Thinking in Systems: A Primer

by Donella H. Meadows

Everything we think we know about the world is a model. Our models do have a strong congruence with the world. Our models fall far short of representing the real world fully. This chapter describes some of the reasons why dynamic systems are so often surprising. Alternately, it is a compilation of some of the ways our mental models fail to take into account the complications of the real world—at least those ways that one can see from a systems perspective. It is a warning list. Here is where hidden snags lie. You can’t navigate well in an interconnected, feedback-dominated world unless you take your eyes off short-term events and look for long-term behavior and structure; unless you are aware of false boundaries and bounded rationality; unless you take into account limiting factors, nonlinearities and delays. You are likely to mistreat, misdesign, or misread systems if you don’t respect their properties of resilience, self-organization, and hierarchy.

ludic fallacy see Taleb