[nonrandomstring]

> the curse of systems thinkers is to be correct, but never valued.

"Systems" are a mixed blessing, but system thinking is almost always good and useful. We can add value but not bask in it. As a someone invested in the _idea_ here are a few of my favourite quotes that illustrate:

- People don't like systems. Especially new ones.

- Systems ossify and become the problem themselves.

- The ideal system exists only in the mind of its designer.

- The ideal systems designer is invisible and can never take credit.

  "I mistrust all systematizers and avoid them. The will to a system is a
  lack of integrity." -- Nietzsche

  "The English have a system, which is *no system*, which is also a
  system, only better." - (?? British political philosopher c 1900 -
  does anyone know this one?)

  "A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved
   from a simple system that worked.  A complex system designed from
   scratch never works and cannot be patched up to make it work. You
   have to start over with a working simple system" -- Gall

Overall, I think the thing is that systems are brilliant, until you try to actually build them and encounter _people_, who have other ideas. Neither the force of the better argument, nor punishment, reward, bribery, or flattery will move things. This is neither the fault of systems thinkers nor people but the misunderstanding that (outside the immediacy of war) systems can be imposed. Working systems evolve and are, if the individuals are mentally healthy and motivated by good attitude, generally such that people are doing the thing they would naturally be doing anyway were a formal system not there.

A good system is like cat that falls off a tall building and by luck lands on its feet in a box of wool, and licks itself as if to say - sure I meant to do that.

[samizdis]

> "The English have a system, which is no system, which is also a system, only better." - (?? British political philosopher c 1900 - does anyone know this one?)

I don't, but that quote was used in a comment [1] about five or six weeks ago, and the commenter's relevant bit was:

Nietzche said it best:

I mistrust all systematizers and avoid them. The will to a system is a lack of integrity.

Or maybe (I think Sidgwick):

The English system is "No system", Which is also a system, only better.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30598863

[Edit to add: I've been dumb there. You were that commenter, so this won't have helped - sorry.]

[nonrandomstring]

Yeah, but thanks for the thought, I since found it wasn't Sidgwick and it's bugging me.

[samizdis]

Ha! The reason I remembered the original comment was because, at the time, I wanted to find out who'd said it - it's such a great quote. So I did the usual DDG, then Alexandria, Google Scholar, Dogpile, then Kagi plus a few esoteric search engines and I found nothing. (But there were mentions similar to it when referring to "common law" in England.)

It's frustrating, but as far as search terms go (in the typical tf/idf indexing model), the most unique word is, um, system ... and that doesn't help.

I know only two philosophy people, and I am going to ask them - and get them to ask their friends. Yeah, I shouldn't let stuff like this bug me, but it just does :)

[hef19898]

I doubt Nietzsche's system is of the kind coverd by system engineers.

[nonrandomstring]

Not sure why you say that. Having read a great deal of both I can confidently assure you they are deeply related. Nietzsche doesn't use process notation or equations for calculating closed loop feedback gain. Shannon, Wiener or Weaver don't directly address the question of whether the cultural software of our society lies within its institutions or individuals. Nonetheless they are both talking about the same subject - one that is highly apropos the precarious situation we find ourselves in today with respect to our failing social cybernetics.

[hef19898]

Sytems engineering, as a engineering discipline, is treating other things than Nietzsche did. Unless you go to philosophical meta questions about "systems", I have yet to encounter those in real life.

[mhitza]

Your last quote reminds me so much of the Gaia X project. The short version of that project is: a standardized protocol of privacy preserving data exchange. But suffering from design by committee and wanting to throw in everything in existence (including blockchains, cause why not) makes it into something that on release (if ever) will just crumble under its own weight.

[catlifeonmars]

> Overall, I think the thing is that systems are brilliant, until you try to actually build them and encounter _people_, who have other ideas.

The problem here is not including people in your “system”. System design needs to be holistic in order to be effective.

[nonrandomstring]

> The problem here is not including people in your “system”.

Absolutely. All too common. And once you do include them each is not merely a new variable capable of assuming wildly different values, but a whole system in itself capable of interacting with every other such system within your system. That's why reductionists like to try factoring them out as interchangeable cogs. Pretty much the entire edifice of modern industrial economics since Adam Smith and Henry Ford is built on that model simplification/efficiency.

[catlifeonmars]

Makes sense. I think where the interchangeable cogs model breaks down (or at least becomes less effective) is in the design/engineering space. To belabor the analogy with Ford, the designer of the Model T is not interchangeable in quite the same way as the nuts, bolts, and assembly line workers

[giantg2]

" but system thinking is almost always good and useful. We can add value but not bask in it."

It's only useful and adds value if your idea actually gets used. Otherwise, it's still pretty crushing.

[tasuki]

> People don't like systems. Especially new ones.

I like how this can be read in two ways and both make sense.

People don't like new systems. But also: New people often don't like (the pre-existing) systems.