Neat write up! I appreciate the part about hysteresis, but in human/organizational systems the only relevant feedback loop is memory, right? In a physical system, changes are worked into the environment - history is instantiated in a magnetic field, or potential energy is held in the temperature or form some substance - but in a business, or for a person with bad eating habits... changes in the world, in the open system these things are inside of will add noise or entirely omit the kind of physical histories a closed system exhibits. Single point failure supply chains, the loss of skilled personnel in a business, or the signals of a full stomach can all be ignored, obscured by complications and abstraction away from whatever relevant, direct feedback might be occurring, until there is a critical failure - crash! Closed business, diabetic condition - permanent system change.
"I appreciate the part about hysteresis, but in human/organizational systems the only relevant feedback loop is memory, right?"
I think a lot about this. That in human/organizational systems, the primary feedback loop is memory/folk mental models/the narrative we write to rationalize to ourselves what's going on. In other words, ground truth is important but arguably irrelevant in human/organizational systems, because actions and decisions are often made based on that primary feedback loop of memory/mental model/narrative.
Neat write up! I appreciate the part about hysteresis, but in human/organizational systems the only relevant feedback loop is memory, right? In a physical system, changes are worked into the environment - history is instantiated in a magnetic field, or potential energy is held in the temperature or form some substance - but in a business, or for a person with bad eating habits... changes in the world, in the open system these things are inside of will add noise or entirely omit the kind of physical histories a closed system exhibits. Single point failure supply chains, the loss of skilled personnel in a business, or the signals of a full stomach can all be ignored, obscured by complications and abstraction away from whatever relevant, direct feedback might be occurring, until there is a critical failure - crash! Closed business, diabetic condition - permanent system change.
"I appreciate the part about hysteresis, but in human/organizational systems the only relevant feedback loop is memory, right?"
I think a lot about this. That in human/organizational systems, the primary feedback loop is memory/folk mental models/the narrative we write to rationalize to ourselves what's going on. In other words, ground truth is important but arguably irrelevant in human/organizational systems, because actions and decisions are often made based on that primary feedback loop of memory/mental model/narrative.