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.
Oh sorry, yes I have a browser extension that always adds that parameter to any wikipedia page. I usually strip it when posting a link, but I forgot (and since it's a long link, it doesn't display in its entirety so I didn't catch it).
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.
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.
What kinds of experiences have shown this heuristic to be not so useful to you?
2 replies →
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.
Oh sorry, yes I have a browser extension that always adds that parameter to any wikipedia page. I usually strip it when posting a link, but I forgot (and since it's a long link, it doesn't display in its entirety so I didn't catch it).
4 replies →
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".