(2024-05-29) Dash Systems The Purpose Of A System Is What It Does

Anil Dash: Systems: The Purpose of a System is What It Does (POSIWID). When trying to understand systems, one really eye-opening and fundamental insight is to realize that the machine is never broken. What I mean by this is, when observing the outcomes of a particular system or institution, it’s very useful to start from the assumption that the outputs or impacts of that system are precisely what it was designed to do — whether we find those results to be good, bad or mixed.

The most effective and broadly-understand articulation of this idea is the phrase, “the purpose of a system is what it does”, often abbreviated as POSIWID. The term comes to us from the field of cybernetics

then we can recognize that driving change requires us to make the machine want something else.

I’ve found the greatest reluctance to embrace this idea, and strongest rejection of its obvious truth, comes from the politically moderate, centrist-leaning suburban folks that I grew up around.

Part of the reason I’m insistent about the POSIWID idea is because it’s a prerequisite for optimism that actually has impact.

Mindless optimism says, “this system is supposed to have a good output, therefore if we support it hard enough, it’ll do the right thing.” But this results in people doubling down on investing in broken institutions.

The next step, then, is to reflect on the systems around us now that we are cursed with the horrible truth that all of them are working correctly. Ask yourself, how do you get the power to change the system so that it wants something else, so that it can only inevitably do the right thing?