Comment by beaconstudios | Hacker News Reader

Comment by beaconstudios | Hacker News Reader

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While systems thinking did grow out of cybernetics (also Bertalanffy's general systems theory), both fields have diverged from control - cybernetics to epistemology, and systems thinking to influencing complex systems through leverage points (see https://donellameadows.org/archives/dancing-with-systems/ and https://donellameadows.org/archives/leverage-points-places-t...).

Cybernetics originated in engineering and mathematics so it makes sense that it would be concerned with control as we tend to explicitly limit and constrain complexity in order to control and predict our systems - ML being the first notable counter-example. Systems theory started out in biology and ecosystems so AFAIK it never held that complex systems could be either fully known (total knowledge of the state), or truly controlled.

Daniel Schmachtenberger is also working in the field of sensemaking so his talks and writing may be of interest to you - https://civilizationemerging.com/about/ (& lots of talks on YouTube).

I linked to the same article! Isn't a leverage point an attempt to control a system?

Thanks for the additional info! Interesting to hear. I will check out Daniel Schmachtenberger.

Sorry, so you did! I'm on mobile so links are truncated, my bad.

I think there's a subtle distinction between control and influence - control is trying to get to a specific end goal, and influence is trying to improve on the current state incrementally. Giving up control is accepting that no matter how much you want it to, you can't make a river flow uphill; not all system states are stable and viable, you need to find an attractor state (and an incremental path to get there) that is desirable. This inherently involves experimentation and iteration - creating a hypothetical model of the system, attempting an intervention, seeing if your hypothesis held up and the new state is what you expected. It's an interactive approach to change rather than one you can declare by authority alone.

In my work in systems change, we look for leverage points and other systems features in order to design strategies for change. (e.g., https://designdialogues.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/Syste...)

You can't control complex systems—heck, you can barely dance with them!—but still, we must find ways of working with them as effectively as possible. This is the only way we'll make real progress on the wicked problems of our time.

Absolutely - the reason to confront systems problems is precisely because reductive approaches don't work; the alternative is to do nothing, or be surprised by unintended consequences when you try to apply a reductive approach.

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