Systems Thinking: Positive Feedback Loops

17 Wednesday Dec 2025

Posted by petersironwood in America, creativity, psychology, Uncategorized

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AI, Artificial Intelligence, books, chatgpt, Design, Feedback, government, innovation, leadership, learning, machine learning, management, politics, POTUS, problem solving, science, sense-making, society, systems thinking, thinking, vicious circle

Systems Thinking: Positive Feedback Loops

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One of the most important tools of thought that anyone can learn: “Systems Thinking.” I touched on this in yesterday’s post “And Then What.” I pointed out that when you take an action that impacts a system such as a human being, a family, or a country, it often does not react in a mechanical way.

Here are some examples. For many years, the United States and the USSR were involved in a cold war arms race. Every time the USSR added more nuclear missiles to their arsenal, the people in America felt less safe. Since they felt less safe, they increased their armaments. When the USA increased nuclear weapons, this made the Soviet Union feel less safe so they increased their arms again and so on. This is what is known in Systems Thinking as a “Positive Feedback Loop.” It is also popularly known as a “Vicious Circle” or “Vicious Cycle.”

Let’s say that you are in pretty good shape physically and regularly run, play tennis, or work out. The more you exercise (up to a point), the better you feel. Feeling better makes you feel more like exercise and more exercise makes you feel better. People call this a “Virtuous Cycle” or “Virtuous Circle” because we think the outcome is good. But formally, it is the same kind of cycle.

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The most important thing to recognize about a Positive Feedback Loop is that it can be run in either direction. At some point, the US reduced their nuclear arsenal and this decreased the perceived threat to folks in the Soviet Union so the soviets felt that they could also reduce their nuclear arsenal which in turn, made people in the US feel safer and led to further reductions and so on.

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Similarly, if you stop exercising for a month, you will tend to feel pretty crappy. Feeling crappy makes you feel less like exercising and this in turn makes you exercise less which in turn makes you even more out of shape, feel worse and be even less likely to exercise. You can break such a “vicious circle” by starting to exercise – even it it’s just a little to start moving the circle in the “virtuous” direction. (Incidentally, that’s why I wrote “Fit in Bits” which describes many easy exercises to get you started).

woman in white bed holding remote control while eating popcorn

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“Vicious circles” also often cause disagreements to escalate into arguments and arguments into fights. Each person feels “obligated” not to “give in” and the nastier their opponent becomes, the nastier they become.

“Fawlty Towers” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fawlty_Towers), a British sit-com uses “Positive Feedback Loops” in the escalating action of the comedy plots. John Cleese plays the co-owner Basil (with his wife, Sybil) of a small hotel. Typically, John Cleese makes some rather trivial but somewhat embarrassing mistake which he wants to hide from his wife. In the course of trying to cover up this rather small mistake, he has to lie, avoid, or obfuscate. This causes an even more egregious mistake which makes him even more embarrassed so he must result to still more outlandish lies and trickery in order to cover up the second mistake which in turn causes an even bigger mistake, and so on.

That pattern of behavior reminds me of the current POTUS who is famously unable to admit to an error or lie and uses a second and bigger error or lie to try to cover up the first lie and so on. He seems, in fact, completely incapable of “systems thinking.”

For example, he may see (and exaggerate) a real, but containable threat such as a trade deficit. He sees the US send more money out of the country than the US takes in from trade. That’s a legitimate issue. But the approach he takes is to ZAP the other parties by slapping on tariffs without any real appreciation of the fact that our trading partners are extremely unlikely to react to tariffs on their products by simply doing nothing. One could use logic, empathy, or a look at history to determine that what is much more likely is that the other countries will put tariffs on our goods (which, of course, is precisely what happened).

Similarly, he demands absolute loyalty. He repeatedly puts himself and his own interests above the law, the Constitution, the good of the country and the good of his party. He expects everyone loyal to him to do the same. But he betrays these loyal appointees, friends, and wives whenever it suits him. He thinks he is being “smart” by doing what seems to be in his best interest at that moment. But what he fails to see is that by being disloyal to so many people who have been mainly loyal to him, he encourages his so-called “allies” to only be loyal to him while it suits their interests.

In the Pattern “Reality Check,” I point out that such behavior is an occupational hazard for dictators. Apparently, it can even be such a hazard for would-be dictators as well. By surrounding himself with those who always lie, cover for him, laud him, cater to his insane whims, etc., such a dictator (or would-be dictator) loses touch with what is really going on. He becomes more and more disconnected from sensible action yet those who remain loyal must say and do more and more outrageous things to keep the dictator from finding out just how bad things really are. Eventually, the Emperor with no clothes may die of hypothermia because no-one has the courage to tell him that he’s actually wearing no protection against the elements!

Positive feedback loops exist in purely natural systems as well as biological and social systems. For example, increased global mean temperatures mean less arctic ice which means more solar radiation will be absorbed by the earth’s dark oceans rather than reflected back into space by the white ice and snow. This, of course, makes the earth hotter still. In addition, the thawing of tracts of arctic tundra also releases more methane gas into the atmosphere which is even more effective at trapping the earth’s heat than is carbon dioxide. Global climate change also makes forest fires more prevalent which directly spews more carbon dioxide into the air and reduces the number of trees that help mitigate the emissions of carbon dioxide by turning it into oxygen through photosynthesis.

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A concept closely related to “Vicious Cycles” is that of “Cognitive Dissonance.” Basically, people like to believe that they are honest and competent. Much like John Cleese (Basil) in Falwty Towers, once they do something dishonest or incompetent, their first reaction is not to believe that they did something dishonest or incompetent. They will now try to distort reality by misperceiving, mis-remembering, or distracting.

For example, at the height of the Vietnam War, I was horrified at the beatings perpetrated by the police on peaceful protestors at the Democratic National Convention. I was also disturbed at the techniques the Democrats used at their convention to silence the voices of dissension within the convention. Candidate Nixon claimed he had a “secret plan” to end the War in Vietnam. I voted for Nixon. As it became clear that Nixon was a crook, I decided that I had made a mistake voting for the man. But I could have taken another path which would be to “double down” on the original mistake by continuing to support Nixon and dismiss all the growing evidence of his misdeeds. As his malfeasance became more and more egregious, it made the egregiousness of my original mistake of voting for him grow as well. So, it would be possible to become ever more invested in not believing the overwhelming evidence of his treachery. (Now, it turns out, it was even worse than we knew at the time. He actively thwarted the peace efforts of Johnson!). Perhaps because I’ve been trained as a scientist and science values the truth very highly, I did not fall prey to that particular instance of “Cognitive Dissonance.” I readily admitted it was a stupid mistake to vote for Nixon.

Of course, today, we see many people not just backed into a corner to support the current POTUS but backed into a corner of a corner. Instead of believing that a liar is lying, they protect their “integrity” by insisting that everything and everyone else is lying: the newspapers, the reporters, his opposition, people in other countries, his former business partners, his former customers, the CIA, the FBI, the NSA. Ironically, for some people, it would be easier to admit that voting for a slightly inferior candidate was a mistake than to admit that voting for a hugely inferior candidate was a mistake. Voting for a slightly inferior candidate is easily understood but if they voted for a candidate that bad and bad in so many ways it was a huge error. And now, as each new revelation comes to light, it is more and more and more embarrassing to admit what a huge mistake it was.

Another common example of a “Vicious Circle” is addiction. A small amount of alcohol, nicotine or heroine makes you feel better. But taking the drug increases your tolerance for it. So, next time, to feel better, you need to take a little more. Taking a little more increases your tolerance still further so now you need to take a still higher dosage in order to feel better. When you do, however, your tolerance increases still more. Whether it is drugs, gambling, addictive sex, or unbridled greed, the mechanism is the same. You need more and more and more over time due to the nature of the “Positive Feedback Loop.”

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A similar mechanism may be at work in the minds of apologists for the NRA (National Rifle Association). As more and more innocent people are killed partly because of easy access to guns, the mistake of supporting the NRA in their refusal to support mandatory vetting, training, and competency demonstrations for gun owners becomes an ever-more obviously egregious error. But, rather than making this more likely for supporters to admit to such an error and therefore change their position, every new slew of innocent children killed for no reason makes them actually less likely to change their position. According to Cognitive Dissonance, every such death makes their earlier decision worse – unless there is some counter-balancing argument. As the number of innocent deaths arises, and indeed, as more and more evidence of the perfidy of the NRA becomes clear, many who previously supported the NRA become ever more entrenched because they “buy into” the great value of unlimited access to guns ever more. Why? They continue their support because not to do so makes them complicit in more and more horrendous crimes.

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If you can see such patterns in your own behavior and in others, you can better choose the correct course of action for yourself and be more thoughtful in how you communicate with others about their errors. Hint: Trying to make people feel more guilty for their stupid decisions will likely backfire.

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Love and Guns

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We won the war! We won the war!

Guernica

A Civil War there Never Was

The First Ring of Empathy

The Walkabout Diaries: Life Will Find a Way

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Donnie Gets a Hamster

An Open Sore from Hell

Roar, Ocean, Roar

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Imagine All the People…

You Must Remember This

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Wednesday

What About the Butter Dish?

All Around the Mulberry Bush

29 Thursday Apr 2021

Posted by petersironwood in Uncategorized

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problem solving, systems thinking, tree, vicious circle

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“How are the burgers coming, Babe?” The aroma was literally making her mouth water. She strolled out onto the deck, a cold martini in each hand. “Here you go, Babe.”

“Thanks sweetheart! They — are — ready! Bring your buns right over here!” Ted laughed at his own wit. Darla didn’t particularly find it funny, but what the hell. A beautiful, warm, late afternoon. Don’t spoil things over nothing, Darla she told herself.

Soon Darla and Ted downed — yes, that’s the right word — not, “sipped” — “downed” their icy cold martinis and began to chomp right in on their burgers. Darla smiled as a bit of blood dribbled down her chin. Ted motioned at his own chin and looked at her in just that way that each pair in a couple learns to read as: “Honey, you’ve got food on your face…right…here!”

She patted at the dribbled meat blood and tried to put her napkin on the wooden table, but her fingers stuck to the oil sticky napkin and it fell to the wooden deck. Darla bent to pick up her napkin and that’s when she noticed it.

Darla had one of those minds that is often impervious to things around her. She might not notice, for instance, that a particular picture is off-kilter for weeks, months, or years — not even if she walks by it every single day. But once she realizes that it is off-kilter, she will stop at nothing to straighten the painting immediately. Then she would feel pride as she said to herself, There you go, Darla, old girl. Fixable problem. Fixable problem. You did it. It was a useful phrase and a useful habit that she had picked up from her mother. Find and solve fixable problems.

So it was with the deck. It was July. They had been eating outside on this same deck five out of seven nights for many weeks. Yet, she had never before noticed how faded the staining was nor how splintery some of the boards had become.

Mid-burger, Darla pulled out her cellphone and called her aunt Helena who knew her own business like the back of her hand and everyone else’s even better. She smiled at Ted. “I just found a fixable problem,” she said. She got the name of a reliable contractor and the next morning scheduled work to start.

It was expensive — and they couldn’t use their deck for a few months. But Ted agreed that it had been worth it. The deck looked 1000% better. Totally worth it.

The only slight problem was that the lumber had been heavy which required a heavy truck to come down their driveway. Which had pretty well demolished the too-thin concrete. When, at last, the work was done and deck was redone, Darla noticed the serious unevenness and cracks. “Well, that’s a fixable problem,” Darla muttered to herself. Sure enough, with a few weeks, Darla had found a contractors to pour a new and stronger concrete driveway. The new driveway was unbroken, stronger, smoother, and — coincidentally — made a much effective barrier to the nearby tree roots. The new, unbroken concrete helped prevent water and air from reaching the roots of the tree.

At first, the tree, in her tree-like way, was terrified. She thought she might die of thirst. But her ancestors had been searching for water for tens of millions of years. She found a new source. Her roots found the teeniest of cracks in the sewer pipe and entered, grew strong with the nearby nutrients. The tree was relieved.

The tree had no idea, we imagine, that 22 days later, the toilets in the house would begin to back up. But they did. At first, Darla thought that their dog, Lauren, must have hidden a dead animal in the house. But no. The smell was much worse.

When they found no pet, Darla thought perhaps Ted was simply eating more red meat than usual and that it was his sweat that stunk up the house. But he denied it. At last, the source of the smell was visible as well as odiferous.

Luckily, it proved to be just another fixable problem. The plumbers fixed the sewer pipes. At least from the human perspective.

From the tree’s perspective, her roots were still denied access to water, air, and nutrients trapped near the surface. She kept searching, but eventually, it became clear to her that she would have to cut her losses so she concentrated on growing what she could. Half the tree weakened, sickened, and died.

The August storm was not unusually strong. But it was strong enough.

Strong enough to split the tree. Hundreds of pounds of pine tree dove onto the new deck, smashing it to smithereens.

When Ted and Darla later went to survey the damage, Darla picked up a toothpick sized smithereen. She turned it in her fingers and began, “Well, at least, it’s … “ But at that point she looked into Ted’s eyes and thought it wiser — much wiser — not to finish that particular sentence.

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Naughty knots

The Forest

The Teeth of the Shark

Life Will Find a Way

What About the Butter Dish

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Comes the Reign

The Tree of Life

Essays on America: OOPS!

29 Wednesday Apr 2020

Posted by petersironwood in America, apocalypse, COVID-19, family, health, management, politics, psychology, Uncategorized

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coronavirus, COVID19, Design, Feedback, pandemic, politics, systems thinking, testing, truth

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OOPS!

The basement in the rented Woburn house was not particularly pleasant. Cold, damp, and dark, there were only four small basement windows and even these were cluttered with spider webs. One day, in order to try to make the place marginally more usable for my three small kids, I removed all the spider webs. The next day, the basement was swarming with hornets!

OOPS!

We had an oil burning furnace in that basement. The landlord cautioned me before we even rented it, that a pair of knobs should be used to make sure that the water level in glass vial be kept between two marks. This gauge looked like the gauge in a level.

I glanced at the gauge every so often. Initially, I checked it every day or so. But the level never moved. So, I began checking it every week. But it still never moved. It never seemed to move for two years. One day, I glanced at it, and to my horror, the gauge was almost completely empty.

OOPS!

Now, I was faced with a dilemma. Which of these two knobs was I supposed to turn? There were no labels. There hadn’t been any when I rented the property. Of course, I should have asked the owner more questions during the walk-through. And, then I should have immediately made my own labels. But I hadn’t.

OOPS!

I could not recall which knob would cause the fluid level to rise. I decided to try it. I just opened it a little bit. Nothing. I watched closely. I waited. Nothing. As in the illustration above, there were no marks either on the knobs or on metal behind them. So, I wanted to return the first knob to its initial position. But in my hurry to “fix” the problem, it hadn’t occurred to me to put a little mark on the knob and the background so that I would at least be able to return it to the original position.

OOPS!

Well, okay but it was too late for that now. I waited. Nothing. I turned the first knob back to where I thought it was. The glass was still nearly empty. Was it slightly less empty than it had been? Or was it slightly more empty? I wasn’t really sure. I should have also marked the level very carefully. I didn’t.

OOPS!

So, the glass tube was nearly empty. I did definitely remember that I had been told this was a very dangerous situation! I had tried one knob and it hadn’t seem to do anything. I decided to try the other knob. I turned it a little. Nothing. I waited. Nothing. At this point, the sweat was pouring down the inside of my undershirt. I wasn’t really clear what might happen if I failed. Could the boiler actually blow up? Could it cause a fire? Or would I be lucky and it would just ruin the furnace?

I opened the second knob a bit farther. Nothing. I waited. I opened it a bit farther. Nothing. I opened it a bit farther. Nothing.

Then, suddenly, the vial began to fill. Rapidly! Too rapidly! I quickly turned the second knob back to what I hoped had been its original position. The vial was still filling. Try as I might, I could not get the vial to stop filling!

Bang!!

OOPS!

The glass vial had broken. Luckily I had not been hit by the flying glass. I turned off the furnace and called the owner. Eventually, it was fixed. In a few months, we moved to Westchester, New York.

Perhaps few people have had the exact experience I had with an oil burner, but I suspect almost everyone has travelled to a new place on vacation or a business trip or visiting a friend and decided to take a shower at some point. (Think back to the pre-pandemic days).

If you are in most bathrooms for the first time, you really have no idea how to arrange the knobs for a reasonable shower temperature. If you move the knob(s) and feel the change almost immediately, you can quickly arrange things so that you have a comfortable shower. In some houses or hotels, however, if you move the knob, there is a significant delay before you feel any change in the water temperature. You might arrange it so the water is perfect. You get in the shower, and you get your self soapy and …

OOPS!

You are suddenly being boiled alive! So, you step out of the scalding water, and drip water all over the floor and go back round to the controls and turn the knobs until it feels comfortable again. You’ve learned your lesson. So you wait. Still comfy. Good. In you go. Ah, feels nice…

OOPS!

Suddenly you are being sprayed with ice water!

Think back and you’ve quite likely experienced something like this. If the feedback is delayed a bit, it makes it harder to adjust things. And, if the feedback for your actions is delayed a lot, it makes the adjustment very difficult indeed. Of course, if you have experience with that particular system or you have a decent model of how the system works, then, you can do a much more reasonable job of adjustment.

Guess what? This is one of the factors that makes “opening the economy back up” extremely hard to do safely. I didn’t say “impossible” but very difficult. If you decrease social distancing regulations and people respond to those regulations by doing precisely as you’ve directed, it will be at least a week before you have reliable feedback about whether your actions have been too little lifting of restrictions, just right, too much or way too much. (It’s quite possible the “Goldilocks Zone” between surging cases way beyond hospital capacity and destroying the economy is very narrow).

And, now let’s imagine that you are one of those politicians who looks at the data and immediately realizes and admits that you opened things up way too much. You retrench. You close things down. Once again, there will be a delay before the rate of new infections, new hospitalizations, and deaths starts to decline again. Meanwhile, even if you, the mayor or governor is wise enough to savvy to the delayed feedback, many of your constituents will not be.

“What do you mean, you’re closing back down!!? You just opened up two weeks ago! I brought everybody back, assured my customers it was fine, bought all this inventory — and you shut me down!? Now, I’ve been shut down a week and so what? The cases keep going up anyway. Your order is bullshit and has no impact!”

If you bow to that pressure, it will be a disaster.

OOPS!

If you are a mayor governor, you also need to realize that your orders themselves have zero impact on the pandemic. What does matter, but which is influenced by your orders, is actual behavior. It may seem an obvious point, but it seems to be overlooked. If for example, you have been honest and open with the public, other things being equal, you will get greater compliance and faster compliance. If you have not been honest, on the other hand, you will get (other things being equal) less complete compliance and slower compliance. As leader, the feedback between what you do and what you see in terms of cases will take a least a week just based on the nature of the disease. But there may also be additional time lag because of the fact that people will not all comply. It would be really good to have measures in place of aggregate compliance in order to understand what is really happening.

Sadly, COVID19 is worse — much worse — in this regard than the shower example. I don’t just mean that the outcome is potentially worse than an uncomfortable shower. It is, obviously. What I mean is that the other examples, though they had delay, were (at least till I got in the loop) basically linear systems.

Spread of contagious diseases is nothing like that!

It is exponential growth. Exponential growth can be explosive growth.

You may recall from your high school days, that rabbits were introduced to Australia and for a time bred for food. At some point, they began to undergo a population explosion and became serious pests for Australia.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rabbits_in_Australia

You might find this paragraph of particular interest:

“The population explosion was ascribed to the disappearance of native predators, but the emergence of a hardier breed by natural selection has subsequently been attributed to their spread.” — op. cit. (4/28/2020)

Awkwardly worded, but I take it to mean that one of the effects of exponential growth is that it can result in hardier breeds. I suppose that the hardier breeds also help foster that exponential growth. A resurgent pandemic also means an explosion — not just in the number of humans who are affected — it also means an explosion in the number of COVID19 viruses on the planet. Therefore, there is a much greater population from which adaptive mutations of various kinds can arise.

There is already evidence that COVID19 has evolved and now exists in different strains. Some strains may be more virulent than others. The degree of cross-strain immunity is as yet unknown. (Update?)

OOPS!

Imagine you live in a straw house. It’s actually pretty comfortable most of the time. But one night it gets really cold, so you decide to start a fire for warmth. Of course, you realize that your house is straw so you aim to be very very careful. And you are. And, then two sparks from your fire spew out in two different directions and set your entire house on fire. Of course, you do your best to put it out. But you don’t. It got away from you.

OOPS!

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Myths of the Veritas: The Orange Man

Trumpism is a New Religion

You Bet Your Life!

Citizen Soldiers.

Parametric Recipes and American Democracy

Essays on America: The Game

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Non-Linearity

20 Thursday Dec 2018

Posted by petersironwood in America, management, psychology, Uncategorized

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Tags

environment, equilibrium, feedback loops, ping pong, research, science, systems thinking, table tennis, testing, truth

Non-linearity

A Chessboard Full of Rice

According to myth, the Emperor’s wise adviser once did him a great favor. So grateful was the Emperor that he begged his wise advisor to take any gift she might like from the vast treasures of gold or jewels, any lands or gardens, any of the Emperor’s many male children to be her companion. However, the advisor answered as follows: “Thank you for your generosity, oh mighty Emperor. I have no need of great material wealth. My needs and wants are simple. I do get hungry and thirsty, of course, as do we all, and sometimes my household runs short of rice. You see this fine chessboard?”

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“Oh, yes, my wise counselor, it is indeed finely made of gold and silver and I would gladly give you twenty such!”

“Thank you again for your generosity, but I only wish for a some grains of rice. Give me one grain on this space and tomorrow, two grains on this space and the next day, four grains on this space. Each day for 64 days, double the number of grains of rice you gave me the day before. At the end of the 64 days, I will ask for no more.”

The Emperor looked puzzled. “Surely, you must have something more valuable than rice! Name it!”

“No, Sire, that is all I desire. Just the doubled rice will do quite nicely.”

“Well, it shall be so!” And thus the Emperor told his staff that they were to provide a grain of rice for the first day, two grains of rice for the next day and to double the amount each day until all 64 days had passed. At first, it seemed such a pathetic gift for such a great favor.

Even after 8 days, the wise counselor only received 128 grains of rice – not even a bowlful.

Readers familiar with exponential growth realize that on the 64th day, the Emperor has promised to deliver 2**63 grains of rice. This is not only more rice than the Emperor had at his disposal. It is more grains of rice than exist in all the kingdoms of earth. To be exact, the last payment is meant to be 9,223,372,036,854,775,808 grains of rice while the total is one less than 2**64. To put the matter scientifically — it’s a lot of rice! Much more than exists in the world.

How would you like the story to end? A wise Emperor, to my mind, would thank the counselor after a couple weeks and say, “I see, oh wise Counselor, that you used my gift to give me another gift to enhance my wisdom. For I now understand that what seemed at first an easy thing to do is actually quite hard. Doubling soon undoes even the richest king. I will keep this in mind when I think about interest rates and population growth.”

A crummy Emperor, on the other hand, might say, “I offer you a gift and you see fit to embarrass me by making me agree to an impossible task? Boil her in oil!”

The Lily Pad Pond Puzzle.

Beside my house is a pond. In this pond, a lily pad began to grow. Every day, it doubled in size. On day 20, it completely covered the surface of the pond. The surface of the pond is 400 square feet. How many days did it take to cover half of the pond?

red and green lily pads focus photography

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At first glance, you might think this problem is insoluble because you don’t know how big the lily pad was initially. In fact, you don’t even need to know how large the pond is. It will cover half the pond on day 19.

The Ping Pong Table Ping Pong Player Population

When I began at IBM Research in 1973, I soon discovered that a fair number of researchers were avid table tennis players. At lunch time, somewhere between six and twenty researchers would show up to play. There were two tables and some small amount of room for spectators to stand on the edges of the two ping-pong rooms and watch. Our rule was that if a person won, they would stay at the table and a new challenger would play. However, if you won three times in a row, you had to sit down regardlessly. I didn’t go over every lunch time, but I went over quite a few times over the course of my first ten years there and there was invariably someone to play with. Sometimes, I had a longer wait time than others, but it was never too long a wait.

Then, because management wanted to use one of the two ping-pong rooms for other purposes, they repurposed one of the rooms. Now, there was only one ping pong table. In the two ping-pong table case, remember, I never had to wait too long nor did I ever go there and have no-one to play. As I said, the number of players varied between somewhere around six to twenty. What is your prediction about how many players showed up when there was only one ping pong table?

Here’s what happened. The first day after this change happened, I went over and about fifteen people showed up. I, like everyone else, waited a long time for a game. Our “official” lunch hour was actually 42 minutes and the building was a five minute walk away. So, if you had to wait a half hour for your chance to play, it really wasn’t that much fun. In addition, there were some more subtle effects. All the players were good, but there some substantial differences in skill level. People tried to arrange it so that they played someone at about the same level. WIth only one table, this was trickier. In addition, when a relatively large number of people showed up, it was too crowded for everyone to see the match without interfering with play. It happened that I was too busy to go for a few days. The next time I showed up, no-one was there. Some of us talked about trying to “organize” the ping pong to insure that enough people showed up but everyone was busy and no-one wanted to take this on. Scheduling researchers is harder than you might think. It was hard for people to make a commitment to show up at noon because a meeting might run over, their manager might give them extra work, etc. The number of people showing up swung wildly for about two weeks and then stabilized.

At zero.

What had been a vibrant community with two ping pong tables did not stay the same size, or shrink to half when we were limited to one table. It went to zero.

Warring Positive Feedback Loops.

We’ve already talked about “positive feedback loops” which are also known as “vicious circles.” Sometimes, there are actually (at least) two positive feedback loops hiding beneath what appears to be a stable system. In the Case of the Missing Ping Pong Table described above, one positive feedback loop was simply that when you went there and had a good time through some combination of watching good matches or playing yourself, you were more likely to go there again. There was also a positive feedback loop that was more of a social nature. The more people who were there, the more likely it was you would find a good or interesting match. It was also more likely to be able to find someone you wanted to have a conversation with although the venue prevented this from being a big part of the adventure. Another way that having more people there increased the chances that more people would be there the next day was that it was kind of exciting to have a larger audience watching, cheering, throwing the ball back when the ball crept under the radiator after pin-balling around for awhile after a decent slam.

At the same time, there were other feedback loops, sometimes of the same factors but in a different range. For instance, beyond the point of having the periphery of the playing field covered one or two deep, additional spectators added only a little excitement and they were more likely to infringe on the needed space around the table. In addition, while the first ring of spectators felt very much a part of the action, the experience for the second ring of spectators was far less engaging. While I mentioned above that more players meant a better change of finding a good match, it also meant that one had to wait longer between matches. The worst case scenario, of course, is that you are the only one who shows up.

Behind Every Abstraction are a Host of Personal Stories.

Yes, you can practice against the wall, and I did this a few times, but it is significantly less fun than a real match. I love to serve, for instance. I have a raft of difficult serves. Just to give you one example, with most set-ups, I can hit the right side of the ball so thinly that I put enough side-spin for the ball to appear as though it isn’t even going to hit the table on the second side, but it does; it curves radically back around the left. Sometimes people are so surprised that they miss it entirely. Even if they get there, the sidespin often makes them hit it off the table or the curve causes them to mis-hit the ball on their thumb or finger. I can also add a fair amount of top-spin or under-spin as well. Anyway, I didn’t get to do any of that just hitting the ball against the wall. The wall was not perfectly smooth either. So I might hit three of four shots and then the ball would hit a little imperfection in the plaster and careen off to scribble scrabble along the floor and then crawl under the radiator. It’s the kind of annoyance that everyone has experienced. And if someone else is there, you can kind of glance at your friend who nods nearly imperceptibly as you get down on your hands and knees and stretch your fingers into the territory of God-knows what spiders or broken glass and feel around through the grit and dust until you retrieved the ball. And that little glance and that little nod actually make quite a difference. If you’re on your own, it’s not any fun at all. It’s just an annoyance. The only reason I even bother to hit against the wall is to learn to keep focus for extended periods of time. For this, it is good practice and a good challenge. But, if I’m interrupting this to go fish my hand into a pile of dust every couple minutes, it isn’t so likely I’ll come back.

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These various factors were all in a dynamic balance so long as there were two tables. When the tables went from two to one, however, what had been a stable equilibrium became a very unstable one. Eventually, of course, it did find a new equilibrium point and that was zero. To crawl out of that, one person might show up. But most of the time, they were the only one. So, they would be less likely to come again. Even if two showed up, since no-one could play every day, you might still find yourself wondering whether someone would be there the next time.

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You might have read this whole story and wondered why the hell this building full of Ph.D.’s couldn’t get their act together and arrange some matches. It’s an interesting question and here is my personal opinion. When it came to these brilliant scientists and engineers, they came from every part of the globe and they came in all shapes and sizes. Some were vastly overweight and others were ultra marathoners. But the ones who liked to play table tennis were, by and large, athletic and “hyper” – an impatient lot. What all of us really loved was working to find out the truth. And, these truths that we sought were ones the company that we worked for wanted us to seek. True enough, but by the same token, that meant the truth found and utilized would make people’s lives better in some way in the not too distant future. But working in a corporation also meant doing a bunch of administrivia. So, the ping pong set in particular, wanted to get up from their intense sedentary mental and administrative work and play hard at something completely physical and different. The last thing any of us wanted to do was add more administriva to our lives.

The Takeaway

It’s easy and common to assume implicitly that the systems you deal with are linear.

They often aren’t.

Things can go out of control extremely quickly (into a dominant positive feedback loop) once the dynamic equilibrium is disturbed.

Would the invention of the iPhone have kept the ping pong community going?

Another takeaway: there are two quite distinct ways of analyzing that are going on in the essay above: a fairly abstract one (even if it uses concrete examples like rice and lily pads) and a very concrete and experiential one. In my experience, both of these modes are useful and valid and if taken together give a fuller picture of what’s going on. My experience in this was mainly in human computer interaction but I think it is equally true for many in law, medicine, management and many other fields. What’s your experience?

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Systems Thinking: Positive Feedback Loops

07 Friday Dec 2018

Posted by petersironwood in America, creativity, psychology, Uncategorized

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Design, Feedback, innovation, learning, politics, POTUS, science, systems thinking, thinking, vicious circle

Systems Thinking: Positive Feedback Loops

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Similarly, he demands absolute loyalty. He repeatedly puts himself and his own interests above the law, the Constitution, the good of the country and the good of his party. He expects everyone loyal to him to do the same. But he betrays these loyal appointees, friends, and wives whenever it suits him. He thinks he is being “smart” by doing what seems to be in his best interest at that moment. But what he fails to see is that by being disloyal to so many people who have been mainly loyal to him, he encourages his allies to only be loyal to him while it suits their interests.

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petersironwood

~ Finding, formulating and solving life's frustrations.

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