Thinking in Systems by Donella H. Meadows
Input-output, repeat. We chug along our lives watching news headlines and casting blame for our problems without really stopping to think. Once the communism falls, we'll achieve world order, right? If we tighten border control, then immigrants won't be a problem, right? If we spend money commuting a War on Drugs by attacking the suppliers, then we won't have drug abuse, right? Right, of course. Because it's just that easy. Even with my parents and some of my own friends from home, massive oversimplifications, billboard phrases, and billboard policy ideas are thrown around as if they mean something. Many people are stuck on events-level analysis. This is problematic. I challenge myself to add a time graph and do behavior analysis for a better picture. This isn't as bad, but still not great. Seek to understand the model itself... the so-called "black box" and "gears" in between the input and the final output. Understand the nonlinear relationship of actions and their short-term and long-term future consequences. Understand the dynamic nature of the world and the reinforcing and balancing mechanisms holding a system in place. That's a lot to ask of anybody but myself, but it never hurts.
Thinking In Systems reframed and also reinforced a lot of my thoughts on how the world works. "A system if an interconnected set of elements that is coherently organized in a way that achieves something (it's function / purpose)." It's such a blanket phrase and definition and has so much to unpack. Stocks, flows, resilience, self-organization, hierarchy, sub-optimization, non-linearity, oscillations, and failure modes. These fundamental concepts are the ABC's to learning how our world works. Treat this book like a primer; like a proper layman's introduction to a heavily complex subject. Whether your ontology (your framework for life) is that of a biologist, economist, physicist, manager, or a statesman, it is highly relevant to understand the core principles of how systems work.
Because of my time constraints before college, I regretfully read the book without reflecting too much on each chapter and concept. I have layers of thoughts that I'm unable to word properly because I didn't spend enough learning the lingo. That's ok -- at least I know the vocabulary exists and where to find it. I plan to buy the book and keep it almost as a hand-guide for approaching problems that I encounter in my life (personal, professional, and beyond). I want to practice making the systems map of the situation with all the reinforcing and balancing loops included. I think playing around with the core principles of how these systems work and understanding each of the prevalent modes of failure is the best way to train my instinct to be a holistic longterm thinker.
I've also half-heartedly started on an outline of the book, which I think could be immensely valuable. When I buy the book and find time to re-read and outline, I'll post it again. Here's what I've got below:
Part One: System Structure and Behavior
The Basics
More Than the Sum of Its Parts
A system if an interconnected set of elements that is coherently organized in a way that achieves something (it's function / purpose)
Elements are tangible & intangible and endless (sub-elements, sub-sub elements)
Changing elements usually has the least effect on a system. A system generally goes on being, changing only slowly if at all, even with complete substitutions of its elements, as long as interconnections and purposes remain intact
Change all the players on a football team, and it's still a football team (though it may perform worse)
Many interconnections in systems operate through the flow of information
If interconnections change, the system may be greatly altered...
Change the rules from those of football to those of basketball, and you've got a whole new ballgame
Function/purpose is expressed through the operation of the system -- rarely said explicitly... deduced rom behavior not rhetoric or stated goals
Purposes of subunits may add up to an overall behavior that no one wants
Changes in function or purpose can be drastic, even if elements and interconnections are constant
Keep the players and the rules but change the purpose from winning to losing
You think that because you understand "one" that you must therefore understand "two" because one and one make two. But you must forget that you must also understand "and." - Sufi teaching story
Understanding System Behavior over Time
Stock: an accumulation of material or information that has built up over time. the present memory of the history of changing flows within the system
Water in a bathtub; money in a bank; your own self-confidence
Flow: material or information that enters or leaves a stock over a period of time
As long as the sum of all inflows exceed the sum of all outflows, the level of the stock will rise (and vice versa will fall)
The human mind focuses more on inflows than outflows... a stock can be increased by decreasing its outflow rate as well as by increasing its inflow rate
A company can build up a larger workforce by more hiring, or by reducing rates of quitting/firing
A stock takes time to change because flows take time to flow. Stocks can act as buffers or shock absorbers in a system
Time lag can cause problems but can also be a source of stability
Part Two: Systems and Us
Why Systems Work So Well
Resilience: a measure of a system's ability to survive and persist within a variable environment
Meta resilience: a set of feedback loops that can restore or rebuild feedback loops
Meta meta resilience: feedback loops that can learn, create, design, and evolve
Not the same thing as being static or constant over time. Resilience is very dynamic.
Self-Organization: the capacity of a system to make its own structure more complex
Produces heterogeneity and unpredictability and requires freedom and experimentation and a certain amount of disorder
Out of a few simple rules of self-organization can grow enormous, diversifying crystals of technology, organizations, and cultures
Hierarchy: subsystems aggregated into larger subsystems, aggregated into still larger subsystems
If subsystems can regulate themselves and still serve the needs of the larger system, while the larger subsystem coordinates and enhances the functioning of subsystems --> stable, resilient, and efficient structure
Complex systems can evolve from simple systems only if there are stable intermediate forms
Relationships within each subsystem are closer than relationships between subsystems
Hierarchies evolve from the lowest level up (farmer --> city --> civilization)
Sub-optimization: when a subsystem's goals dominate at the expense of the total system's goals
Too much central control is also suboptimal
Why Systems Surprise Us
Beguiling events
This poem reminds me of a essay in LessWrong's Trust
"A system is a big black box of which we can't unlock the locks, and all we can find out about is what goes in and what comes out. Perceiving input-output pairs, related by parameters, permits us, sometimes, to relate an input, output, and a state. If this relation's good and stable then to predict we may be able, but if this fails us heaven forbid! We'll be compelled to force the lid!" - Kenneth Boulding
Event analysis doesn't help predict what will happen in the future or how to change the behavior of the system
Behavior analysis: performance over time (growth, stagnation, decline, oscillation, randomness, or evolution)
Problems:
Overemphasize flows and underemphasize stocks... w/o seeing how stocks affect related flows through feedback processes, one cannot understand the dynamics of systems or the reasons for their behavior
People try to find links that relate flows to each other... there's no reason to expect any flow to bear a stable relationship with any other flow (they relate to stocks, usually not each other)
Pretty good at predicting short-term, bad at predicting long-term, terrible at telling us how to improve
System structure is the source of system behavior. System behavior reveals itself as a series of events over time