Meadows Chapter 3 Notes: Why Systems Work So Well

If pushed too hard, systems WILL fall apart.
Three important characteristics of systems: resilience, self-organization, or hierarchy.
Resilience: the ability to bounce or spring back into shape, position, etc.
- resilience arises from a rich structure of many feedback loops that can work in different ways to restore a system even after a large perturbation. Multiple loops bring about resilience.

A set of feedback loops that can restore or rebuild feedback loops is resilience at a higher level, even higher meta-meta-resilience comes from feedback loops that can learn, create, design and evolve ever more complex restorative structures.
Ex. of resilient system: the human body
- although it does have limits, human body is extremely resilient.
Ex. of resilient system: ecosystem
-ability to learn and evolve.

Resilient systems are not static or constant, but dynamic.
-systems that are constant over time tend to be unresilient.
- people often sacrifice resilience for stability or productivity.

Many chronic diseases comes from breakdown of reliance mechanisms that repair DNA, blood vessels etc.

The capacity of a system to make its own structure more complex by diversifying, complicating, evolving and learning, is called Self-organization.
-self-organization is often sacrificed for short-term productivity and stability.
-self-organization produces heterogeneity and unpredictability.

Koch snowflake, long edge but contained within a circle. (complex self-organizational system)

Self-organizing systems often arise from simple rules.

Hierarchy: the process of creating new structures and increasing complexity, generated by self-organization.
-lots of subdivisions

Why do self-organized systems, which breed unpredictability, create a system of hierarchy which is organized?

Relationships WITHIN SYSTEMS ARE STRONGER AND DENSER THAN RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN SUBSYSTEMS.
-HIERARCHY SYSTEMS CAN BE PARTIALLY DECOMPOSED.
-HIERARCHIES FORM FROM THE LOWEST LEVEL UP.

WHEN A SUBSYSTEMS' GOALS DOMINATE AT THE EXPENSE OF THE TOTALY SYSTEM'S GOALS, THE RESULT BEHAVIOR IS CALLED SUB-OPTIMIZATION.
-ANOTHER SIMILAR PROBLEM IS TOO MUCH CONTROL.

HOW CAN SELF-ORGANIZED HIERARCHIES BE CONTROLLED?