Thread by @conways_law

Right Now,
the United States is undergoing many teachable moments that must not be squandered.

The particular lesson I have in mind here is about systems thinking.

This thread is about applying systems thinking to today’s politics. Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.
1/18

What’s going on right now in America is causing immense consternation among intellectuals because it’s so crazy. It’s like a cult.

https://twitter.com/anelsona/status/1221447480040153091

2/18

Exactly. But that doesn’t mean that it’s weird or sick; it’s another manifestation of being human. The lesson before us is to see it as such and learn to manage it alongside the rest of human behavior.
3/18

The flopping-about like landed fish that I’m seeing among intellectuals is because systems thinking is not in their vocabulary. They need to do something about that.
(NB: @anelsona)
4/18

What is systems thinking? I see no consensus on a definition, so I’ll describe here the definition I’ve been living.

A preview: systems thinking is thinking on two connected levels at the same time.
5/18

To start, you must accept that Nature is a totally incomprehensible mess that, with the brains we’ve been issued, we have no hope of understanding.

6/18

So we have to simplify. And, we are condemned to oversimplify. The trick is to oversimplify in a way that is controllably useful.

Don’t let anybody tell you that we can do better than that. (Like “knowing the truth”, for example.)
7/18

To attack a situation using systems thinking you have to focus. Find two categories C and D, in which D-things are, in some way, interesting aggregates of C-things. It's arbitrary, except that some arrangements are more productive than others. Examples:
D: molecule
C: atom
8/18

D: neighborhood
C: riot

D: riot
C: person

D: person
C: organ

D: organ
C: tissue

And a favorite of mine:
D: murmuration
C: bird

9/18

The systems thinking comes when you are struggling to connect D-behaviors and C-behaviors. Starling murmurations, for example, have been explained in terms of each bird maintaining a spatial relationship with seven neighbors.
npr.org/sections/13.7/…
10/18

Now back to politics.

My work lately has been to develop a design pattern that can be the basis of simulations for testing models that connect Ds and Cs.

https://twitter.com/conways_law/status/1208468897176924163

11/18

In

https://twitter.com/conways_law/status/1199425348515061760

I call the D-C theory part an “emergence process”. That small dotted box is the “Then a miracle occurs” part of the theory.
12/18

My most recent writing was an as-yet-untweeted essay that reframes mass disinformation as a public-health issue.
melconway.com/Home/pdf/vacci…
13/18

Now (because I haven’t yet done it for you) please look at these two things together:
1: the “Ideation/Behavior” diagram at the top of page 3 of the “vaccine” paper and
2: the “Emergent/Thing” graphic in tweet 1 of

https://twitter.com/conways_law/status/1199425348515061760

.
14/18

Then, in 2, replace the heavy “Emergent” box above the dotted line by 1’s “Behavior” box,
and the heavy “Thing” box below the dotted line by 1’s “Ideation” box.
15/18

Now, if you look at the first sentence of the second paragraph below the “Ideation/Behavior” diagram on page 3 of 1 you’ve got a systems-think description of the gross personality state change that occurs in an individual captured by the cult phenomenon.
16/18

Voila! the beginning of a system model of cult (and other affinity-group) behavior.

My hope is that with enough cooperation from behavior, and other, scientists we could develop a useful simulation model.
17/18

This model will permit us to test, and improve, theories about what’s going on in American politics, at least, for starters, in some small part of American politics like the Senate Republican caucus.

Is there support out there for moving ahead on this?
18/18

Appendix: Thanks to everybody for getting this conversation going, and apologies if I missed you:
@joshcorman @janellekz @PezeshkiCharles @jfcloutier @DFire45 @CatSwetel @iPhilSomething @ruthmalan
19/18

@pdfmakerapp grab this

@pdfmakerapp grab this