Excellent piece! Very much aligned with my own thinking on how complex systems actually work (and fail).
Might I offer Gerald Gaus's "The Tyranny of the Ideal" as a philosophical and moral counterpart to your practical and operational argument? Your analysis of systems "kicking back" against top-down design is the practical outcome of the kind of moral hubris Gaus describes.
I was particularly struck by your mention of Australia's NDIS, which is a prime example of getting almost everything wrong by violating these principles. I made this connection explicitly in my own writing, where I used the NDIS to illustrate the central ideas from Gaus's book.
I had Forrester as a professor. I don't think he ever said the forecast outcome was correct. No student was taught to believe the output of the modeling technique is precise. The purpose of the models is to understand scenarios and non linear systems. It is notable the MIT students that took his courses went on to create the technology that avoided the worst case of the forecast. Which was really the purpose, to train the minds to make the world better. I believe at the time he said you could not model price signal properly, which ultimately was the conclusion by economics who rebuted Ehrlich.
Forrester also was key to the invention of radar, led the first national missile defense system in the 50s, invented bubble memory, helped start DEC computer, and demonstrated why massive public housing projects increase poverty.
Excellent piece! Very much aligned with my own thinking on how complex systems actually work (and fail).
Might I offer Gerald Gaus's "The Tyranny of the Ideal" as a philosophical and moral counterpart to your practical and operational argument? Your analysis of systems "kicking back" against top-down design is the practical outcome of the kind of moral hubris Gaus describes.
I was particularly struck by your mention of Australia's NDIS, which is a prime example of getting almost everything wrong by violating these principles. I made this connection explicitly in my own writing, where I used the NDIS to illustrate the central ideas from Gaus's book.
Thanks for a great read.
You can find the review at https://peter.evans-greenwood.com/2025/08/27/the-tyranny-of-the-ideal/ should you be interested.
I had Forrester as a professor. I don't think he ever said the forecast outcome was correct. No student was taught to believe the output of the modeling technique is precise. The purpose of the models is to understand scenarios and non linear systems. It is notable the MIT students that took his courses went on to create the technology that avoided the worst case of the forecast. Which was really the purpose, to train the minds to make the world better. I believe at the time he said you could not model price signal properly, which ultimately was the conclusion by economics who rebuted Ehrlich.
Forrester also was key to the invention of radar, led the first national missile defense system in the 50s, invented bubble memory, helped start DEC computer, and demonstrated why massive public housing projects increase poverty.
All systems resist to change; complex systems resist change in complex ways
Great read! And reassuring to learn that the lazy instinct to start over with something simple is actually the wise and effective thing
Great read!