Comment by oever
5 days ago
"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.