5 ms·
I don't often come across a blog post that long that keeps me interested until the end. It's description of systems reminds me a lot of what I've read about cyb
by PinkMilkshake 5y ago
I don't often come across a blog post that long that keeps me interested until the end. It's description of systems reminds me a lot of what I've read about cybernetics. I'd love to know what someone who has studied the topic thinks about the way it's explained.
That said, I feel like a few word games had to be played in order to reach it's conclusion; Especially with what I perceive as a somewhat conflated use of the word "purpose".
Perhaps I have to read it through again to make sure I properly understand it.
- beaconstudios 5y agoCybernetics and systems theory are both about the same thing, which is to say nonlinear causality, so you're right to observe a similarity. The difference is primarily that cybernetics focuses on the ground up modelling (often mathematically) of casual loops whereas systems theory (and systems thinking) typically focuses on the behaviour of the system as a whole and its teleological (in this article, called purposive) behaviour, as well as things like stable states (called attractors in the literature). To use a software analogy, they're like white box and black box analysis respectively.