Subject: SD and critical pedagogy

Posted by George Richardson on 9/21/2011
In Reply To:SD and critical pedagogy Posted by Jaimie Cloud on 9/13/2011

Message:

On Sep 13, 2011, at 12:55 PM, Jaimie Cloud wrote:


1. If “One person’s gain is interdependent with everyone’s gain or one person’s folly can lead to folly for all”

I think we can simplify some of our thinking on Jaimie's tough questions by agreeing that this first one is simply a false premise doing its best to mislead us. Example? I may "text" while driving and plow into somebody, a terrible folly, but that doesn't lead to "folly for all." Somebody might punch me out because I was such a jerk to text and drive, and that might be his folly, but it's certainly not folly for all. Or even if I'm an important person, like the Governor of a state, and make an even more terrible folly, like refusing to commute the sentence of an apparently innocent prisoner, that does not necessarily "lead to folly for all" if we mean others doing similar or subsequent follies.

An aside: I wondered if Jaimie was quoting someone so I googled "one person's folly." Found some astounding quotes, a few of which I list here for your amusement...
"One person's folly is someone else's truth."
"One man's folly is another man's wife."
"One person's arrogance isn't another person's folly."
"One person's folly is another person's following."
"One person's folly is another person's work of art."
But that's probably enough of that!

The tougher questions are

And if
“ Favorable conditions for one species/group are unfavorable for another” or What is good for some parts of the system are bad for others and visa versa”,

Then what determines which way it goes? Can we predict which of those two results interdependence will yield?

Wise choices in complex situations require two kinds of things: the best knowledge we can get about the consequences of policy options, and a wise, client-centered balancing of the pros and cons of each option. As Paul suggested, we all love system dynamics formal models and simulation experiments for the former. For the latter, when it really matters we would want to use "multi-attribute utility models" (MAU models, sometimes called multi-criteria decision making models, MCDM). MAU models enable people to put rigor into their value judgments, including different weights on different criteria to reflect what's really important.

If we can't spend the time or money to get formal (quantitative) models to help us, then we would do our best to think like the models would. That is, we'd mentally simulate, and we'd mentally evaluate and compare all the options and their outcomes, weighing the criteria mentally.

A good process would have stakeholders engage in both tasks, agreeing on the outcomes of policies (if possible) an agreeing on how the various policy options are valued. In practice, it's the latter that is hard, and sometimes impossible, because different stakeholders put different weights on the criteria. As Jaime says, "favorable for one group and unfavorable for another." The process can lead to combinations of policies that may work for most if not all the stakeholders. Maybe.

1a. Is the best we can do to solve more than one problem at a time and minimize the creation of new problems?

I'd say yes.


2. I am still struggling with the notion that “problems and their solutions are endogenous—that they arise within a system, not from outside.”
I understand that once a problem has emerged—it is endogenous—but some problems actually were imposed from outside the system—AND even if the problems are endogenous, the solutions are often not—--they are often brought in from “the outside “—so what am I not understanding here?

I think it's helpful (actually, I think it's crucial!) to distinguish DYNAMICS that are generated endogenously from those generated exogenously. Different people see the same things differently -- some prefer to see dynamics as endogenously generated and some prefer an exogenous point of view. Does urban decay come from forces and interactions inside the city, or does it come from outside forces originating in suburbia or the government? Jay's book Urban Dynamics takes an extreme (and incredibly insightful) endogenous point of view. The dynamics were generated by forces within the city, completely ignoring suburbs, government financing, and other exogenous influences.

But policy interventions come out of deep analysis and some kind of choice process. I don't think it is helpful to try to figure out whether we'd like to call such processes endogenous or exogenous. That is, I don't think it is helpful to think of the process of policy analysis and choice as endogenous or exogenous.

With one exception: policy analyses and choices have to be done by, or with, all the stakeholders. If that's what some mean by "solutions as endogenous," then I think a good view is "both problems and solutions are endogenous."

...George

Follow Ups:

SD and critical pedagogy - Jane Pratt 9/21/2011