You mentioned that you taught music in Chicago for several
years. I thought if God couldn't teach
the foolishness of Progressive ways in Chicago I had no hope in SW MO.
Several things have caused me to rethink my World View. I think it is most concisely stated as “The
Road to Hell is paved with good intentions.”
I consider the justification for this worldview to follow
naturally from two scientific/technical papers.
The first is an
article which appeared in the December 13, 1968, issue of Science Magazine by Garrett
Hardin. This article was a part of a
movement creating Earth Day and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
The second is an article which appeared in MIT’s Technology
Review “The Counter-intuitive Behavior of Social Systems” by Jay W. Forrester
the founder of Systems Dynamics at MIT.
The first paper is known to everybody. I was shocked to learn the limited
availability of the second. I saw it in
MIT’s Technology Review. The citation for the
article is
Jay W. Forrester, "Counterintuitive Behavior of Social
Systems",
Technology Review, Vol. 73, No. 3, Jan. 1971, pp. 52-68.
Technology Review, Vol. 73, No. 3, Jan. 1971, pp. 52-68.
Professor Forrester had a long
and distinguished career at MIT. In
1956, Forrester moved to the MIT Sloan
School of Management where he is currently Germeshausen Professor
Emeritus and Senior Lecturer. In 1961, he wrote about the expanding effects
down the supply chains due
to fluctuations in demand, thenceforth known as the "Forrester effect" or Bull
whip effect. In 1982, he
received the IEEE Computer
Pioneer Award. In 1995, he was made a
Fellow of the Computer History
Museum for his perfecting of
core memory technology into a practical computer memory device; for fundamental
contributions to early computer systems design and development. In 2006, he was inducted into the
Operational Research Hall of Fame.
Forrester is the founder of
system dynamics which deals with the simulation of interactions between objects
in dynamic systems. Industrial Dynamics was the first book Forrester wrote using
system dynamics to analyze industrial business cycles. Several years later,
interactions with former Boston Mayor John F. Collins led Forrester to write Urban Dynamics, which sparked
an ongoing debate on the feasibility of modeling broader social problems.
The urban dynamics model
attracted the attention of urban planners around the world, eventually leading
Forrester to meet a founder of the Club of Rome. He later met with the Club of
Rome to discuss issues surrounding global sustainability; the book World Dynamics followed. World Dynamics took
on modeling the complex interactions of the world economy, population and
ecology, which understandably met
with much misunderstanding (see also Donella
Meadows and Limits to Growth).
·
1961. Industrial
dynamics. Waltham, MA: Pegasus Communications.
·
1968. Principles
of Systems, 2nd ed. Pegasus Communications.
·
1969. Urban
Dynamics. Pegasus Communications.
·
1971. World
Dynamics. Wright-Allen Press.
·
1975. Collected
Papers of Jay W. Forrester. Pegasus Communications.
Articles and papers, a selection:
·
1958. "Industrial
Dynamics--A Major Breakthrough for Decision Makers.", in: Harvard
Business Review, Vol. 36, No. 4, pp. 37–66.
·
1968, Market
Growth as Influenced by Capital Investment.
A fellow graduate student at
Wisconsin, Gerald O. Barney, went on to work for the Center for Naval Analyses
and took a sabbatical at MIT. The good
Chinese leader learned about the methodology. Democratic Capitalists believe in
Free Markets.
Both groups know of the
counter-intuitive behavior of social systems
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