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UCSB ENVS 106 - Lecture 10 Thinking in Systems Chapter 3 and 4_POST

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Systems MetaphorsChapter 3: Why Systems Work So WellResilienceResilience in the Human BodyResilience in EcosystemsSelf-OrganizationSelf-Organization: From Simple RulesHierarchyHierarchy: Development and EvolutionSlide 10Chapter 4: Why Systems Surprise UsThree Truths About Systems ThinkingThe System Black BoxSlide 14Slide 15Linear Minds in a Nonlinear WorldSlide 17System Boundaries (don’t really exist)System Boundaries (don’t really exist)Layers of LimitsLayers of LimitsSlide 22Know the Limits!Ubiquitous DelaysBounded RationalityThe 5-Second RuleSlide 27Systems MetaphorsThe Language We Employ when discussing •Brain as a muscle (can grow, develop, become stronger, requires exercise/work, etc.) vs. Brain as a tool•War on Cancer metaphor – makes people more likely to support research but less likely to think about healthy lifestyles as a way to minimize risk•Time in terms of spatial reasoning… (time’s arrow)Chapter 3: Why Systems Work So WellResilience•A measure of a system’s ability to survive and persist within a variable environment•Utilizes a rich structure of feedback loops that can work in different ways to restore after a perturbation•Not the same as constancy over timeShort term oscillations may be part of the system and part of its resiliency•Can be hard to see unless you exceed the system’s capacity, overwhelming feedback loopsResilience in the Human Body•Fends off thousands of microbial and larger threats•Tolerates a wide range of temperature/climate•Tolerates wide variability in food supply•Healing•LearningResilience in Ecosystems•Multiple species serving similar functional roles (producers, primary/secondary consumers)Ecological Niches•Evolution/Adaptation•Acclimation•Population Dynamics and Reproduction strategieshttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecological_nicheSelf-Organization•The capacity of a system to make its own structure more complex•Can be sacrificed for productivity and stability, reducing resilience as well•Produces heterogeneity and sometimes unpredictabilitySelf-Organization: From Simple RulesSimple Organizing Rules That Lead to Self-Organizing Systems•Basic organizing rules of DNA, RNA and proteins are the basis for all life•Agricultural revolution: self-organizing lifestyles in a single settled location•Medieval Europe: Theological and cosmological principles that built towns with Cathedrals at the center, both physical and social structures“God created the universe with the earth at its center, the land with the castle at its center, and humanity with the Church at its center”•Industrial Revolution: “God and morality are outmoded ideas; people should be objective and scientific, should own and multiply the means of production, and should treat people and nature as instrumental inputs to production”The (protein-coding components of) human genome is about 99% the same as the chimpanzee genome, about 85% the same as the mouse genome, and about 50% the same as a banana’s genome. Simple DNA replication structures lead to all sorts of self-organizing complexity.While this to me seems a stretch, a charitable interpretation here is that, with religiosity as a leading factor in social organization, towns will tend to have high resource use for Cathedrals, and high social orientation around religious figures.This maybe makes a little more sense. The rise of scientism in Western culture does seem to be associated with industrialism and consumerism – a lot of our activities are oriented around thoseHierarchy•Self-Organizing systems often generate hierarchy, an arrangement of subsystems within systemsCell in liver is a subsystem of the organ, a subsystem of the organism, which is a subsystem of several other social systems (family, team, music group, etc.)•Subsystems can generally manage themselves while serving the needs of the larger system (with sometimes assistance from the larger system or other subsystems)Hierarchies build resilience Can also increase efficiency by reducing the amount of information tracking necessary within the subsystems task, minimizing feedback delays•Managing subsystems might not require a great deal of lateral understanding, or understanding of levels above or belowFor example, a doctor can focus on a liver surgery without worrying about other organ subsystems (heart or tongue), higher levels (your personality), or lower levels (your DNA)Not Necessarily Authoritarian Hierarchy!Hierarchy: Development and Evolution•Person gets too much work and hires others to help•The purpose of hierarchy is to allow originating subsystems to perform their jobs better•Higher and lower subsystems of a system can forget the main task at hand•Sub-optimization Team members more interested in personal achievementCells that begin to divide on their own (cancer)Students that seek grade maximization at the cost of academic integrityCorporation that bribes or otherwise influences government for its own advantage reduces the advantages of competitive markets•Too much Central ControlMicromanagement in a company or nonprofitRule-bound systems that forego the main taskTo be a highly functional system, hierarchy must balance the welfare, freedoms, and responsibilities of the subsystems and total system—there must be enough central control to achieve coordination toward the large-system goal, and enough autonomy to keep all subsystems flourishing, functioning, and self-organizing.Resilience, self-organization, and hierarchy are three of the reasons dynamic systems can work so well. Promoting or managing for these properties of a system can improve its ability to function well over the long term— to be sustainable. But watching how systems behave also can be full of surprises.Chapter 4: Why Systems Surprise UsThree Truths About Systems Thinking1. Everything we think we know about the world is a modelWords, maps, statistics, books, databases, equations, computer programs2. Models usually have a strong congruence with the worldNature, people, organizations  we can use models fairly well!3. But models fall far short of representing the world fullyMistakes, tracking variables, bad conclusions, bad assumptionsThe System Black Box •We tend to focus on inputs and outputsOutputs: “A team wins. A river floods. The Dow Jones Industrial Average hits 10,000. Oil is discovered. A forest is cut. Events are the outputs, moment by moment,


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