"The purpose of a system is what it does" is a shorthand statement that comes out of the study of complex, human-involved, systems that lack unitary design, often having many actors having a hand in creating over time, and mostly is a statement about the lack of analytical utility of any other concept of the purpose of a system, and it is about analyzing the operation of those systems over a window of time. A longer phrase from the person who coined it on the same topic and explaining it is, “There is after all, no point in claiming that the purpose of a system is to do what it constantly fails to do.”
> Claiming "The purpose of a system is what it does." is like claiming that software bugs do not exist.
It's more like claiming that there is no meaningful difference to any outside observer between a bug that is not eradicated over an extended time window and an intentional feature.
I disagree, because it's the opposite: the purpose of a system only aligns with what we want the purpose to be if the system works perfectly. Whatever we consider the purpose to be doesn't matter for the effect the system has on the world, because if we choose to keep the system alive as-is, it will keep doing the thing that we apparently don't want it to be doing. It's the same for a program - if you choose not to fix a bug, that bug is part of the functionality. It doesn't really matter to the user whether it's supposed to work differently, unless you actually fix the bug.
I do agree with you in cases where the system is being continually refined, but I don't think the quote talks about changing systems, only about constant ones.
when a system's side effects or unintended consequences reveal that its behavior is poorly understood, then the POSIWID perspective can balance political understandings of system behavior with a more straightforwardly descriptive view
> But in the absence of credible information to the contrary, it's not wrong.
In the sense it is intended, it is entirely correct. It is not a claim about what the intent of the people involved in the system is, it is a recognition that (1) intent doesn't really aggregate, and, more importantly, even if it did (2) intent that consistently fails, because of the nature of the system, to materialize into function doesn't matter.
It's an elegant idea in it's simplicity, but there's zero reason to think this heuristic is more valid than any other, and in my personal experience this line of thinking is usually wrong.
Is the useSkin parameter something you manually added? I am not logged in and when I navigate to another page the parameter (and with it the skin preference) disappears.
It's the opposite; it's a heuristic for directing thought down useful pathways and escaping a rabbit hole of speculation on matters which makes no material difference, and which largely (for the kinds of systems it concerns) also involve pointless metaphysical wankery on the order of debating how many angels can dance on the head of the pin, because the kinds of systems it concerns (which are almost all real systems that matter) aren't guided by unitary intent, and pretty much any intent you want to appply probably can be found in some subset (and, conversely, also opposed by some subset) of the contributors to the system.
A more precise statement might be "'Purpose' is not a meaningful attribute of complex systems," but POSIWID works.
It's a good "razor" to strip away rationalizations and sophistry used to defend perverse or failed systems and ideas.
E.g. the "purpose" of fascism is nihilistic violence and the "purpose" of communism is rule by a bureaucratic elite that is somehow more equal than everyone else. All the sophistry is bullshit.
After a review, the program works as coded.
"The purpose of a system is what it does."
This is only true for systems that works perfectly. If the implementation if flawed, the system can do something different from its purpose.
Claiming "The purpose of a system is what it does." is like claiming that software bugs do not exist.
"The purpose of a system is what it does" is a shorthand statement that comes out of the study of complex, human-involved, systems that lack unitary design, often having many actors having a hand in creating over time, and mostly is a statement about the lack of analytical utility of any other concept of the purpose of a system, and it is about analyzing the operation of those systems over a window of time. A longer phrase from the person who coined it on the same topic and explaining it is, “There is after all, no point in claiming that the purpose of a system is to do what it constantly fails to do.”
> Claiming "The purpose of a system is what it does." is like claiming that software bugs do not exist.
It's more like claiming that there is no meaningful difference to any outside observer between a bug that is not eradicated over an extended time window and an intentional feature.
I disagree, because it's the opposite: the purpose of a system only aligns with what we want the purpose to be if the system works perfectly. Whatever we consider the purpose to be doesn't matter for the effect the system has on the world, because if we choose to keep the system alive as-is, it will keep doing the thing that we apparently don't want it to be doing. It's the same for a program - if you choose not to fix a bug, that bug is part of the functionality. It doesn't really matter to the user whether it's supposed to work differently, unless you actually fix the bug.
I do agree with you in cases where the system is being continually refined, but I don't think the quote talks about changing systems, only about constant ones.
Seems reductive.
But in the absence of credible information to the contrary, it's not wrong.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_purpose_of_a_system_is_wha...
when a system's side effects or unintended consequences reveal that its behavior is poorly understood, then the POSIWID perspective can balance political understandings of system behavior with a more straightforwardly descriptive view
> But in the absence of credible information to the contrary, it's not wrong.
In the sense it is intended, it is entirely correct. It is not a claim about what the intent of the people involved in the system is, it is a recognition that (1) intent doesn't really aggregate, and, more importantly, even if it did (2) intent that consistently fails, because of the nature of the system, to materialize into function doesn't matter.
> it's not wrong.
It's an elegant idea in it's simplicity, but there's zero reason to think this heuristic is more valid than any other, and in my personal experience this line of thinking is usually wrong.
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Is the useSkin parameter something you manually added? I am not logged in and when I navigate to another page the parameter (and with it the skin preference) disappears.
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It's a thought terminating cliche.
Systems thinking is much more nuanced and productive IMO. Drift Into Failure by Sidney Dekker is a good introduction.
> It's a thought terminating cliche.
It's the opposite; it's a heuristic for directing thought down useful pathways and escaping a rabbit hole of speculation on matters which makes no material difference, and which largely (for the kinds of systems it concerns) also involve pointless metaphysical wankery on the order of debating how many angels can dance on the head of the pin, because the kinds of systems it concerns (which are almost all real systems that matter) aren't guided by unitary intent, and pretty much any intent you want to appply probably can be found in some subset (and, conversely, also opposed by some subset) of the contributors to the system.
A more precise statement might be "'Purpose' is not a meaningful attribute of complex systems," but POSIWID works.
It's a good "razor" to strip away rationalizations and sophistry used to defend perverse or failed systems and ideas.
E.g. the "purpose" of fascism is nihilistic violence and the "purpose" of communism is rule by a bureaucratic elite that is somehow more equal than everyone else. All the sophistry is bullshit.
I dunno, you start doing that to capitalism people get big mad fast.
The "purpose" of capitalism is to "destroy the ecology of earth by being good at organizing stuff into metastasizing accumulation strategies"?
People don't like that at all, because it's simply pretentious to reduce any system to however you choose to smugly describe "what it does".