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Coming from an economics background, every presentation I've seen of "systems thinking" (admittedly, not a large number) makes it look ill-defined, incomplete,

Coming from an economics background, every presentation I've seen of "systems thinking" (admittedly, not a large number) makes it look ill-defined, incomplete, and obvious.

projektfu 5y ago
The basics are feedback and a holistic POV. From there anything can be said. But if your strategy doesn't incorporate feedback, it is not a systemic strategy.
- BoiledCabbage 5y ago
  I think his point is that "applying systems thinking" in many cases when at least shared casually like this post, frequently seems like some hand-wave that is extremely porous in its reasoning. Ie that was a whole lot of formality to deduce and say "other people will gang up on you if you're seen as too strong". Honestly I'd love to see an example of systems thinking that provides a unique insight that someone wouldn't have otherwise come up with by looking at a problem from more than 2 mins. An approach for thinking only provides value if it produces something different and better than what an alternate approach would have come up with. Every instance of support for systems thinking has either been used as a justification for an otherwise trivial result, or has been a version of the argument of "this person I look up to uses it therfore it's good". Can noone find an example where it actually demonstrates value?
jameshart 5y ago
There’s certainly a big hand wave here between describing Risk in terms of stocks and flows, and the strategies that he then goes in to propose. Honestly the systems thinking analysis here is weak in that at no point does he characterize the opponents or their armies and countries as part of the system - where he actually then relies on their behavior as a component of strategy (getting them to fight among themselves, for example). There’s discussion of how the strategy manages ‘opponent fear’, but he hasn’t explained that as a stock.
viburnum 5y ago
Are you kidding? My economics background taught me to assume away all the relevant facts and content myself with toy models of perfect competition.
- Jeff_Brown 5y ago
  The most relevant economic model for this context would be Nash equilibrium.
beaconstudios 5y ago
If you want a more rigorous view of systems theory then you'll want to look into the mathematical side of cybernetics, chaos theory and nonlinear dynamics. Systems thinking is more of an approach than a rigourous discipline in the same way that reductionism is ("break a problem down into its constituent parts and solve them"), but it is backed by both rigourous disciplines and philosophy.

Coming from an economics background, every presentation I've seen of "systems thinking" (admittedly, not a large number) makes it look ill-defined, incomplete, and obvious.

projektfu 5y ago

The basics are feedback and a holistic POV. From there anything can be said. But if your strategy doesn't incorporate feedback, it is not a systemic strategy.

BoiledCabbage 5y ago
I think his point is that "applying systems thinking" in many cases when at least shared casually like this post, frequently seems like some hand-wave that is extremely porous in its reasoning. Ie that was a whole lot of formality to deduce and say "other people will gang up on you if you're seen as too strong". Honestly I'd love to see an example of systems thinking that provides a unique insight that someone wouldn't have otherwise come up with by looking at a problem from more than 2 mins. An approach for thinking only provides value if it produces something different and better than what an alternate approach would have come up with. Every instance of support for systems thinking has either been used as a justification for an otherwise trivial result, or has been a version of the argument of "this person I look up to uses it therfore it's good". Can noone find an example where it actually demonstrates value?

jameshart 5y ago

There’s certainly a big hand wave here between describing Risk in terms of stocks and flows, and the strategies that he then goes in to propose. Honestly the systems thinking analysis here is weak in that at no point does he characterize the opponents or their armies and countries as part of the system - where he actually then relies on their behavior as a component of strategy (getting them to fight among themselves, for example). There’s discussion of how the strategy manages ‘opponent fear’, but he hasn’t explained that as a stock.

viburnum 5y ago

Are you kidding? My economics background taught me to assume away all the relevant facts and content myself with toy models of perfect competition.

Jeff_Brown 5y ago
The most relevant economic model for this context would be Nash equilibrium.

beaconstudios 5y ago

If you want a more rigorous view of systems theory then you'll want to look into the mathematical side of cybernetics, chaos theory and nonlinear dynamics. Systems thinking is more of an approach than a rigourous discipline in the same way that reductionism is ("break a problem down into its constituent parts and solve them"), but it is backed by both rigourous disciplines and philosophy.