System Dynamics Sounds Awesome

(ooo, first blog post from my new laptop)

so I was reading about system dynamics. this is a talk Professor Jay Forrester gave in Spain in 1998.

Early in the development of system dynamics, we discovered surprising
things about corporations that apply to all social systems:
· first, most difficulties arise from internal causes, although people usually blame
troubles on outside forces.
· second, actions that people take, usually in the belief that the actions are a
solution to difficulties, are often the cause of the problems being experienced,
· third, the very nature of the dynamic feedback structure of a social system tends
to mislead people into taking ineffective and even counterproductive action,
· fourth, people have enough information about a system to permit successful
modeling.

wow that sounds awesome. i am strongly considering going back to school to study this. here is another awesome except which is exactly how I feel about laws and policy-making! it is exactly why while i'm interested in policy, i feel hesitant about diving into that field.

People may dislike the idea of "designing" social systems. Designing social
systems may seem mechanistic or authoritarian. However, all social systems have
been designed. Corporate policies, computer systems, organization charts, and laws
constitute partial designs of social systems. Governments pass laws after superficial
debate. Laws redesign political and economic systems. Such redesigns are
experiments using a country as a laboratory. The experiments include no dynamic
modeling of the long-term effects. Changes in corporate policies receive even less
analysis. For example, the recent wave of corporate mergers and the reduction of
trade barriers constitute a major redesign of the world economy without adequate
consideration for the results. People have designed the systems within which they
live. The shortcomings of those systems result from defective design, just as the
shortcomings of a power plant result from erroneous design.