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UCSB ENVS 106 - Lecture 13 Thinking in Systems Chapter 7 and Paper stuff_POST

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Slide 1Chapter 7: Living in a World of SystemsSlide 3Slide 4Slide 5Slide 6Get the Beat of the SystemSlide 8Expose your Mental Models to the Light of DayHonor, Respect, and Distribute InformationSystems LanguageOther Systems IdeasOther Systems IdeasPaper 2: Stocks of Interest in the ArticlesStock: Atmospheric MoistureStock: Atmospheric MoistureSlide 17Slide 18Ozark grasslands experience major increase in trees and shrubsWeek Tuesday Thursday026 Sep 28 Sep Intro to Course13 Oct 5 OctMerchants of Doubt Merchants of Doubt210 Oct 12 OctMerchants of Doubt Merchants of Doubt317 Oct 20 OctMerchants of Doubt Merchants of Doubt424 Oct 26 OctThinking in Systems Thinking in Systems531 Oct 2 NovThinking in Systems Thinking in Systems67 Nov 9 NovThinking in Systems Thinking in Systems714 Nov 16 NovClimate Psychology Climate Psychology821 Nov 23 NovClimate Action Thanksgiving928 Nov 30 NovClimate Action Framing105 Dec 7 DecWords that Work Review for Final ExamES 106 Tentative ScheduleLearn how people have been misled on environmental issues, who some major players are, and what tactics have been (and continue to be) used to distort the science behind environmental issuesDevelop systems thinking insights and methods into analysis of environmental problems and solutions, incorporating concepts such as dynamic equilibrium, feedback, oscillation, and resilienceCognition and the EnvironmentUnderstand how humans process environmental information. Learn to effectively communicate environmental problems and implement solutions. Study the psychological mechanisms and methods that underlie environmental skepticism/denial, particularly on climate change.Paper 1 DUEPaper 1 DUEPaper 2 DUEPaper 2 DUEChapter 7: Living in a World of Systems“The real trouble with this world of ours is not that it is an unreasonable world, nor even that it is a reasonable one. The commonest kind of trouble is that it is nearly reasonable, but not quite. Life is not an illogicality; yet it is a trap for logicians. It looks just a little more mathematical and regular than it is.” — G. K. ChestertonPeople who are raised in the industrial world and who get enthused about systems thinking are likely to make a terrible mistake. They are likely to assume that here, in systems analysis, in interconnection and complication, in the power of the computer, here at last, is the key to prediction and control. This mistake is likely because the mind-set of the industrial world assumes that there is a key to prediction and control.I assumed that at first too. We all assumed it, as eager systems student sat the great institution called MIT. More or less innocently, enchanted by what we could see through our new lens, we did what many discoverers do. We exaggerated our findings. We did so not with any intent to deceive others, but in the expression of our own expectations and hopes. Systems thinking for us was more than subtle, complicated mind play. It was going to make systems work.Self-organizing, nonlinear, feedback systems are inherently unpredictable. They are not controllable. They are understandable only in the most general way. The goal of foreseeing the future exactly and preparing for it perfectly is unrealizable.The idea of making a complex system do just what you want it to do can be achieved only temporarily, at best. We can never fully understand our world, not in the way our reductionist science has led us to expect. Our science itself, from quantum theory to the mathematics of chaos, leads us into irreducible uncertainty. For any objective other than the most trivial, we can’t optimize; we don’t even know what to optimize. We can’t keep track of everything. We can’t find a proper, sustainable relationship to nature, each other, or the institutions we create, if we try to do it from the role of omniscient conqueror.If you can’t understand, predict, and control, what is there to do?Systems thinking leads to another conclusion, however, waiting, shining, obvious, as soon as we stop being blinded by the illusion of control. It says that there is plenty to do, of a different sort of “doing.” The future can’t be predicted, but it can be envisioned and brought lovingly into being. Systems can’t be controlled, but they can be designed and redesigned. We can’t surge forward with certainty into a world of no surprises, but we can expect surprises and learn from them and even profit from them. We can’t impose our will on a system. We can listen to what the system tells us, and discover how its properties and our values can work together to bring forth something much better than could ever be produced by our will alone.We can’t control systems or figure them out. But we can dance with them!I already knew that, in a way. I had learned about dancing with great powers from whitewater kayaking, from gardening, from playing music, from skiing. All those endeavors require one to stay wide awake, pay close attention, participate flat out, and respond to feedback. It had never occurred to me that those same requirements might apply to intellectual work, to management, to government, to getting along with people.But there it was, the message emerging from every computer model we made. Living successfully in a world of systems requires more of us than our ability to calculate. It requires our full humanity—our rationality, our ability to sort out truth from falsehood, our intuition, our compassion, our vision, and our morality.Get the Beat of the System•Observe the system, watch it work•Learn its history•Ask those who’ve been around longer what has happened•Make a time graph! – memory is fuzzy•Be aware of misconceptions1975 1980 1985 1990 1995 2000 2005 2010 20150246810121416Homicide Rate in California, 1976-2015Rate per 100,000 PopulationA simple anecdote – my brother who works in the prison system was quite surprised to find out that homicides (and actually all crime in general) have gone down significantly in CA over the years. Just because someone is in a given area does not mean that know the data or remember the past correctly!Data From: https://oag.ca.gov/sites/all/files/agweb/pdfs/cjsc/publications/candd/cd15/cd15.pdfAnd finally, starting with history discourages the common and distracting tendency we all have to define a problem not by the system’s actual behavior, but by the lack of our favorite solution. (The problem is, we need to find more oil. The problem is, we need to ban abortion.


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