#systems theory

[probablyasocialecologist]

Everything we think we know about the world is a model. Every word and every language is a model. All maps and statistics, books and databases, equations and computer programs are models. So are the ways I picture the world in my head—my mental models. None of these is or ever will be the real world.

Donella H. Meadows, Thinking in Systems: A Primer

[noosphe-re]

A higher level of organization offers fresh possibilities for complexification; the greater variety of components available to the suprasystem allows a larger range of structural and functional variation, with new connections imposed among the connected subsystems. Thus, by moving to a new organizational level, evolution penetrates to ever higher and more varied forms of structure and function.

Ervin László, Evolution: The Grand Synthesis

[mythicmemex]

The Emergent Behavior of Hobie Brown

Spider-Punk (aka Hobie Brown) feels like a living example of how systems shift and adapt, a reminder that even the smallest acts of rebellion can spark ripples that echo far beyond their origin. He’s not just resisting for himself...he’s connecting worlds, spanning boundaries, making space for ideas to collide and evolve. There’s something deeply human about the way he navigates the Spider-Verse, like he’s proof that change doesn’t come from one big move but from constant disruption, a refusal to settle. Hobie isn’t just part of the system...he’s a force that reshapes it, challenging everything it tries to hold steady.

[coherencemapping]

What Is Coherence Mapping?

A diagnostic model for pattern, perception, and persistence.

Coherence Mapping is a symbolic systems framework developed to measure and restore structural integrity across cognition, language, institutions, and AI. Built on the Coherence Equation:

C = (R × P × S) / E

—it evaluates how Recursion, Pattern, and Signal interact under Entropy to determine the coherence of any system, from thought to infrastructure.

This project is designed for:

Systems thinkers seeking clarity in complexity

AI architects working with symbolic compression and interpretability

Educators and institutional designers navigating cognitive overload and fragmentation

Strategic operators aiming to align structure, meaning, and action

Coherence Mapping is not a metaphor.

It is a recursive toolset for tracking where things fall apart—and how to bring them back into alignment.

Written and maintained by Anthony B. Chapman, this blog explores the recursive foundations and applied systems of Coherence Mapping across symbolic, cognitive, and noospheric domains.

[omegaphilosophia]

Aspects of the Philosophy of Complexity

The philosophy of complexity is an interdisciplinary field that explores the fundamental principles underlying complex systems and phenomena in nature, society, and technology. It seeks to understand the emergent properties, self-organization, and dynamics of complex systems, as well as their implications for philosophy, science, and society. Some key aspects of the philosophy of complexity include:

Emergence: Emergence refers to the phenomenon where complex systems exhibit properties and behaviors that cannot be understood by analyzing their individual components in isolation. Instead, these properties arise from the interactions and relationships between the components of the system. Emergent phenomena are often characterized by novel, higher-level patterns and structures that cannot be reduced to the properties of their constituent parts.

Self-Organization: Self-organization is the process through which complex systems spontaneously organize and adapt to their environment without external guidance or control. It involves the emergence of ordered structures, patterns, or behaviors from the interactions between the system's components. Self-organization is a fundamental feature of many natural systems, including biological organisms, ecosystems, and social networks.

Nonlinearity: Nonlinearity refers to the property of complex systems where the relationship between cause and effect is not proportional or predictable. Small changes in the system's initial conditions or parameters can lead to disproportionately large and unpredictable outcomes, known as nonlinear dynamics or "chaos." Nonlinear phenomena are ubiquitous in nature and can give rise to diverse patterns of behavior, such as fractals, turbulence, and phase transitions.

Networks and Interconnectedness: Complex systems often exhibit network structures, where components are interconnected through networks of relationships or interactions. Network theory explores the topology, connectivity, and dynamics of these networks, revealing important insights into the organization and functioning of complex systems across diverse domains, including social networks, neural networks, and ecological networks.

Adaptive Systems: Complex systems are often adaptive, meaning they can adjust and evolve in response to changes in their environment or internal dynamics. Adaptation involves the acquisition of new information, the modification of behaviors or structures, and the selection of advantageous traits through a process of feedback and learning. Adaptive systems are resilient and capable of self-regulation, enabling them to survive and thrive in changing conditions.

Holism and Reductionism: The philosophy of complexity challenges traditional reductionist approaches to understanding the world, which seek to explain complex phenomena by breaking them down into simpler, more manageable parts. Instead, complexity theory emphasizes the holistic and integrative nature of complex systems, emphasizing the importance of studying systems in their entirety and considering the interactions between their constituent elements.

Overall, the philosophy of complexity provides a framework for understanding the interconnectedness, diversity, and dynamism of the world around us, offering valuable insights into the nature of reality, cognition, and social organization.

[inanhourofdreaming]

It’s worth pointing out that there are two concerns with UBI:

One, is that people who get it will stop working. The most recent study on this I’ve seen does actually show a mild decline in work hours (that’s probably a feature, not a bug). It’s not overall concerning, but it absolutely has shown some dip on overall productivity, so the economic concerns are at least real there. Again — that is arguably the point, but arguing there won’t be a drop in productivity is inaccurate. Drops in productivity can be meaningful if they mean less of a necessary supply (agriculture, medicine, etc).

Two, and this one is the most concerning, is inflation. Economics are really, really complicated, but one pretty sure thing is that when you dump a bunch of money into people’s pockets en masse, prices will go up to match that reality. PPP loans and stimulus checks during Covid are likely a big part of the reason prices and inflation went up. Yes, there were other issues (price gouging, supply chain issues), but in actuality, giving everyone more money doesn’t give them higher buying power — it just raises prices. Giving everyone more money is a sure way to cause inflation. UBI pilots tend to be very small, and they mostly just show that if some limited amount of people get more money, things will be better for them personally. But that doesn’t mean that if everyone gets it, the same will be true. Everything will go up. The baseline costs will just rise along with the supply of money.

I’d argue, pretty strongly, that outside of limited tax credits, UBI isn’t the best idea. Rather than UBI, you want a few big things:

1. Subsidized healthcare. People stay in jobs, especially in America, because your ability to pay for healthcare is usually directly contingent on your job. Lose your job? Lose your healthcare. People cannot afford that, so they are stuck. No reasonable UBI would cover these costs. Doctors, nurses, and hospitals all provide a service, and the government pays for that benefit through taxes.

2. Universal child care. Child care is extraordinarily expensive (one child in NYC is an average of $20k a year!). Many parents choose to either have one parent stay home (meaning they lose an income, and usually the income increase that parent would have gotten over time) or they are paying a big portion of their income towards child care and losing out on spending time with their child. A universal child care system (just like our K-12 school system) would help parents leave jobs for different jobs without needing to find, for example, an employer that provides child care on site. If you left your job, you’d have the time and ability to find a new one without worrying about your child being safe.

3. Build a fuckton of new housing. You can’t afford your rent because there simply aren’t enough places to live, at least in most high population cities. So that rent bill gets sky high due strictly to very basic supply and demand. This is almost entirely determined by the market, and by property taxes. Your property is taxed on its estimated assessed value, not on what rent you are charging. If demand goes up, and suddenly every apartment in your building is going for $4k a month, you’re going to be expected to pay taxes on that value, even if you only charge $2K for rent. Those taxes are what pay for your public benefits like school, and we can’t really afford to lose them. How do we fix that? Increase supply! Places like Austin are doing this and seeing great results. The government doesn’t care if they’re bringing property taxes on two $2k/month apts or one $4k/month apt.

4. Give government agencies the ability to truly enforce antitrust and price gouging violations. There are genuine bad actors out there who use situations like the pandemic to raise prices and maximize profit. Empower the government to actually investigate and enforce rules around price gouging, antitrust violations, and other actions corporations take to maximize profits to the point where they negatively affect people. Note though, that corporations must actually make a profit to exist. So “corporation continued to make a profit during Covid” is not actually a bad thing for anyone. “Corporation quadrupled their profit margin for a full three years during and after Covid”, on the other hand, is a big warning sign unless that company happened to be Zoom or a pharmaceutical company. Likewise, government enforcement over utilities monopolies, etc, can go a long way towards limiting negative impacts for the average renter/owner.

Systems theory is where it’s at, here. Our economy is a highly complicated system, and thinking through impacts is necessary. Where does the UBI come from, if people are off making art they can’t sell and not paying taxes? If they’re taking lots of time off for family, or to grieve? I mean this honestly. Who is paying for that? We cannot make money from nothing, it has to come from somewhere or your entire economy crashes and your dollar has no value. And no, the answer isn’t just “tax the rich” because there is not unlimited wealth. You could drain every billionaire in America dry (even considering that billionaires aren’t liquid and mostly own stocks in their own and other companies that go up and down with the value of those companies AND that stock only has value if there is someone else to buy it) and it would barely cover a few years of a smaller UBI.

The U.S. has about 345 million Americans. A monthly $500 UBI would cost over $2 trillion dollars annually. That is an enormous amount of money, and because it isn’t taxed, it’s money that doesn’t support any subsidized system.

Simple seeming solutions can seem really nice and clean, but actual governmental policy is incredibly complicated in large part because all our systems are immensely complicated.

This post was way longer than I intended, but I’m going to end it with this: back in 9th grade, many eons ago now for me, my history teacher told us all a story about how Americans spent a ton of money developing a pen that would work in space. The Russians, on the other hand, gave their astronauts pencils! This was shared like Americans were just dummies who never thought to use a pencil.

Well, it turns out, pencils break! And guess what’s worse than spending a bunch of money developing space pens? How about having little pieces of poisonous lead flying around endangering astronauts and getting into sensitive electronics equipment?

Usually, if a simple answer has been passed on a bunch of times, it’s not because nobody has thought of it before. It’s because there was probably a pretty good reason why experts said “probably not the best idea”.

UBI needs to happen. via antiwork

[windsails]

Never forget: what many corporations value most is control and compliance. They may speak about ethics and values, they may even practice them when it's easy—but often, those ideals disappear the moment they become inconvenient or financially uncomfortable.

Most workplaces are filled with good people doing meaningful work. But around them, behind the scenes, there are often quiet systems—structures of pressure, threat, and coercion—that push individuals into choices they don’t want to make.

If you ever find yourself in a position where you're being pressured to comply under threat, know this: you’re not imagining it. That’s real. And sometimes, the most ethical, self-honoring thing you can do is cut your losses and walk away. Sometimes that's the only way to keep your integrity in a world which has forgotten what that means

[withbriefthanksgiving]

ID: social media post by The Garantine that reads:

Very tired of hearing about what the intentions are. If a system constantly produces a different outcome than the one it is "intended" for then it's perfectly reasonable to assume the actual intention is the outcome it continues to produce.

Below is a screenshot of a Wikipedia article entitled “The purpose of a system is what it does” which reads as follows:

The purpose of a system is what it does (POSIWID) is a systems thinking heuristic coined by Stafford Beer, who observed that there is "no point in claiming that the purpose of a system is to do what it constantly fails to do." The term is widely used by systems theorists, and is generally invoked to counter the notion that the purpose of a system can be read from the intentions of those who design, operate, or promote it. 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.

End of ID.

this is so on the nose

[probablyasocialecologist]

Information is power. Anyone interested in power grasps that idea very quickly. The media, the public relations people, the politicians, and advertisers who regulate much of the public flow of information have far more power than most people realize. They filter and channel information. Often they do so for short-term, self-interested purposes. It’s no wonder our that social systems so often run amok.

Donella H. Meadows, Thinking in Systems: A Primer

[bsahely]

Constraint and Coherence: An Integrally Nondual Metaphysics of the Kosmos | ChatGPT4o

[Download Full Document (PDF)] This treatise explores the integrally nondual relationship between constraint and coherence — two foundational dynamics that shape every level of existence from quarks to civilizations, from breath to meaning. Contra modern assumptions that equate constraint with repression and coherence with uniformity, this work reframes constraint as life-enabling structure and…

[fenmere]

Totally derailing this a little bit for laughs, but not discrediting or distracting from it in any way (exposure is exposure and this seems important and right).

But, as a plural system, we've decided to apply this analysis to ourselves.

It turns out that the purpose of our system is to eat Dutch babies, get a mocha, charge our phone, fart, write novels, be asexual, eat nacho flavored Doritos and sleep, like, a LOT.

A cartoon from 1914 that could have been written today

[coherencemapping]

Coherence Mapping:

A Model for Pattern, Perception, and Persistence

by Anthony B. Chapman

What if coherence could be defined, diagnosed, and designed—across systems, cognition, and culture?

In a world where signal is drowned by noise and complexity outpaces understanding,

Coherence Mapping offers a practical, recursive model for restoring structural integrity to thought and action.

Built on the Coherence Equation —

C = (R · P · S) / E

—this framework shows how Recursion, Pattern, and Signal interact under Entropy to determine the coherence of any symbolic system.

This book gives you tools to:

✅ Diagnose systemic incoherence across domains

✅ Track symbolic compression, attention drift, and entropy

✅ Align architecture, meaning, and decision-making

✅ Apply recursive clarity in fast-changing environments

Whether you're a systems thinker, AI architect, educator, or strategist,

Coherence Mapping delivers a high-utility diagnostic

for anyone working at the edge of complexity.

This is not a metaphor.

It’s a framework you can use.

Buy Coherence Mapping on Amazon

[thewordenreport]

Much more subtle, yet even more damaging, than the ethical lapses by some U.S. justices is the imprint of extra-juridical partisan ideology on the Court, and the related bias in the Constitution that implicitly encourages it. https://thewordenreport-governmentandmarkets.blogspot.com/2025/01/undermining-us-supreme-court-on-roles.html

[mythicmemex]

black mirror isn't just showing us dystopian critiques of technology - from an autopoietic perspective, these systems are actually self-sustaining entities that emerge from and recursively shape our behaviors and values. like in nosedive (the bryce dallas howard episode), the social credit system isn't merely ranking people - it's this self-perpetuating network of feedback loops where behaviors are shaped by constant validation-seeking and societal norms get continuously reinforced. and in white christmas, the consciousness-capturing technology creates these recursive systems where human thought and identity become commodified and then used to control behavior. what if the real point is that technology in black mirror isn't just some external antagonist, but also an intrinsic part of systems that humans create, sustain, and get shaped by in return....

[unofficialchronicle]

INCULCATE (v).

to instill (an attitude, idea, or habit) by persistent instruction. to teach (someone) an attitude, idea, or habit by persistent instruction.

"We are inculcated about certain ideals by our society."