Quotes About Systems

all belief systems are just the stories we create in order to deal with the void. Ego abhors a vacuum, so everybody's scrambling to create the illusion of something where there's nothing. Belief systems are simply the devices we use to explain away the unthinkable horror of no-self.

To this day I still hear people claim that computers should adapt to users. This isn't always true. Our brains prefer systems that are consistent and predictable, and we like learning new skills.

We have the most generous immigration policy, but what is a concern is when illegal immigrants come and undermine a variety of the systems that work in order to make our society function.

Computer science doesn't know how to build complex systems that work reliably. This has been a well-understood problem since the very beginning of programmable computers.

It is interesting that we know how the world and the planetary systems work, but we don't know how we think and why we are conscious.

We are, first of all, not solitary creatures and second of all, we are deeply embedded in the lives of others. It's very easy to forget that and to engage in an atomistic fallacy - where we think that all we have to do is study the individual components of a system in order to understand the system.

You see, in chess we have styles - like in any other field. There are also fashions in the kinds of systems that people play. So I'm trying to know my opponent as much as possible.

Organs are supple and capable of adapting to different situations and domains. Finally, they are open to development, and this is precisely what "stable systems" (Case, 1992a, p. 5) are not. But organs are much more complex than such systems, and it is much more difficult to understand them.

Nicolis, G., & Prigogine, I. (1977). Self-organization in non-equilibrium systems: From dissipative structures to order through fluctuations. New York: Wiley.

Boom, J. (2004). Individualism and collectivism: A dynamic systems interpretation of Piaget's interactionism. In J. I. Carpendale & U. Müller (Eds.), Social interaction and the development of knowledge: Critical evaluation of Piaget's contribution (pp. 67–85). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.

no one ever develops and achieves self-awareness in a vacuum, beyond all ears and systems. The period you grow up in and mature in always influences your thinking. This in itself requires no self-criticism. What is more important is how you have allowed yourself to be influenced, whether by good or by evil.

History is particularly important in throwing light on the source of our attitudes about sex because many of the assumptions we make are not necessarily scientific or rational but holdovers of past belief systems that are no longer held by modern society.

Conceptually, the energy systems are intensity dependent, not time dependent.

focus on the efficiency and interaction of the systems rather than try to target one system for development.

Valleys of Death" — those points in the company's growth where you're bigger, but not quite big enough to have the next level of talent and systems needed to scale the venture.

Those Emergent fuckers have taken away all the I/O that works. I can't use voice, I can't use head-up displays. All we have are windows and these mother-damned things!" She threw the keyboard at the table. It bounced up, spinning into the ceiling. There was a chorus of agreement, though not quite so manic. "You can't do everything through a keyboard. We need huds…. We're crippled even when the underlying systems are okay.

Systems run the business and people run the systems.

If you're not working to get your business or investing operation to operate without you, you're thinking too small. Think team and systems.

Capitalism, communism ... it's all garbage.

Investing in management means building communication systems, business processes, feedback, and routines that let you scale the business and team as efficiently as possible.

I believe that if you don't have systems, you don't have a business - you simply have a job for yourself. My challenge has been to build those systems in a new restaurant setting.

We think of enterprise architecture as the process we use for fully describing and mapping business functionality and business requirements and relating them to information systems requirements.

We need to learn the disciplines that will help cultivate the wisdom of the group and larger social systems.

most of the problems faced by humankind concerns [concerned] our inability to grasp and manage the increasingly complex systems of our world.