The article is right to be critical of "systems thinking", but only because people who advocate "systems thinking" usually don't have a concrete definition of "system" or any unique method of thinking.

The complicated systems that are alluded to here, are usually best modeled as optimizers or control systems. Both have clear definitions and vast mathematical corpi.

In a house with heating, it's difficult to cool the whole house or even a single room by leaving the freezer door open. Why? because the system is programmed to be a certain temperate and has a mechanism continuously driving it to that temperature. It's difficult to knock over one of the Boston Dynamics robots for the same reason.

If the government declares that rents cannot be higher than a certain price per square foot, then mysteriously only the renters with impeccable financials and renting history will be able to get houses. And some houses will stop being available for rent. Why? Because the market is optimizing for value creation. Honest, considerate renters devalue the property less during their stay, and some properties are worth more than the maximum rental price when used for another purpose. If you limit the price, agents will fallback to other mechanisms to determine the most valuable course of action. In this example that is minimizing missed payments, evictions, and property damage.

Unless you affect the controller or optimizer hidden in each system, you can't manipulate the system effectively. Usually you aren't able to do this, and so the system is difficult to control. It's easier to rip out a thermostat than to disable the desire of millions of humans to create value. If you can't model the system in a rigorous way, and then use math to predict and explain it, then you won't be able to manipulate it. Saying that you are using "systems thinking" won't change that.

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cl3misch 3 days ago | parent [-]

> it's difficult to cool the whole house or even a single room by leaving the freezer door open

I think cooling with an open freezer is impossible in general? Or is that your point and I don't understand the argument?

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alphazard 3 days ago | parent [-]

The point is that just dumping an arbitrary amount of cold into the house is unlikely to change the temperature because the thermostat has access to more heat, and has a different goal.

That example was meant to illustrate why simple one off actions have a diminished or imperceptible effect on the system.

	▲	rcxdude 3 days ago \| parent [-]
		It's just not a great one because an open freezer or fridge will not cool a room at all, anyway: it pumps heat (with some inefficiency, i.e. more heat) from inside itself into the room, so it will on average heat up a room if it's left with its door open.