- All systems are complex systems.
- There are no simple systems. There are only simple models
for complex systems.
- Some complex systems tend to behave in accordance with
simple models.
- All models are wrong but some are useful or; models are
not reality but some models can facilitate desirable effects
on reality.
- System thinking is the closest thing to looking at the external
world the same way the Buddha looked at the internal world.
- Holistic solutions try to encapsulate an entire system with
one or more models whereas reductionistic solutions try to
make partial models of a system as accurate as possible.
- Both reductionistic and holistic approaches are useful.
- Holism is generally "eastern" and reductionism is generally
"western".
- Donella Meadows' list of leverage points seem to fall on a
spectrum with the surface-level interventions being reductionistic
and the deeper interventions being holistic.
- Once again, both reductionistic and holistic approaches are
useful.
- Holistic approaches are almost non-existing in the developed
world. We can cure some people of complicated diseases but
seem unable to keep people truly healthy.
- Highly developed reductionistic models are crucial for true
progress, but so are highly developed holistic models.
- As above, so below. As within, so without.
- Reductionistic models work terribly for the internal world.
- Consciousness is holistic.
- Our ability for reductionistic models and inability for holistic
models might answer for the degradation of the "western" soul.
- Our ability with reductionistic models and inability with holistic
models might answer for why deeper system interventions seem
impossible.
- Systems at the deepest and most encompassing levels are
inherently unexplainable. God, Zen, Tao...
- Rationalism and reductionism go hand in hand.
- Rationalism and holism tend to be enemies because holistic
models will always have gaps in its logic.
- Rationalism's unwillingness to be irrational means it will never
grasp more than parts of a system.
- Holistic models reject quantification whereas most reductionistic
model's accuracy are evaluated quantitatively.
- Holism tends to relate to quality whereas reductionism tends to
relate to quantity.
- A system doesn't progress, it just changes.
November 29th, 2023
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