#source/book📚/ingested ```toc ``` ## What is a system? A system is any group of elements that are inter-related. It is easy to see the elements and not easy to see the relationships. *A systems is make up of elements, the relationship between those elements, and the purpose of the system as a whole* The relationships can be: - Self-reinforcing -> results in exponential growth or decay - Self-balancing -> tending towards stability - Changing the *elements* won't change the outcome much - Changing the *purpose* will - Replacing Tom Brady with Mac Jones didn't result in as big a change because the system's purpose stayed the same ## Systems have delays A thermostat controlling the temperature of the room is an example of a system. When the room is warmer, more heat is lost to the outside (negative reinforcing), when the temperature is lower, the furnace kicks in to warm the room. - The room will never reach the temperature set at the thermostat because it takes time for the furnace to warm the room and during that time heat is being lost to the outside. It always takes time to for the information to reach the system controls, which must be accounted for in the modeling. - Those delays create the cyclic nature of the feedback response. The cyclic nature is inherent in these systems, it is a function of the system. Prolonging the feedback loop **not shortening** is the thing that reduces the fluctuations. ![[CleanShot 2022-01-10 at 08.25.47.jpg]] ![[CleanShot 2022-01-10 at 08.26.19.jpg]] ## Types of systems ### One balancing and one reinforcing - Population growth: more people = more babies (reinforcing), but deaths also increase (balancing). If the death rate < birth rate -> exponential growth. If the death rate > birth rate -> exponential decline. Another system: me and the dogs: the happier I am, the easier it is to train the dogs because they feel my happiness, the more frustrated I am, the less they trust me and will learn with me. - This is a reinforcing system - This system cannot be changed by changing the elements, instead one must change the purpose - As the person who thinks about purpose, only I can influence the outcome - and not by short-term reactive behaviors. I need to be like the Federal Reserve - meeting on a quarterly basis and not influenced by daily issues in the behavior of one element. - This is a great example because it's easy to see the elements, but it's difficult to see the relationship, and there is a built in delay to the response. It takes months to train new habits, but also transformational learning could occur with _one_ really significant perterbation. - **Because this is a self-reinforcing system it can grow boundless without balancing forces - I would be the balancing forces, how can I prevent being the balancing forces?** ##![[CleanShot 2022-01-10 at 08.23.38.jpg]] ## System Traps or Opportunities: ### Policy Resistance You can only create change through enforcement unless you can identify a shared purpose and move towards that shared purpose. The law of unintended consequences means you will get negative behaviors, some of them more costly than the outcome you wanted. Example was Romania outlawing abortion and contraception to try to increase population -> result was tripling of maternal mortality and tons of children in orphanages. In Sweden they decided a better shared vision would be all children would be wanted and well cared for resulting in free abortion and contraception and increased social spending on children -> positive shared vision and there was a negligable difference between the two countries and their birth rates which went up and down. They also identified barriers of too small housing and not enough childcare and government subsidized those, this created new bottlenecks. - Solutions: Let go, look for shared purpose and allow the outcomes to be what they are ### Tragedy of the commons: When farmers share grazing privileges on a lot of land all the incentives are for overgrazing because each farmer does not experience the impact on one more cow until the land has degraded so much that grass won't grow and everyone looses. - Solutions: Police enforcement of policy, privatize or isolate the results of the overuse so each person feels the impact of their own behavior, educate ### Rich get richer When the winner gets to reinvest the results of winning, you end up with a winner-take-all market. - Solution: Create resets or break up winners, offset markets (like video games create benefits for those who aren't winners to keep them in the game) ## Guidelines for Living in a World of Systems 1. Get the beat of the system. 2. Expose your mental models to the light of day. 3. Honor, respect, and distribute information. 4. Use language with care and enrich it with systems concepts. 5. Pay attention to what is important, not just what is quantifiable. 6. Make feedback policies for feedback systems. 7. Go for the good of the whole. 8. Listen to the wisdom of the system. 9. Locate responsibility within the system. 10. Stay humble—stay a learner. 11. Celebrate complexity. 12. Expand time horizons. 13. Defy the disciplines. 14. Expand the boundary of caring. 15. Don’t erode the goal of goodness. ## Places to Intervene in a System (in increasing order of effectiveness) 12. Numbers: Constants and parameters such as subsidies, taxes, and standards 13. Buffers: The sizes of stabilizing stocks relative to their flows 14. Stock-and-Flow Structures: Physical systems and their nodes of intersection 15. Delays: The lengths of time relative to the rates of system changes 16. Balancing Feedback Loops: The strength of the feedbacks relative to the impacts they are trying to correct 17. Reinforcing Feedback Loops: The strength of the gain of driving loops 18. Information Flows: The structure of who does and does not have access to information 19. Rules: Incentives, punishments, constraints 20. Self-Organization: The power to add, change, or evolve system structure 21. Goals: The purpose of the system 22. Paradigms: The mind-set out of which the system—its goals, structure, rules, delays, parameters—arises 23. Transcending Paradigms #source/book📚 [@meadowsThinkingSystemsPrimer2008] [[Thinking in Systems.pdf]] [[2022-01-26]]