Complex behavior can emerge from simple rules interacting with a complex environment.
Simon's 1969 image: the ant's path across a beach looks complex, and the complexity is in the beach. It is the standing argument for looking at the environment before positing internal sophistication.
In practice
- A delivery driver's apparently expert route through a city is the traffic lights and the one-way system, not the driver.
- A customer journey that looks like sophisticated behaviour is often a simple rule meeting a badly designed form.