18 Comments
Oct 20Liked by Michael Woudenberg, Joshua Deiches

Your Eisenhower quote reminds me of another one in the same vein from John Muir, founder of the US system of parks:

"When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the Universe."

https://vault.sierraclub.org/john_muir_exhibit/writings/misquotes.aspx

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

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author

I need to start using that one too!

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AI is causing massive harm to women and children right now. People are using it for revenge porn and pedophiles are using it too. Worse, cops and the military are currently using it. Israel has Lavender. The art issue is critical but not as critical as AI being used to commit genocide.

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author

There are a lot of layers to it all.

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Nov 11Liked by Michael Woudenberg

Kind of makes me want to go bang my head against a wall, but I’ve been healthcare adjacent for the last 20 years - lots of pent up frustration from systems un-thinking. This is a great framework for teaching the concept, but how will users know when they’ve gotten what they need out of it? Suggestion: the quality of the results depends a lot more on who is at the table for the discussion than it does on the approach that is used.

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That is very true. This is the first step and hopefully "And..." Can allow that conversation to happen.

Here's one on embracing the divergents:

https://www.polymathicbeing.com/p/embrace-the-divergents

And another on The Wisdom In Crowds:

https://www.polymathicbeing.com/p/rethink-the-wisdom-of-crowds

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Enjoyed listening to this article. The examples you provided really helped with the explanation. Looking forward to using this on my own!

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author

Awesome to hear! I'd love to know your expereince using it.

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Oct 27Liked by Michael Woudenberg

Nice, I almost missed the low-key "pressure" joke.

I remember us talking through this framework. It's a good one! Very useful.

I see loads and loads of well meaning oversimplification out there. It's important that we keep pointing this stuff out.

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author

I love the pressure joke!! And yes, sometimes we need to embrace the complexity so we can actually make better decisions.

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Systems expand to consume the resources of the social organizations that create them.

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And too often we don't step back far enough to see where those systems have actually expanded to!

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I really like your Yes, And, So approach. I was recently researching about Buckminster Fuller. He would say that you cannot simply look at the individual parts of the system to understand the system as a whole. There would be no way to study the emergent behavior that comes out of the system awithout looking at the system in its entirety. I'm going to keep your 'Yes and So' concept in my head as it seems to be a good way to see the full picture. I think Bucky would approve!

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Thanks and awesome to hear! To be compared to Bucky himself is quite an accolade!

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Yes, and often the composition of systems produces synergistic effects that no single system studied alone would produce on its own. So, understanding system aggregation is a keystone skill as system of systems grow more complex.

P.S. who needs a molecule named after you when you can provide tangible insights to a curious world? 🤣

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Oct 21Liked by Michael Woudenberg

The case study I can think of is the wars that's happening both in the middle east and in eastern europe...

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Would you combine those together or run them seperately? Want to try a run through? You start with your Yeses, Let's see what we can come up with Ands.

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