Tag Archives: system thinking

The Tyranny of Small Decisions

I have thought about this concept on my own, but didn’t know about the work of Alfred Kahn. Basically, the idea is that many small daily decisions made at inappropriately low levels within an organization can lead to drift from the organizations mission or goals, and ultimately undesirable outcomes or even failure. All these individual decisions can seem rational and well-intentioned to the people making them.

This all makes sense to me, and I have seen it play out in organizations. I do think it is a strong argument for planning. Organizations that don’t have appropriate decision making processes in place are going to fail. For even for organizations that do, the people making the decisions need to understand the goals and mission of the organization, and the larger systems that organization is embedded in. That means you need a plan, and the plan needs to be periodically reviewed and communicated so that it stays in the forefront of peoples’ minds. And there needs to be a process for continuity of the plan when the people involved inevitably change over time. I don’t think embedding the plan only at the highest level of management works very well – it needs to be embedded at all levels of the organization, particularly mid-level management but even the rank and file, in my view.

reading list on ecology

This blog post from Geekcologist has a fantastic set of links to classic essays and more recent blog posts on ecological topics. As an amateur (albeit an amateur who just spent 3.5 years thinking about the intersection of ecology and engineering and myself wrote about 250 pages on the topic) who cares about the natural world I think it is critically important to try to understand and grapple with these ideas. Because by and large it is not decisions made by ecologists that are determining the fate of our ecosystems. It is the decisions of politicians, bureaucrats, engineers, architects, planners, and businesspeople of all stripes. Even if we have morals that might cause us to make better ecological choices, we don’t know very much about ecology, and we just aren’t thinking about this every day. Meanwhile, if I were going to criticize ecologists I would say they are just arguing with each other in an echo chamber and not getting through to the rest of society. Or, they are probably getting through to us in elementary school, and then the vast majority forget what we learned in elementary school when we turn into serious and cynical grownups. Anyway, a person could spend a lot of time drilling into the links in this one post. Maybe I will try to do some follow up posts on a handful of them.

what, exactly, is momentum?

This is a physics topic – maybe not of interest to many, but of interest to me as I happen to be taking (suffering through?) a hydraulics course at the moment. Like energy, we kind of intuitively know what momentum is, but we have a hard time describing it satisfactorily in words. Apparently, there are philosophers of science that spend entire careers examining words used by others (like Isaac Newton) to try to describe it. Once upon a time, a philosopher and a scientist were the same thing, in fact.

Momentum is about force. It is a thing that does not change unless “external forces” are imposed on a system. In fluid mechanics, there is an imaginary thing called a “control volume” which obeys this law. You can do calculations on this, and then you can go into a laboratory where you have a pump and a glass channel (picture a long aquarium) with very low friction, and show that your math matches what happens in the real world. There can be “internal forces” in the fluid which allow energy to change (well, change from energy embodied in pressure – potential energy – and/or velocity – kinetic energy – to heat, which then just drifts off into the air. But the momentum does not change because there are no external forces (ignoring the friction of that slippery, slippery glass.

Momentum is a function of mass and velocity, we learn in high school. Force, we learn in high school, is the product of mass and acceleration, and acceleration is a change in velocity over time. So there – did I explain it to myself? Not quite, but that at least helped me to think it through.

Even if ChatGPT could produce a more coherent version of what I wrote above (which is possible), that would not have helped me think this through and incorporate more of the real world into my mental model of how the real world works. Because thinking and writing go together. So I am not going to give up writing any time soon. Even if nobody read my writing here (and if you did, I apologize), it helped me to write this down. I will skim over this later at some point using some rough version of “spaced repetition”, and that will also help my feeble human brain to incorporate this knowledge into my mental model.

Talking can also sometimes help upgrade our mental models, although most talking is useless. For example, I was discussing momentum with my professor recently in the mens room. So ladies, if you were wondering what men talk about in the mens room, now you know, or at least now you know what two random men were discussing in one random mens room on one random day. And yes, we know you complain about us in the ladies’ room, and that complaining about men is an important part of female bonding that really doesn’t have much to do with us. And this is okay.

August 2023 in Review

Most frightening and/or depressing story: Immigration pressure and anti-immigration politics are already a problem in the U.S. and Europe, and climate change is going to make it worse. The 2023 WEF Global Risks Report agrees that “large scale involuntary migration” is going to be up there as an issue. We should not be angry at immigrants, we should be angry at Exxon and the rest of the energy industry, which made an intentional choice not only to directly cause all this but to prevent governments from even understanding the problem let alone doing anything to solve it. We should be very, very angry! Are there any talented politicians out there who know how to stoke anger and channel it for positive change, or is it just the evil genocidal impulses you know how to stoke?

Most hopeful story: Peak natural gas demand could happen by 2030, with the shift being to nuclear and renewables.

Most interesting story, that was not particularly frightening or hopeful, or perhaps was a mixture of both: There are a number of theories on why “western elites” have not been (perceived to be) effective in responding to crises in recent years and decades. Many have to do with institutional power dynamics, where the incentives of the individual to gain power within the institution do not align with the stated goals of the institution. Like for example, not killing everyone. The possible silver lining would be that better institutions could be designed where incentives aligned. I have an alternate, or possibly complementary, theory that there has been a decline in system thinking and moral thinking. Our leaders aren’t educated to see the systems and or think enough about whether their decisions are on the side of right or wrong.

are “western elites” “irrational”?

This long article on Naked Capitalism claims the leadership of western countries is not effective in a crisis, and I think there may be something to this. The Covid non-response and some recent bungled natural disaster responses from New Orleans to Puerto Rico to Hawaii come to mind. This article focuses more on Ukraine, and while that situation is certainly unsatisfactory, it is hard to see what the good options would have been. The U.S. choices (NATO expansion, Balkan War, CIA interference with foreign elections) you can point to as questionable were all made years or decades ago, when this author presumably thinks leadership was better.

I certainly share the sense that our political leadership today is not particularly confidence-inspiring. So why is this? The author gives a few possibilities [my thoughts in brackets]:

  • the rich and powerful are out of touch with ordinary people [nothing new here]
  • stormtrooper syndrome – assuming you are the good guys, your opponents or competitors are the bad guys, and the bad guys can’t win [but this was certainly the case during the Cold War and the public loved it!]
  • a “conspiracy of degenerates” – this would have to be hidden from public view
  • right-wing demagogues promoting conspiracy theories and offering a simple message as an alternative that appeals to the public [certainly happening, and this is the good old Hitler playbook we have to watch out for]
  • Iron Law of Oligarchies – any organization is controlled by a small number of powerful individuals whose top priority is increasing their own power, rather than the success of the organization
  • crabs in a bucket – one crab can escape a bucket, but supposedly two or more crabs will stop each other from escaping, the implication being that relative rank is important to us animals – if I can’t succeed at everyone else’s expense, I will make sure nobody can succeed
  • the “Mowshowitz theory” – a variation on the above where power seeking behavior is rewarded within organizations rather than alignment with the stated goals of the organization, and in fact furthering the goals of the organization without seeking power can be punished
  • “intra-elite signaling dynamics” – the power of ritual to signal acceptance of a particular belief system, and the more bizarre the better [exactly what these rituals are I had trouble following]

I have had my own theories for awhile, and they have to do with education. I do not think children are being educated well in basic logic and being able to spot logical fallacies. This makes us susceptible to propaganda. They are not being educated well in the behavior of complex, dynamic systems. They are learning plenty of math and science, but it results in short-term and literal thinking rather than longer-term and abstract thinking. And finally, I don’t think children are being challenged to think morally. I’m just talking about the habit of asking yourself before you make a small daily decision whether you think on balance the consequences are on the side of right or wrong, justice or injustice.

Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal

Edward de Bono and creativity

Edward de Bono is a popular author on the subject of creative and original thinking. This long article is highly critical of him, suggesting that his ideas on creativity and originality are not all that creative or original. It never actually says his ideas are bad, just that he derived bits and pieces of them from the scientific literature without giving credit to the people who actually thought them up.

In the course of criticizing him, the article does a good job of summarizing his ideas.

The Use of Lateral Thinking is a short book with a long reach. Providing no more than a few slight examples of how lateral thinking might work in practice – largely on the perception of shape and function in geometric forms – it proposed four vague principles for problem-solving and creativity: the recognition of dominant polarising ideas; the search for different ways of looking at things; a relaxation of the rigid control of vertical thinking; and the use of chance.

Aeon

It sounds like decent advice to me. First, you need to learn the rules (i.e., traditional way of thinking about or doing something) before you earn the right to break them. Otherwise you run the risk of reinventing the wheel or coming up with something at odds with indisputable evidence or logic you just weren’t familiar with. Now, you have earned the right to look at the issue from a variety of angles and talk to people across disciplines that might not usually talk to each other. Finally, exposing yourself to a wide variety of information and experiences, and taking time to reflect on them alone and with others, will open your mind to new connections and possibilities.

The article goes on to survey the literature on the subject of creative thinking, which de Bono may have partially drawn on. This includes:

  • a variety of eccentric and famous figures who seem to have been good at letting their minds wander and coming up with interesting things
  • Henri Poncare’s idea of training the mind on a problem, then lettin insights slowly build while we are doing unrelated mindless tasks
  • the Einstellung effect, where people fail to solve a problem because it resembles another problem they know how to solve, but that solution doesn’t work (maybe this contradicts my idea of “learn the rules before you break them”? but I don’t know, maybe it just means that breaking out of the mold takes conscious effort)
  • Gestalt psychology’s idea of “productive thinking”, which emphasized looking at a problem from different angles
  • J.P. Guilford’s idea of “divergent thinking”, characterized by people with “the ability to produce a great number of ideas or problem solutions in a short period of time; to simultaneously propose a variety of approaches to a specific problem; to produce original ideas; and to organise the details of an idea in one’s head and carry it out.” (this sounds like brainstorming to me, other than organizing the ideas at the end, which is the logical next step after any productive brainstorming session)
  • and what do you know, brainstorming. The term was coined by Alex Osborn, who favored groups of 5-10 people thinking together on the same problem, sometimes aided by randomly selected words.
  • More recent research emphasizing the value of individuals brainstorming independently, then combining and organizing ideas through “the productive spark of debate, friction and constructive conflict”. You have to keep it friendly to be productive, in my personal experience.
  • Arthur Koestler, who apparently surveyed many of the topics above in the 1960s and also emphasized the creative role of humor.

So, I’ll attempt to synthesize all this and combine it unscientifically with my personal experiences.

  1. Define the problem you are trying to solve or the question you are trying to answer. Writing it down helps me. Then, “give yourself permission” to think about it gradually over a period of time. Also give yourself permission not to think about it – don’t force it.
  2. Do lots of reading, listening, and thinking, both related and unrelated, fiction and non-fiction. Garden, take walks in nature, listen to or make music, exercise, meditate, and even consider responsible, moderate use of recreational substances. (But consider the cautionary tale of Sherlock Holmes, who could only turn his creative brain off with music and cocaine – Arthur Conan Doyle must have been like that or known somebody like that.)
  3. Keep a notebook (or the electronic equivalent) handy to write down anything related that pops in your head. Review these notes occasionally.
  4. Keep going until you have lots and lots of ideas, then slowly let them gel in your mind. Then start organizing them in writing (or drawing, or whatever makes sense).
  5. Then consider discussing your ideas with other people who have ideas and like to discuss them peacefully. I find it hard to find people like this.

Now you might arrive at a creative idea or solution to a problem or two. It’s hard work and there are no guarantees which means it is not always a good match for billable hours, which could be why you don’t see more of it in the professional ranks. Put another way, your creativity idea will not necessarily make you rich, and it might even make somebody else rich, in which case you may have a case of the sour grapes. Good luck!

coronavirus stats by metro area and normalized for population

I like this City Observatory approach to coronavirus stats. They are reporting numbers by metropolitan statistical area and normalizing them per 100,000 population. They are also reporting the rate at which cases are growing in each metropolitan area. They are using static tables and graphs but I think these provide much better information than the fancy maps and dashboards I have seen. The fancy maps and dashboards are updated more often – the ideal approach would blend all this together. As long as I am making a wish list, it would be nice to see the number of people hospitalized in each metro over time. That is the number we are looking for – the stock of available beds to first reappear as a positive number, then start to grow. When that happens I think we will start to see more public and political pressure to get people back to work. I expect high risk people to have to hide in their homes for quite some time after that, which is sad but I think that is the balance our society is likely to strike. If there comes a point later in the year where that stock of available hospital capacity starts to shrink or disappear in a given metro, that is when we might see shorter, more geographically targeted social distancing orders come and go.

more epidemic simulations

Okay, the current pandemic is not a game and not fun, people are suffering and I certainly don’t want to make light of it. But maybe we can at least learn something about systems, such as positive and negative feedback loops, S-shaped curves, and time delays. Netlogo has a few agent-based virus simulations to play with. The MIT system dynamics people put together a whole lesson on simulation of an epidemic as a teaching tool. (This is part of their “road maps” series, which you can find here. Just be warned that many of the hyperlinks don’t work, but if you cut and paste the names of the documents into a search engine, you can usually find them.)

And of course, there is the old flash game Pandemic 2, which is kind of fun in ordinary times but seems a little crass to play now, or at least to admit that you’re playing it. (Your goal is to kill everybody in the world, for example by making them vomit blood from their eyes…) On the other hand, Flash seems like it is on the way out so if you want to try this game it may be best to try it soon. And those of you stuck at home without multiple small children to entertain (not a category that includes me!) might have the time right now.

September 2019 in Review

Most frightening and/or depressing story: Most hopeful story:
  • I think Elizabeth Warren has a shot at becoming the U.S. President, and of the candidates she and Bernie Sanders understand the climate change problem best. This could be a plus for the world. I suggested an emergency plan for the U.S. to deal with climate change: Focus on disaster preparedness and disaster response capabilities, the long term reliability and stability of the food system, and tackle our systemic corruption problems. I forgot to mention coming up with a plan to save our coastal cities, or possibly save most of them while abandoning portions of some of them in a gradual, orderly fashion. By the way, we should reduce carbon emissions and move to clean energy, but these are more doing our part to try to make sure the planet is habitable a century from now, while the other measures I am suggesting are true emergency measures that have to start now if we are going to get through the next few decades.
Most interesting story, that was not particularly frightening or hopeful, or perhaps was a mixture of both:
  • I mentioned an article by a Marine special operator (I didn’t even know those existed) on how to fix a broken organizational culture: acknowledge the problem, employ trusted agents, rein in cultural power brokers, win the population.

youcubed

This site is all about fresh ideas for teaching high school math. Apparently a lot of people agree that the traditional U.S. approach of algebra 1, geometry, algebra 2, and calculus is not working. A lot of people seem to think data science is the answer. It sounds okay to me to start with interesting data and then work backward to math theory and systems concepts. I do use geometry pretty much daily in my work, at least concepts like areas and volumes. Are those geometry? I think I originally learned them in high school chemistry class. I almost never use calculus symbols, but I use calculus concepts like rate of change and accumulating and depleting stocks daily. I solve those numerically rather than symbolically. So maybe this is what we should be teaching in high school, then working our way to the symbols for people who really need it, for example the ones who are going to be programming the computers that the rest of us use to solve various problems. A little statistics and probability is a good idea, but even that can be more experiment based and less symbolic at first.