The Plurality of POSIWID
A system doesn't necessarily have a single purpose, and different observers may detect different purposes. Or even different systems.
POSIWID should be plural (January 2010) - with thanks to Chris Bird
Constructing POSIWID (April 2022) - with thanks to Harish Jose
What You Measure Is What You Get - WYMIWYG
Label: Target-Setting
Inertia
Large organizations have strong feedback loops that maintain and restore the
status quo against the most forceful and ingenious interventions.
Enterprise POSIWID (March 2012)
Corporate Grind (November 2014)
And is the Aim of Human Society (September 2021) to maintain its equilibrium?
Conspiracy
POSIWID appears to encourage the creation of conspiracy theories -
looking for the hidden agenda that will explain actions - especially
when the official story doesn't seem to add up.
But it is one
thing to search open-mindedly for a hidden agenda, and another thing
entirely to presume its existence without evidence. Sometimes it is not
conspiracy theory but chaos (cock-up) theory that best explains some
complex series of events.
Label: Conspiracy
Sometimes a dreadful event is so politically convenient for certain parties or interest groups that they may be accused (by their opponents or by conspiracy theorists) of having engineered the event themselves.
See Visible Problems (June 2010), The Value of Chaos (December 2021)
Invisible Hand
Are Markets Tools? (January 2012), Culture War - What is it Good For? (July 2021)
Determinism
Biological determinism (e.g. evolutionary biology). As I see it, one of the main problems of evolutionary biology is that for any plausible hypothesis, one can invent any number of equally plausible alternatives. Explaining Bodies (February 2013)
Technological determinism (December 2020)
Labels: Determinism, Indeterminacy
Delayed reaction
Sometimes it takes a while for another purpose of a complex system to emerge.
Example: Walter Wolfgang Returns (August 2006)
See also: Delayed Success - Evolution (April 2023)
Or perhaps purposes are tacked on afterwards (October 2006)
Absence of purpose
Absence-of-purpose at one level may be sustained by a deeper purpose. POSIWID helps us to search for a purpose, but doesn't reveal what kind of purpose we might find.
Example: Pact with the Devil (June 2006)
Whole system
There is an interesting relationship between the purpose (effect) of the individual and the purpose (effect) of the system. We cannot infer a strong purpose for an individual based on a very low probability effect. But the aggregate effect of the whole population may have a reasonably high probability.
See Purpose and Probability (September 2005)
There are also interesting questions about the purpose of diversity, which can only be addressed relative to the whole system.
Label: Diversity
Reframing purpose
From failure to success, from stalemate to victory - see Political Theatre (May 2012), Culture War - What is it Good For? (July 2021)
Label: Framing
Symmetrical POSIWID
For gardeners, the worm's purpose is to chew up grass cuttings and vegetable peelings and torn-up cardboard and produce compost.For worms, the main purpose of the gardener is to provide a regular supply of grass cuttings and vegetable peelings and torn-up cardboard.
So there is a pleasing symmetry between the purpose of the gardener and the purpose of the worm. For religious folk, both the worm and the gardener are fulfilling God's purpose.
The Mirror of POSIWID (July 2008)
Identity versus viability
The primary purpose (POSIWID) of
closed systems is to maintain their identity, and to resist all
challenges to this identity. However, in complex dynamic environemnts,
viability often requires responding creatively to change. Identity is
therefore often in conflict with viability.
Example: Tribal Identity (October 2005)
Simplicity and complexity
If things seem unnecessarily complicated, this may be the result of some conscious or unconscious motive. Gagan Saxena notes that sometimes bad websites, phone-trees and policies have a dark purpose
.
See Badly Designed Websites (August 2010)
Sometimes a corporate bureaucracy appears to be designed to make life difficult for employees and customers; even if such a design is not consciously planned, it may be sustained by the short-term benefits it confers (such as cost-saving or corporate convenience).
See Contradiction and Ambivalence (June 2011), Enterprise POSIWID (March 2012)
Denial
This is not who we are (September 2021) - yeah, right
What is the purpose of denial, and what does it achieve? For example, climate change denial. When a famous scientist stakes his reputation on denying some widely accepted environmental belief. Is this akin to other forms of denial, such as AIDS denial or Holocaust denial? Given that a given belief is a basis for collective support for a given position, denial appears to have the effect (and therefore the implicit purpose) of undermining this position.
Purpose of Denial (May 2005)
Label: Denial
Amplification
If you know the effect that your actions are likely to have, and you go ahead anyway, this only makes sense if the alternative is far worse. Or if you imagine you won't get caught. For example, concealing or destroying evidence. POSIWID thinking therefore acts as an amplifier, accentuating the whisper of suspicion into a bawl of accusation.
Example: Erasing the tapes (September 2007)
Communication and Rhetoric
If a communication has diverse effects, how shall we determine the underlying purpose of the communication? Who is the real audience?
Real Audience (November 2006)
There is also a question as to whether the effects can be attributed to the rhetoric or to something behind the rhetoric.
Scarcity and Poverty (January 2011)
Are the effects of a communication more important than whether it is true or not? (Note Foucault's notion of Fiction Functioning in Truth)
Discourse Wars (June 2020)
And if a communication causes people to be upset or angry, can we assume this was the purpose all along?
Label: Outrage
Adam Curtis
Finally, let me put in a plug for Adam Curtis, whose documentary films provide a huge wealth of material on this subject. I still need to post something on his latest series.
See also POSIWID - the Acronym (April 2022)
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