Trivial and Non-trivial Machines

Last week, I wrote about the “four rooms of change”. My new job has exposed me to another theory that I like very much, which is the story of the trivial and non-trivial machines. One of doubtlessly many definitions of the principle can be found here.

The original idea was developed by the Austrian/American physicist/philosopher Heinz von Foerster

Like in my “four rooms of change” article I would like to talk about this topic from the lay-woman, “shop-floor”, perspective = from someone who deals with stuff like that on a corporate, consulting level.

So what are trivial and non-trivial machines in human terms?

A trivial machine is simple, you put A (e.g. money) into a machine and get B (e.g. a PET bottle with water) out of the machine. The outcome of putting A in and getting B is predictable. Only if the person who has loaded the machine with goods makes a mistake you receive e.g. orange juice instead of water from the machine (and will be thoroughly upset about it, because you expected water, not juice and are disappointed that the predicted outcome was not what you had expected).

Human beings though tend to be non-trivial machines. You put A in, but you have no clue whether B, C, D, X, Y or Z will come out. For example: You sit in the subway beside someone who stinks. You decide to tell this person that he/she stinks. You do not know how this person will react. He/she has many choices: the person could ignore you, get up and leave for another seat, start a quarrel with you, hit you, apologize to you, blush with shame and so forth. You simply do not know what the outcome of an input into a non-trivial machine will be.

This is what makes human interaction so difficult and scary at times. Since people usually do not wish to trigger a negative response from a non-trivial machine, we “weigh our words” or every often decide to do simply nothing and endure the stinking neighbor in the subway. The fear of the non-trivial machine’s reaction often outweighs the amount of “suffering”. We are afraid of more suffering caused by the non-trivial machine’s unpredictable output.

So also in the corporate world we very often remain in non-motion or non-change, because we fear the reaction of the non-trivial machines around us that could make our work environment worse. That is of course also true outside the office. The existence of non-trivial machines everywhere we look is a great source for resistance against change. There are many other versions or reasons for resistance against change of course, but the non-trivial machine issue is surely one of them.

Again, nice food for thought and a very obvious reason for why so often, we endure an in principle unsatisfying status quo.