Thinking in Systems: International Bestseller

When we think in terms of systems, we see that a fundamental misconception is embedded in the popular term “side-effects.”… This phrase means roughly “effects which I hadn’t foreseen or don’t want to think about.”… Side-effects no more deserve the adjective “side” than does the “principal” effect. It is hard to think in terms of systems, and we eag

Addiction is finding a quick and dirty solution to the symptom of the problem, which prevents or distracts one from the harder and longer-term task of solving the real problem.

Many of the interconnections in systems operate through the flow of information. Information holds systems together and plays a great role in determining how they operate.

A change in purpose changes a system profoundly, even if every element and interconnection remains the same.

If a factory is torn down but the rationality which produced it is left standing, then that rationality will simply produce another factory. If a revolution destroys a government, but the systematic patterns of thought that produced that government are left intact, then those patterns will repeat themselves.… There’s so much talk about the system.

A delay in a balancing feedback loop makes a system likely to oscillate.

There are always limits to resilience.

The information delivered by a feedback loop—even nonphysical feedback—can only affect future behavior; it can’t deliver a signal fast enough to correct behavior that drove the current feedback. Even nonphysical information takes time to feedback into the system.

Markets tend toward monopoly and ecological niches toward monotony, but they also create offshoots of diversity, new markets, new species, which in the course of time may attract competitors, which then begin to move the system toward competitive exclusion again.

A system generally goes on being itself, changing only slowly if at all, even with complete substitutions of its elements—as long as its interconnections and purposes remain intact.