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This is a fair criticism. I think, if I had stopped at "hey look, Will Larson's model in this post wasn't realistic, this proves there's a bunch of people out

This is a fair criticism. I think, if I had stopped at "hey look, Will Larson's model in this post wasn't realistic, this proves there's a bunch of people out there being mystical about system dynamics", this would certainly be a straw man -- but my argument went further. It's "hey look, Will Larson's model in this post wasn't realistic -- in fact, it's impossible to use stock and flow modeling to tell a realistic story about this subject matter, yet nevertheless here is system dynamics being peddled as useful in basically all contexts as a fundamental skill of leadership" which is not a straw man.

wpietri 4y ago
It seems to me that it's impossible to tell any realistic story. The point of stories is abstraction such that we can see something non-obvious. "All models are wrong, some models are useful." So to me the appropriate use of SD models is not "perfectly model the vastness we are confronted with", but "find a model we can use for a while to get insights that we can use to try out possible improvements". Stock-and-flow models can indeed do that with software development sometimes. If people are saying that X is the One True Way to Think, yeah, that'd be wrong no matter the X. But from what you wrote, I'm not seeing that.