Before I could realize, this unique semester had ended. Although I didn’t get to experience the classes unusually, the course was still very inspiring to me.
It is said that the first step in acquiring knowledge is to admit one’s ignorance. Our knowledge of the world is far less than most people are willing to admit. Taking the environment, which we have been discussing a lot during classes for example, the gradual disappearance of tropical rain forests and the continuous extinction of earth species. We don’t know how human behavior will affect the world. The problem is not the disappearance of rain forests and the extinction of species, because changes will always be there. The problem also does not lie in human behavior itself, because changing the world is one of the essence of human beings. In fact, the success of human beings stems from their ability to transform the world. The problem is that this ability must be kept within a controllable range.
With the continuous success of our science and technology, we are changing the world faster and faster. But we are not particularly clear about the impact behind these “successes.” At the moment, we just saw some terrible clues. Because of the “success” of science and technology, it has brought to the world complexity that science and technology themselves have not revealed. In order to cope with this complexity, system thinking is extremely important.
As opposed to Reductionism, system thinking requires that no matter what people do, they should always base themselves on the whole, and understand the whole from the interaction between the parts, and the whole and parts, and the whole and the environment. The wholeness of system thinking is determined by the wholeness of objective things. The wholeness is the basic feature of system thinking mode. It exists in the whole process of system thinking and is also reflected in the results of system thinking. Integrity is built on the basis of the dialectical relationship between whole and part. The whole is inseparable from the parts. The attributes and functions of the whole are caused by the interaction and interconnection of the parts in a certain way. And the whole also is according to this kind of interconnection and interaction way to implement the domination of the part.
The object of study must be recognized as a system, which means the object of study must always be investigated and analyzed in the system. There are two implications here: first, it must be clear in thinking that any research object is a system composed of several elements; The second is that in the process of thinking we must put each specific system within the larger system to examine. For example, if we are trying to solve the urban traffic problem, we should take the urban traffic problem as a system composed of several elements to investigate, not only to investigate the parameters elements of the system, such as vehicles, passenger flow and roads, but also to investigate the operation of vehicles. At the same time, the traffic problem should be brought into the urban municipal construction of the large system to be investigated. Only from the whole point of view of municipal construction to investigate and solve the problem of urban traffic this subsystem, is the fundamental and effective way to solve the problem.
From the point of view of system theory, “self-organization” refers to the process in which a system, driven by internal mechanisms, develops from simplicity to complexity, from roughness to refinement, and constantly improves its complexity and refinement. What I understand as self-organization is actually a state full of vitality. A basic self-organization is just like a seed taking root and sprout to grow into a tree. A powerful system can also grow out of a simple organization. Perhaps, variability and disorder is the best argument for vitality. During the process of growth, we will certainly encounter all sorts of problems and situation, if we could think systematically, the problems are the raw materials, and these materials are going to help us complete self evolution after the experiment, mutation and test. Therefore “self-organization is the expression of system that has the highest resilience”. A system with the characteristics of self-organization is an open, developing and changing system. Based on a simple self-organization rule, an organization or a person could change and evolve themselves.
A complex system is defined as one consisting of a large number of interacting parts, without central control, where rules that operate simply give rise to complex collective behavior and complex information processing, and adaptation through learning and evolution. Such as things like the brain, the immune system, cells, insect society, the global economy. We can also think of complex systems simply as systems between the boundary of order and chaos, it is neither as orderly as code or integrated circuit boards, nor as unpredictable as hurricanes or avalanches. It is closer to a game of controlling a small ball that I played on my phone. You need to keep tilting the phone to keep the ball in the center of the seesaw and not fall. Perhaps this state of constant motion is the state of a complex system.
In the movie mind walk, Sonia made it clear that she opposed Descartes’ theory. It is undeniable that the “simplification paradigm” proposed by Descartes, including the principles of separation, reduction, and abstraction, has promoted the development of philosophy and science since the 17th century. But its harm has only been revealed since the 20th century. For example, under the principle of separation, physics, biology, and human science are fundamentally separated from each other; under the principle of reduction, complex things are reduced to simple things, complex phenomena is restored to eternal law by the efforts of classical science. The result of this is that all objects are isolated from their environment, and the integrity is cut. Under the guidance of this methodology, people have achieved a sort of “blind intelligence”. Therefore, in order to avoid this “blind intelligence” and to understand complexity, we cannot eliminate complexity before thinking. While thinking, one should get used to entanglement, uncertainty and contradiction.
For the part of Singularity, in my opinion, the pace of human creation of technology is accelerating, and the power of technology is also increasing exponentially. Exponential growth is deceptive. It starts with very small growth and then explodes at an incredible rate. If one does not pay attention to its development trends, this growth will be completely unexpected, just imagine linear growth and exponential growth. At this stage, the human body, brain, digestive system, and blood circulation system have been redesigned and manufactured based on genetics, nanotechnology, and robotics. The singularity will enable us to overcome the problem of human aging and greatly liberate human creativity. We will maintain and strengthen intelligent evolution to overcome the limitations of biological evolution. If human intelligence can be completely transferred to the computer, then death will become meaningless. If humans are completely integrated with the machines they produce, then the world will be totally different. But I define this “difference” from the perspective of good and bad.
All in all, our brain tends to think in one direction. When we encounter a problem, we always feel that there must be a fundamental reason behind it. The problem will be solved if we could find this reason. However, most problems in the real world are not linear, and there may be interaction and dynamic effects between problems, problems and results, and results and other results. Therefore, when it comes to systemic complex problems, we must pay attention to the integrity, structure, relevance, variability and purpose, and gradually establish a system thinking mode to add a way of solving complex problems for ourselves.
Living in the 21st century, we have such a huge pool of information, but our behavior and interpretation of information is not always correct. Backgrounds, biases, occupations, and limited horizons often lead to loopholes and biases in our thinking and interpretation. More importantly, in reality, the delivery of various interest groups leads to the possibility that even perfect information could be misused and misinterpreted, intentionally or unintentionally. Beyond this, it requires people to be sufficiently knowledgeable and broad-minded to embrace the challenges and terminology of all dimensions (economic, financial, religious, political, environmental, scientific, engineering, etc.), and to integrate these disparate and sometimes opposing disciplines in an inclusive attitude, to delineate and undefined boundaries, and build a complete, prudent, and systematic thinking model. This experience of learning system theory made me aware of the loopholes and deficiencies in my knowledge. It also made me feel how difficult it is for people who think in a simplistic way to accept new ideas.
However, system thinking certainly has shortcomings itself. It is only a method and point of view for us to understand the world. Various models are only an approximation of the objective world and can never replace the real and rich reality. What we have to do is to pass System thinking provides methods to better understand our world, grasp its characteristics and trends, and follow the flow instead of trying to control the system.