July 2024
Intermediate to advanced
256 pages
7h 37m
English
Content preview from Critical Systems Thinking
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Conclusion
The hour is very late, and the choice of good and evil knocks at our door.
(Wiener, 1954)
Señor, señor
Can you tell me where we’re headin’?
Lincoln County Road or Armageddon?
Seems like I been down this way before
Is there any truth in that, señor?
(Dylan, 1978)
The tale is told. It is a story of a world of increasing multidimensional complexity. The wicked problems this throws up at the global level are mind‐boggling. For example, an Oxfam report reveals that:
The richest 1% of humanity is responsible for more carbon emissions than the poorest 66%, with dire consequences for vulnerable communities and global efforts to tackle the climate emergency ….
(Watts, 2023)
How do you start to untangle that? But it is not just at the global level. As we have seen, leaders of institutions and organisations of all types, and at all levels, are having to find ways of coping (or not) with multidimensional complexity.
Some believe that Artificial Intelligence (AI) will help us find a way through. Charles Foster got it right when he was asked about this possibility and replied: ‘I find it difficult to understand how the primary product of the problem can be the solution’ (Foster, 2022). A change in our way of thinking is necessary before we can be sure AI becomes a useful servant rather than a dangerous master.
The change in thinking necessary is to complement mechanism with Systems Thinking (ST). Mechanism, with the traditional scientific method as its most powerful weapon, ...
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I wanted to learn C and C++, but it didn't click for me until I picked up an O'Reilly book. When I went on the O’Reilly platform, I was astonished to find all the books there, plus live events and sandboxes so you could play around with the technology.Addison B.
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I'm always learning. So when I got on to O'Reilly, I was like a kid in a candy store. There are playlists. There are answers. There's on-demand training. It's worth its weight in gold, in terms of what it allows me to do.