[mekoka]

> what POSWID actually means

The phrase does not make more sense even if we go all the way back to Beers. I certainly don't feel alone in not understanding how he went from his (fair) observation that "[There's] no point in claiming that the purpose of a system is to do what it constantly fails to do" to his more controversial conclusion: "The purpose of a system is what it does (aka POSIWID)".

Surely, there were many more sensible (but perhaps less quippy) stops between the two.

[Merovius]

> perhaps less quippy

Being quippy is the point. That's how aphorisms work: creating a short, pithy distillation of a complex argument, that you can then use pars pro toto to make a point.

I certainly agree that POSWID is easily (and perhaps frequently) misused. But that doesn't invalidate it in general.