[wenc]

To build on this discussion, what are some highlights in that book that you found useful?

I ask because I've read some systems thinking books (e.g. Systemantics) that were difficult to apply in real life. I come from the perspective of someone with a systems/theory builder personality. The only systems thinking book that I found remotely practical was The Fifth Discipline by Peter Senge.

The most useful piece of short writing on systems thinking that I've come across is "How Complex Systems Fail" [1, 2], which talks about designing systems for resiliency, and not for rigid notions of reliability.

[1] "How Complex Systems Fail" https://web.mit.edu/2.75/resources/random/How%20Complex%20Sy...

[2] Its accompanying O'Reilly conference talk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2S0k12uZR14

[chubot]

I read both Systemantics and Thinking in Systems.

I agree that both of them were not very rigorous, e.g. in terms of making predictions or presenting falsifiable claims. But I enjoyed parts of both.

From Thinking in Systems, I got 2 main things out of it:

- Many systems can be modelled in terms of resources and flows.

- If you want to affect a system, find the leverage points.

But both claims could have been justified more. It feels like the author states them as a given.

Specifically, she doesn't talk much about modelling error. OK, so I came up with a set of resources and flows to model a system. How do I know if it's good? Will it work in some cases and wildly mispredict in others?

I think they just did computer simulations? How did you check it against the real world? I think that was entirely missing from the book. I'd be happy for a correction.

Overall, the book felt like it was incomplete (which is not surprising, given the back story of its publication).

I think I read this book because Bill Gates recommended it. I can understand why he would have liked it. I'm not sure there is much that's actionable for a programmer or software designer, though.

I'd be interested in other takes on it too. Did I miss something? I also wonder why it's so highly thought of. I think it does have a unique point of view, and raises interesting questions, but it also made me wonder if that view is true! It's perhaps too vague to be true or false.

----

I enjoyed Systemantics, to a point. The negative view of systems tends to be the more accurate one in my experience ;-)

[vijayshankarv]

If you found Peter Senge's book practical you would probably like Thinking in Systems. It takes a few systems archetypes and explores them in reasonable detail and has charts of simulations. I browse through my copy every once in a while when thinking about a problem, and it often sheds some light on the problem.

Before reading this book, I did not think much about delays but now I try to identify them as soon as possible.

[Jtsummers]

http://donellameadows.org/archives/leverage-points-places-to...

(On mobile) If I grabbed the right link that’s chapter 6 (maybe edited a bit?) of Thinking in Systems. If it interests you you’ll probably like the rest of the book.

[Karrot_Kream]

I really enjoyed "Business Dynamics: Thinking and Modelling for a Complex World" by John Sterman. It's an older book, but it answers all of the questions that you ask. The book starts out by giving a high level overview of how systems modelling (and iteration on these models) occurs in practice, along with case studies and models that represent those case studies. The book talks about stocks and flows and real life examples on how stocks and flows work. While I wouldn't say this book is as rigorous as an engineering math text, it has a section on nonlinear dynamical systems and the math that these models represent in some sparse detail, so you can try to apply rigor to the models presented.