ThePurposeOfASystemIsWhatItDoes

Context: SystemsThinking

StaffordBeer said "The Purpose of a System is what it does".

Random thoughts

This collapses a notion of Normativity into a flat plane where there is no gap between wanting and doing.

It's not as sophisticated a notion of function as, say an evolutionary one (ie. the purpose is what helps it survive).

Or even a "normal" one. Ie. function as "normal" not abnormal behaviour. The purpose of the heart is to kill you with heart-attacks?

Actually, DanDavies here pulls back from that. No the purpose of a system isn't to do what it might do in abnormal cases. Instead he glosses it as much more about normal behaviour. So the heart's purpose is not to kill you in a heart-attack. But UK Rail system might be to ration demand for rail services to a level consistent with the political support for them.

It's important that this is a heuristic that’s only to be used in the context of something that’s at least potentially [ ViableSystems ]. So, for example, if you have an air conditioning unit that’s emitting black smoke, you can’t say “the purpose of this air conditioning unit is to emit black smoke”, because it’s not an ongoing system that’s going to be allowed to keep doing that. One of the big misconceptions that the POSIWID slogan fosters is that it should always be (but rarely is) mentally expanded to “the purpose of a system is what it systematically does, on an ongoing basis, with the permission of the other systems which form its environment”.

And that last clause about the other systems is really important. Immediately after coining the POSIWID phrase in Diagnosing the System, Beer emphasises that the “purpose” of the system you are analysing is always going to be a compromise with other systems in which it is embedded.

So, for example, a (kind and clever) reviewer of my book applied the principle to his train journey and concluded that “the purpose of the [British] rail network is to disincentivise people from making train journeys”. Is he right?

https://backofmind.substack.com/p/the-purpose-of-a-system-is-you-cant

(I also note how this example Davies gives : "it’s not an ongoing system that’s going to be allowed to keep doing that" is (perhaps unsurprisingly) close to ChristopherAlexander's notions of pattern and AntiPatterns.)

BrianEno once said "honour your error as a hidden intention".

This is the tautology at the root of, particularly AustrianEconomics, but really all politicized economics, that asserts markets best match human desires because whatever the human did in the market was what they wanted to do.