Counterintuitive Behavior of Social Systems.¶
Forrester, J. W. (1971). Counterintuitive Behavior of Social Systems. Technology Review, 52-68.
Cited by¶
2 citations across 2 artifacts.
Each citation links to the sentence it supports in the citing article.
Primes¶
- Future Wheel
- (4) The deeper abstraction, articulated by Forrester (1971) in his analysis of social-system counterintuitive behavior, is that most consequential change produces its most important effects indirectly, through chains of consequence whose individual steps may be modest but whose aggregate is substantial.
This sourceFoundational system-dynamics paper; directly supports the claim that in complex social systems the most important effects of interventions arise indirectly through chains of consequence, with direct effects modest relative to higher-order outcomes.
Supported in partVerified against the work's full text
Forrester shows that effects of interventions appear elsewhere and later than their causes, but does not state that most important effects are indirect chains of modest steps.
“Actions at one point in a system to relieve one kind of distress produce an unexpected result in some other part of the system.”
- (4) The deeper abstraction, articulated by Forrester (1971) in his analysis of social-system counterintuitive behavior, is that most consequential change produces its most important effects indirectly, through chains of consequence whose individual steps may be modest but whose aggregate is substantial.
- Leverage Points
- Meadows' framework is a qualitative way of surfacing the same insight: system behavior is far more sensitive to some parameters than others
This sourceFoundational system-dynamics paper establishing that in complex systems the most important effects of interventions typically arise indirectly through feedback chains, with direct effects being modest relative to higher-order outcomes.
Supported in partVerified against the work's full text
Forrester states that social systems are insensitive to most policy changes but have a few sensitive influence points, which is the insight the claim says Meadows qualitatively echoes.
“social systems seem to have a few sensitive influence points through which behavior can be changed.”
- Meadows' framework is a qualitative way of surfacing the same insight: system behavior is far more sensitive to some parameters than others
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