Thinking in Systems
Metadata
- Author: Donella H. Meadows and Diana Wright
- ASIN: B005VSRFEA
- Reference: https://amazon.co.uk/dp/B005VSRFEA
- Kindle link
Highlights
Psychologically and politically we would much rather assume that the cause of a problem is “out there,” rather than “in here.” — location: 239
Not always true - see locus of control
No one intends to produce a society with rampant drug addiction and crime, — location: 408
Hummmmmmmmmm.
Keeping sub-purposes and overall system purposes in harmony is an essential function of successful systems. — location: 422
Ipm and matrix etc
We also use behavior-over-time graphs to learn whether the system is approaching a goal or a limit, and if so, how quickly. — location: 499
The amount of water in the tub stays constant at whatever level it had reached when the inflow became equal to the outflow. It is in a state of dynamic equilibrium—its level does not change, although water is continuously flowing through it. — location: 507
A breakthrough in energy efficiency is equivalent, in its effect on the stock of available oil, to the discovery of a new oil field—although different people profit from it. — location: 529
Its the second bit here which is interesting
Stocks usually change slowly. They can act as delays, lags, buffers, ballast, and sources of momentum in a system. Stocks, especially large ones, respond to change, even sudden change, only by gradual filling or emptying. — location: 540
If you have a sense of the rates of change of stocks, you don’t expect things to happen faster than they can happen. You don’t give up too soon. — location: 557
But how do you kmow if it is having any effect
Economies are extremely complex systems; they are full of balancing feedback loops with delays, and they are inherently oscillatory. — location: 1090
But any real physical entity is always surrounded by and exchanging things with its environment. — location: 1098
I’ve assumed that the company has a goal of 5 percent annual growth in its business capital. If there isn’t enough profit for 5 percent growth, the company invests whatever profits it can. — location: 1131
Cost is equal to capital times the operating cost (energy, labor, materials, etc.) per unit of capital. — location: 1136
More and more, increases in technology and harvest efficiency have the ability to drive resource populations to extinction. — location: 1276
The trick, as with all the behavioral possibilities of complex systems, is to recognize what structures contain which latent behaviors, and what conditions release those behaviors—and, where possible, to arrange the structures and conditions to reduce the probability of destructive behaviors and to encourage the possibility of beneficial ones. — location: 1294
The just-in-time model also has made the production system more vulnerable, however, to perturbations in fuel supply, traffic flow, computer breakdown, labor availability, and other possible glitches. — location: 1354
Large organizations of all kinds, from corporations to governments, lose their resilience simply because the feedback mechanisms by which they sense and respond to their environment have to travel through too many layers of delay and distortion. — location: 1362
Systems need to be managed not only for productivity or stability, they also need to be managed for resilience—the ability to recover from perturbation, the ability to restore or repair themselves. — location: 1370
Fortunately, self-organization is such a basic property of living systems that even the most overbearing power structure can never fully kill it, although in the name of law and order, self-organization can be suppressed for long, barren, cruel, boring periods. — location: 1402
Yeah or self-organisation happens in a toxic way created by the structures imposed on it
When a subsystem’s goals dominate at the expense of the total system’s goals, the resulting behavior is called suboptimization. — location: 1500
Everything we think we know about the world is a model. Every word and every language is a model. All maps and statistics, books and databases, equations and computer programs are models. So are the ways I picture the world in my head—my mental models. None of these is or ever will be the real world. — location: 1525
Straying outside yer remit there
At any given time, the input that is most important to a system is the one that is most limiting. — location: 1822
We are not omniscient, rational optimizers, says Simon. Rather, we are blundering “satisficers,” attempting to meet (satisfy) our needs well enough (sufficiently) before moving on to the next decision. — location: 1926
They have a common underlying concern: how to get their particular system to function. — location: 2005
Policy resistance comes from the bounded rationalities of the actors in a system, each with his or her (or “its” in the case of an institution) own goals. — location: 2042
and the increasing raunchiness of rock bands. — location: 2287
Wut
Once our neighborhood had a contest with a 100 on more Christmas lights. After that family won three years in a row, with their display getting more elaborate every year, the contest was suspended. — location: 2323
Didnt happen
people think the fall of the communist Soviet Union has disproved the theories of Karl Marx, but this particular analysis of his—that market competition systematically eliminates market competition—is demonstrated wherever there is, or used to be, a competitive market. — location: 2340
This option, helping the system to help itself, can be much cheaper and easier than taking over and running the system—something liberal politicians don’t seem to understand. — location: 2470
;_;
Designing rules better means foreseeing as far as possible the effects of the rules on the subsystems, including any rule beating they might engage in, and structuring the rules to turn the self-organizing capabilities of the system in a positive direction. — location: 2521
Back in Chapter One, I said that one of the most powerful ways to influence the behavior of a system is through its purpose or goal. That’s because the goal is the direction-setter of the system, — location: 2537
If the desired system state is national security, and that is defined as the amount of money spent on the military, the system will produce military spending. — location: 2543
The GNP lumps together goods and bads. — location: 2561
And yet.see tom forth
GNP is a measure of throughput—flows of stuff made and purchased in a year—rather than capital stocks, the houses and cars and computers and stereos that are the source of real wealth and real pleasure. — location: 2566
O_o
Specify indicators and goals that reflect the real welfare of the system. Be especially careful not to confuse effort with result or you will end up with a system that is producing effort, not result. — location: 2588
meaning services, which need less capital but also return less profit in the long run. — location: 2611
The world’s leaders are correctly fixated on economic growth as the answer to virtually all problems, but they’re pushing with all their might in the wrong direction. — location: 2631
pocket. It’s why stores hold inventory instead of calling for new stock just as customers carry the old stock out the door. — location: 2705
Lol brexift
Businesses invented just-in-time inventories, because occasional vulnerability to fluctuations or screw-ups is cheaper (for them, anyway) than certain, constant inventory costs—and because small-to vanishing inventories allow more flexible response to shifting demand. — location: 2711
goal. The same is true if your information is timely, but your response isn’t. For — location: 2736
It’s usually easier to slow down the change rate, so that inevitable feedback delays won’t cause so much trouble. — location: 2751
(For example, the great push to reduce information and money-transfer delays in financial markets is just asking for wild gyrations.) — location: 2759
One of the big mistakes we make is to strip away these “emergency” response mechanisms because they aren’t often used and they appear to be costly. — location: 2771
One of the most heartbreaking ways we do this is in encroaching on the habitats of endangered species. Another is in encroaching on our own time for personal rest, recreation, socialization, and meditation. — location: 2773
Prices that reflect full costs will tell consumers how much they can actually afford and will reward efficient producers. Companies and governments are fatally attracted to the price leverage point, but too often determinedly push it in the wrong direction with subsidies, taxes, and other forms of confusion. — location: 2780
This great system was invented to put self-correcting feedback between the people and their government. The people, informed about what their elected representatives do, respond by voting those representatives in or out of office. The process depends on the free, full, unbiased flow of information back and forth between electorate and leaders. Billions of dollars are spent to limit and bias and dominate that flow of clear information. Give the people who want to distort market-price signals the power to influence government leaders, allow the distributors of information to be self-interested partners, and none of the necessary balancing feedbacks work well. Both market and democracy erode. — location: 2787
Reducing the gain around a reinforcing loop—slowing the growth—is usually a more powerful leverage point in systems than strengthening balancing loops, and far more preferable than letting the reinforcing loop run. — location: 2820
If the wealthy can influence government to weaken, rather than strengthen, those measures, then the government itself shifts from a balancing structure to one that reinforces success to the successful! — location: 2830
Look for leverage points around birth rates, interest rates, erosion rates, “success to the successful” loops, any place where the more you have of something, the more you have the possibility of having more. — location: 2832
Missing information flows is one of the most common causes of system malfunction. Adding or restoring information can be a powerful intervention, usually much easier and cheaper than rebuilding physical infrastructure. — location: 2841
Contrary to economic opinion, the price of fish doesn’t provide that feedback. As the fish get more scarce they become more expensive, and it becomes all the more profitable to go out and catch the last few. — location: 2844
Suppose any town or company that puts a water intake pipe in a river had to put it immediately downstream from its own wastewater outflow pipe. — location: 2851
Flint
To demonstrate the power of rules, I like to ask my students to imagine different ones for a college. Suppose the students graded the teachers, or each other. Suppose there were no degrees: You come to college when you want to learn something, and you leave when you’ve learned it. Suppose tenure were awarded to professors according to their ability to solve real world problems, rather than to publish academic papers. Suppose a class got graded as a group, instead of as individuals. — location: 2866
Need ensure goals are aligned with rules
I said a while back that changing the players in the system is a low-level intervention, as long as the players fit into the same old system. The exception to that rule is at the top, where a single player can have the power to change the system’s goal. I have watched in wonder as—only very occasionally—a new leader in an organization, from Dartmouth College to Nazi Germany, comes in, enunciates a new goal, and swings hundreds or thousands or millions of perfectly intelligent, rational people off in a new direction. — location: 2939
You keep speaking and acting, loudly and with assurance, from the new one. You insert people with the new paradigm in places of public visibility and power. You don’t waste time with reactionaries; rather, you work with active change agents and with the vast middle ground of people who are open-minded. — location: 2978
Systems thinking for us was more than subtle, complicated mind play. It was going to make systems work. — location: 3017
Systems thinking makes clear even to the most committed technocrat that getting along in this world of complex systems requires more than technocracy. — location: 3039
A translation tool for technocrats
And finally, starting with history discourages the common and distracting tendency we all have to define a problem not by the system’s actual behavior, but by the lack of our favorite solution. — location: 3110
Ok straight up wow
When we draw structural diagrams and then write equations, we are forced to make our assumptions visible and to express them with rigor. We have to put every one of our assumptions about the system out where others (and we ourselves) can see them. Our models have to be complete, and they have to add up, and they have to be consistent. Our assumptions can no longer slide around (mental models are very slippery), assuming one thing for purposes of one discussion and something else contradictory for purposes of the next discussion. — location: 3116
You don’t have to put forth your mental model with diagrams and equations, although doing so is a good practice. You can do it with words or lists or pictures or arrows showing what you think is connected to what. — location: 3121
degenerative accounting, — location: 3172
If the Eskimos have so many words for snow, — location: 3179
Lol what is this thing called
Aid and encourage the forces and structures that help the system run itself. Notice how many of those forces and structures are at the bottom of the hierarchy. Don’t be an unthinking intervenor and destroy the system’s own self-maintenance capacities. — location: 3238
A great deal of responsibility was lost when rulers who declared war were no longer expected to lead the troops into battle. — location: 3268
But nothing changed
One of the worst ideas humanity ever had was the interest rate, which led to the further ideas of payback periods and discount rates, all of which provide a rational, quantitative excuse for ignoring the long term. — location: 3311
To quote roger allam “that’s fucking mental”