REPLY Society Strategy Development (SD6914)

[SDMAIL Bill Harris]

Posted by  Bill Harris <bill_harris at facilitatedsystems.com>

> > These illustrations largely cover, like Jack's suggestion, the
> > *capability* to deal with problems - can anyone offer examples of
> > objectives to have *actually solved* those problems?, e.g. 
Kim,

I started to respond and then lacked the time to give it the thought I
wanted to give, but you expressed my concern: at the most important
level, I don't care about SD.  

Sure, I really enjoy modeling, and I'd be sad if I couldn't do it
anymore, but the important stuff includes all sorts of things about
using the resources of the planet sustainably, figuring out how to get
along as peoples and as nations, figuring out how to allocate resources
among people and peoples fairly and equitably, figuring out how to have
good and healthy relationships with others, and the like.

SD only counts in two ways, seen that way: it counts if it's a tool that
helps us get there (and, if so, it only counts to the extent that it
does), and it counts as a way to help some of us earn our livelihoods.
Trying to give it further meaning seems to me a bit like asking about
the strategic impact of a 12mm spanner: who really cares except the
spanner manufacturer or the person with a nut to tighten, and the latter
won't care if there's also a 12mm socket and ratchet within reach.

For me, that leads to two areas of focus --

- - What are the key problems that SD can address?

- - How can we best help?

and one realization -- 

- - There may be other tools that can help quite well, too (or there may
  be at times tools that can help more than SD).  When we push SD, we
  need to think carefully of our motivations and whether they truly help
  the larger goals or whether they only help us.  It's fair to focus on
  the business side of SD from time to time, but it's important to
  realize that such is focusing on the cart, not the horse.

To take but one example:

> > - internationally-agreed policy will already be in place that has got
> > greenhouse gas levels [not emission rates] reducing by X% per year

SD can help us see the "physics" that shows the impact of reducing or
not reducing GHG levels, it can help us see the likely impact of various
strategies for getting there, but it may not help all of us accept the
ethical importance of making that happen in lieu of assuaging our
short-term desires to achieve other goals.

SD can help us see that attending to the commons has certain benefits,
but it may not help us see the world from anothers' frame of reference,
and it may not help us internalize why we should do something for a
group with whom we disagree over something we believe to be substantive.

If I step back one step to focus on how we can best help, then I think
I'd like to see attention here to the two issues I mentioned: how can we
use SD better in the service of such problems, and how can we stay in
business (both as internals and as externals) so that we have the
opportunity to help, with the former (using SD better) being more
important.

Given the ideas that have come by so far, I have a possibly contrarian
suggestion to address the former (someone wanted fancier GUI tools, as I
recall): we'll once again have good, readily available, text-mode
simulators, and all our simulators will store their models in plain
text.

The former helps those of us who think we think better in text (Geoff
Coyle has advocated for that, too, so I'm not the only one), and the
latter ensures that our models remain ours, not locked up in a binary
format that may become unreadable at some time and in some situations
(the analogous situation arises in some office software suites, which is
part of why I switched to OpenOffice.org several years ago).

Incidentally, I also like working with GUIfied simulators; I just don't
want to be limited to one approach.

Perhaps I should offer two clarifications, just in case:

Bill Harris <bill_harris at facilitatedsystems.com> writes:
> I started to respond and then lacked the time to give it the thought I
> wanted to give, but you expressed my concern: at the most important
> level, I don't care about SD.  

One of the reasons I like SD is that I think it has the demonstrated
potential to help address many of the important problems.  I just want
to ensure I don't make the means the end.  

> Given the ideas that have come by so far, I have a possibly contrarian
> suggestion to address the former (someone wanted fancier GUI tools, as I
> recall): we'll once again have good, readily available, text-mode
> simulators, and all our simulators will store their models in plain
> text.

And to be even more clear, that means that the default, most full-
featured way of storing models is in plain text.  Word can store text
files, and Excel can store csv files, but in neither case do the files
contain the richness for which those applications are normally used, and
I imagine only a tiny minority of users regularly stores their documents
that way.

Bill
- -- 
Bill Harris  
Posted by  Bill Harris <bill_harris at facilitatedsystems.com>
posting date  Fri, 11 Apr 2008 09:37:18 -0700