Notes on Reading System Thinking by Donella Meadows Part 1
System consists of: Elements, Interconnections, a function or purpose.
- I probably give an exercise for myself here to identifies the system according to this term around myself.
- Key notes to think about when looking at stuff around: How to know whether you are looking at a system or just a bunch
of stuff:
A) Can you identify parts? . . . and
B) Do the parts affect each other? . . . and
C) Do the parts together produce an effect that is different from the effect of each part on its own? . . . and
perhaps
D) Does the effect, the behavior over time, persist in a
variety of circumstances?
- Be careful about getting into details, you can find endless elements and may lose sights to the system. As the saying goes, you can’t see the forest for the trees.
You think that because you understand “one” that you must therefore understand “two” because one and one make two. But you
forget that you must also understand “and.”
—Sufi teaching story
Can be hard to identifies functions or purposes, oberving the systems for a little longer can help
Remember that purposes can be found from the behavior not from the rhetoric or stated goals. Like the government can claim to care about environmental issues but doesn’t really add funding to theses tactics. We can say that environmental issues probably not the purposes of the government.
-Changing switching elements are not making that much drastics changes. It won’t improve anything much. like you can change the players, but it’s still the same football game, so it’s not that much changing.
- Change in interconnections and function/purpose can cause drastic changes.
- Ok so interconnections are more like commons rule of how each elements talk and act together, to create the purpose/final fucntion of the system.
- There’s also limit to how much changing top leader can affects smaller elements too... like if population is already too stables.
- Stock is like a storage of the elements, which are transport and move by the flow.
- Stock and flow can be easily understand, sum of inflows more than outflows, the system going up, less, then goes down, equal so system become equilibrium
- People somehow focus more on the stocks, which is the elements of the system, as for sure, they are quite visible. On top of that, people also focus more on the inflows than managing the outflows as well. Just like when we want to save money, we more focus on making more income, but at the same time, we can reduce our spending too as an example.
- We have to understand that the flows need to take time to flow too. We can adjust the inflow or outflow; the faucets and the drain, anyway, the level of water need to take gradual time to change too. This is kinda similar to a more “trust the process” approach...
- System thinkers see the world as feedback process. Just how the stocks and flows can affect so many factors within itself? As if the system is running itself
- ANother example of Stock and flow: Money is the stock, Obviously the ammount of money you have, and your bank account is the flow, as it controls how much money need to spend in and out.
- Feedback loop is like you receive bank statement from the bank. You have certain amount of stock money in the bank. Ok, you feel like you want to make more money, so you have more “stock” money. Once you work more, you make more money, then once you have more money, you then decrease your work rate.
- Feedback loop can run in two direction, to correct oversupply, and undersupply
- Balancing feedback loop is like an action that long-term stabilizing the system. Once drinking coffee, it is just a short term stimulant. Once energy is peaked, it will then go down and causes drowsiness as an example. You may soon go to the coffee pot and drink more, OR you will reach the moments where you are telling yourself to sleep and get a real recharge.
- Balancing feedback loop can be called a goal-seeking loop. They usually has faster turning rate at first and will gradually slowing donw once they are closer to the equilibrium.
- We can say the feedbacks are the interconnections in the anatomy of system.
- Reinforcing Feedback Loop is the type of feedback that keep increasing the intake of the flow.
- Growth is mostly exponential, the more you put, the more you gain.
- Decisions made without feedback loop is the thinking regardless of goals or planning within the stocks or ammount of elements?
- If A causes B, is it possible for B to cause A as well? ? You will change the way to think instead of who to blame, but what is the system.....
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