge needed (+3 more)

Broader Connections

• Human cognitive limits make simplifying concepts and calculating devices constitutive of complex markets. #exemplifies (0.90) — Donald MacKenzie, An Engine, Not a Camera, 1195
• Other minds as alter egos intensify complexity, requiring language to reduce it #expands (0.85)
• Organizational routines combine a fixed ostensive pattern with variable performance #exemplifies (0.85) — Jörg Sydow, Georg Schreyögg, and Jochen Koch, Organizational Path Dependence, 49
• Slur vocabularies’ cognitive complexity tracks how simplified outgroup mental representations are #exemplifies (0.80) — , Rudman, Laurie A - On the Nature of…, 1281
• Structural differentiation, meant to manage complexity, scatters the very knowledge needed #complicates (0.80)
• History functions as the primary mechanism for reducing world complexity #expands (0.75) — Niklas Luhmann, Trust and Power, 137