
A Lifetime of Systems Thinking - yarapavan
https://thesystemsthinker.com/a-lifetime-of-systems-thinking/
======
clairity
> "Schools are upside down. Students should be teaching, and teachers at all
> levels should learn no matter how much they resist doing so."

i was musing about this the other day... split the day between teaching and
learning (probably alternating by hour): teach the grade below you and learn
from the grade above you. teachers would mainly guide the teachers and set the
agenda. the student teachers can grade papers, with adult teachers spot
checking their grading.

> "...the internal market economy..."

some chinese companies, notably haier, used some form of the internal market
economy to become multinational behemoths. your group would only be successful
if you added enough value to the internal value chain that another group would
"buy" your product, with the external customer as the final arbiter in the
chain.

> " _The best thing that can be done to a problem is to solve it._ False. The
> best thing that can be done to a problem is to dissolve it, to redesign the
> entity that has it or its environment so as to eliminate the problem."

problem definition implicitly frames a situation and thereby narrows the
window of possible solutions. i've learned to look for these kinds of
solutions because those kinds of solutions tend to be the most effective. when
you want to stop a bad habit, don't focus on the stopping. create a world
where the habit is unnecessary.

~~~
dorchadas
> i was musing about this the other day... split the day between teaching and
> learning (probably alternating by hour): teach the grade below you and learn
> from the grade above you. teachers would mainly guide the teachers and set
> the agenda. the student teachers can grade papers, with adult teachers spot
> checking their grading.

As a teacher, I think this is an interesting proposal. It definitely would
help a lot, and the ones teaching would get a firmer grasp on the material
without a doubt. I wonder if it could be integrated into something like Sal
Kahn's model, however. Say, kids watch lectures at home, and then kids in the
higher class help them work through problems, with teacher guidance to explain
in more depth for curious students and to help work through problems.

There's a few issues I see with this, however, the main one being timing.
There's only so many hours in a day, and if kids are going to both learn and
teach, we'll have to cut down on _something_ in the high school curriculum.
Sadly, I fear this would mostly be electives or humanities classes, two things
which are still needed. The other issue would be what to do with final year
students. Would they only teach, or would they still need learning too?
Ideally, they could get an internship, but who knows how that would really
work, especially in rural areas/areas without many job opportunities.

~~~
clairity
it would basically split the learning across 2 years instead of 1, so
hopefully it wouldn't require additional time. spend half the time each year;
test rudimentary knowledge the 1st year, mastery in the 2nd year.

but if necessary, maybe performing arts could be pushed to non-profits to
administer outside of school (as is often the case already).

and i'd suspect final year students would help teach each other in electives.
maybe get freshmen from college majoring in the subject. in college, teaching
assistants are often only a couple years ahead of you anyway.

i was just imagining how one room schoolhouses of yore (like on _little house
on the prairie_ ) would work. =)

~~~
dorchadas
> it would basically split the learning across 2 years instead of 1, so
> hopefully it wouldn't require additional time. spend half the time each
> year; test rudimentary knowledge the 1st year, mastery in the 2nd year.

Hmm, that could be interesting, especially if the mastery is tested in the
_second_ half of the year. That would allow you to do the concepts you learned
in the first half and bring those into the stuff you learned the previous
year...But it could also be a huge gap between actually learning the concepts
and then putting them to use teaching someone else. Maybe have it alternating
years, where, say, freshmen are teaching 8th graders the first half, then
being taught the second half. And that class keeps their schedule of first
half teaching, second half being taught as they progress, with the year before
and after having the opposite one.

> but if necessary, maybe performing arts could be pushed to non-profits to
> administer outside of school (as is often the case already).

The issue with this is that many would never get exposure to them, then. And
people need exposure to it (we need to be well-rounded, basically; STEM people
need more humanities and humanities people need more STEM). Plus, with people
pushing other extra curriculurs (sports!) that take up a lot of school time,
it's hard to see many choosing these.

Like, my hometown has an art guild, but few students do anything with it,
sadly. It's quite a neat place. But they do a lot during school, and I'd hate
to deprive that chance for those who are interested (and good). For some kids,
it might be what keeps them coming to school and encourages them. Who knows?
Plus, this would hurt rural areas quite a lot. But, I think the half-year plan
mentioned above makes this point moot.

>and i'd suspect final year students would help teach each other in electives.
maybe get freshmen from college majoring in the subject. in college, teaching
assistants are often only a couple years ahead of you anyway.

That'd be an option...if you lived near a university.

------
Upvoter33
"Witness the difference between the ease with which we learned our first
language without having it taught to us" \- this is so much b.s. and ignores
the fact you usually have at least one or two _very_ dedicated teachers who
help you out with language a lot - parents. I really don't like when people
pick on education from a distance - such an easy target, but such a hard
problem to "solve" in the broadest sense.

~~~
abecedarius
Things like
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creole_language](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creole_language)
and children of immigrants often not learning their parents' language well
make me skeptical of the importance you're assigning to parents as teachers.

~~~
UncleEntity
There's many a motivation for a parent not teaching their native language to
their children -- my step-father's parents didn't teach their kids Spanish
because they didn't want them to have an accent (and also got beaten as
children for speaking Spanish in school as that was the '30s rural New Mexico
way).

------
kimar
I didn't know that website but it seems to have lots of interesting content.

On a related note, Thinking in Systems: A Primer by Donella H. Meadows is one
of my favorite books.

~~~
wenc
To build on this discussion, what are some highlights in that book that you
found useful?

I ask because I've read some systems thinking books (e.g. Systemantics) that
were difficult to apply in real life. I come from the perspective of someone
with a systems/theory builder personality. The only systems thinking book that
I found remotely practical was The Fifth Discipline by Peter Senge.

The most useful piece of short writing on systems thinking that I've come
across is "How Complex Systems Fail" [1, 2], which talks about designing
systems for resiliency, and not for rigid notions of reliability.

[1] "How Complex Systems Fail"
[https://web.mit.edu/2.75/resources/random/How%20Complex%20Sy...](https://web.mit.edu/2.75/resources/random/How%20Complex%20Systems%20Fail.pdf)

[2] Its accompanying O'Reilly conference talk
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2S0k12uZR14](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2S0k12uZR14)

~~~
chubot
I read both Systemantics and Thinking in Systems.

I agree that both of them were not very rigorous, e.g. in terms of making
predictions or presenting falsifiable claims. But I enjoyed parts of both.

From Thinking in Systems, I got 2 main things out of it:

\- Many systems can be modelled in terms of resources and flows.

\- If you want to affect a system, find the leverage points.

But both claims could have been justified more. It feels like the author
states them as a given.

Specifically, she doesn't talk much about modelling error. OK, so I came up
with a set of resources and flows to model a system. How do I know if it's
good? Will it work in some cases and wildly mispredict in others?

I think they just did computer simulations? How did you check it against the
real world? I think that was entirely missing from the book. I'd be happy for
a correction.

Overall, the book felt like it was incomplete (which is not surprising, given
the back story of its publication).

I think I read this book because Bill Gates recommended it. I can understand
why he would have liked it. I'm not sure there is much that's actionable for a
programmer or software designer, though.

I'd be interested in other takes on it too. Did I miss something? I also
wonder why it's so highly thought of. I think it does have a unique point of
view, and raises interesting questions, but it also made me wonder if that
view is _true_! It's perhaps too vague to be true or false.

\----

I enjoyed Systemantics, to a point. The negative view of systems tends to be
the more accurate one in my experience ;-)

------
simulate
This article was published around 1999. Russel Ackoff mentions he is 80 in the
article and he died in 2009 at the age of 90. The Systems Thinker started in
the 1980s and discontinued publication in 2013.
[https://thesystemsthinker.com/about/](https://thesystemsthinker.com/about/)

------
excalibur
> The perceived need to learn something new is inversely proportional to the
> rank of a manager. Those at the top feel obliged to pretend to omniscience,
> and therefore refuse to learn anything new even if the cost of doing so is
> success.

Wonder what happens when a manager spends his career perched atop a giant
tower with his name on it.

~~~
aklemm
That's a guy who'll have one of the best brains.

~~~
dwd
A stable genius in his own words.

------
an-allen
I find the hierarchy of “mental content” to be kind of confusing.

He posits “the hierarchy of mental content, which, in order of increasing
value, are: data, information, knowledge, understanding, and wisdom.”

Coming from a Shannon-centric view of the world - can someone explain the
data/information distinction for me?

~~~
PurpleRamen
Information is data with a meaning.

Like a series of bits is just data, but by decoding and interpretating them
they can become useable information, a number or a string.

~~~
no_identd
> Information is data with a meaning.

Of course, we can turns this on its head:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Marshall_McLuhan](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Marshall_McLuhan)

Or rather, like a certain German philosopher did with another certain German
philosopher, turn it from standing on its head to standing on its feet.

------
kungfuscious
The listserver at the bottom of the article (k-12sd@sysdyn.mit.edu) doesn't
seem to work. Does anyone have the correct address, or is it an MIT only
thing?

------
davebryand
This is a great example of Spiral Dynamics Stage Yellow.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w0d1TsOcbQs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w0d1TsOcbQs)

~~~
codemac
Any other references to what you're referring other than a very long video? I
don't know this Actualized.org group at all or the person talking, and
clicking on the forum lead to even more confusion.

~~~
davebryand
Yes, sorry, that was a pretty lazy post :) The most exciting thing about Stage
Yellow is that it's the first stage of Tier 2, which means beings at this
stage can see that there are levels before it.

More details[1]

 _What is the essence of the Yellow value system?_

Core Values: Systemic, integral, emergent

Paradigm: Synergy “ I am learning.”

World View: The world is a complex, self-organizing, natural system that
requires integral solutions.

Life Motto: “I manifest myself, but not at the cost of others.”

Life Theme: Effective action to support the whole.

Life Philosophy:

I am searching for freedom and embrace (integral) space and complexity.

 _What is the origin of the Yellow value system?_

Period: 50 years ago

Geographical Location: The Western World

Founders: Systems thinking and holists such as, for example, Einstein, Bohm,
Wilber and Graves.

In reaction to: At a given point, the Green value system may cause frustration
because complex problems that humanity is confronted with cannot solely be
solved by consensus and a people-focused way of thinking and living. Moreover,
the Green group process takes a lot of time and energy, which can be used in
more useful ways. The need to take oneself and the world to the next level
causes people to break out of the group and to offer their unique contribution
to the world in a complete independent and free way. This is done by combining
different existing ideas, theories and models and distilling new connections
from them. The world is now seen as an integral whole, in which the value of
all value systems is acknowledged. However, some values and manifestations are
more suitable and appropriate than others. There’s a freedom from fear, from
nature, from the boss, and from others, as one simply does what one needs to
do. There’s a new consciousness emerging, which sees life just as life, and
that life is an integral part of a big and vast universe in which humans just
play a small role.

 _How do you recognize the presence of Yellow?_

Yellow is recognized by the large amount of ideas, connections and complexity
that it introduces. Yellow’s starting point is an overarching vision about a
system (on an individual, group, organizational, national, planetary and/or
cosmic level) and then determines what the system needs to grow and blossom.
In order to do so, Yellow will pass by personal and purely human-orientated
interests. Yellow is also characterized by an enormous drive and focus (Yellow
knows exactly in which direction it wants to move). Yellow has the ability to
look far into the future and, at the same time, keep things close at home and
integrate the past. Yellow often has visionary and revolutionary ideas about
the future.

 _How do you recognize the absence of Yellow?_

There is a lack of focus from a broader perspective. There is no overview or
vision about the future. The skill to look at a problem from different angles
is lacking. People are “afraid” of chaos and turbulence. Energy does not
“flow” and structures and processes exist primarily to keep things as they
are. There is not a lot of vision and the issues of the day take up all the
energy.

 _What are the general characteristics of the Yellow value system?_

* Overarching view of living systems * View life as a chaotic organism in which change is a constant and in which insecurity is an acceptable way of living * Integrative structures and evolutionary streams * The need to develop natural living environments that support human evolution in a step-by-step and phased way * Integration of head, heart and gut feeling * Focused on both process and content * Moves freely in different value systems * Change is a constant: it’s emergent and about long-term thinking * “Acupunctural interventions”; small actions with a big impact * Personal freedom without harming others or nature * Thinks and acts from an inner-directed core

 _Sayings_

* We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them * Imagination is more important than knowledge * There are no facts, only interpretations * Wisdom is knowing what you do not know * Good wine needs no bush * Do right and fear no one * Turn your hand to anything * The darkest hour is before the dawn * If someone strikes gold, everyone will know

[1]
[http://spiraldynamicsintegral.nl/en/yellow/](http://spiraldynamicsintegral.nl/en/yellow/)

