At 14:XX, there is a fun slide that says "Personify Your Audience" -- which is like, create a character who represents your audience? It actually sounds like a lot of fun. The bullet points on the slide read:

• Create representative players
• Give them names
• List their hobbies
• What do they want from your game?

~ SYNAPSE Systems have two parts - subsystems and connections

In this diagram we take a system (a large whole unbroken black circle) and see it as a collection of three types of things -
elements (five small whole unbroken black circles)
interconnections (seven red lines connecting some elements to others)
a function or purpose (a pink line projecting outwards from the system)
. . . there is also a boundary (a dotted grey line indicating where the large whole unbroken black circle once was)

Imagine zooming in, or out. This system is an element in a larger system; the elements are themselves systems; interconnections, seen up close, are functions or purposes; functions or purposes, seen from afar, are interconnections.

Rather than three types of things, a system is only two: elements; and connections, which may be internal connections or external connections.

See ~ SYNAPSE: Self sufficient subsystems, and evolution. especially the ~ Hierarchies fable

Rather than focus on output, result, consequence, function, purpose, I much prefer this perspective: We look out at the larger system(s) of which this system is a part and ask, "What outside connections does this system have with the larger world of systems?"

Rather than function or purpose, which imply intent on the part of the thing-itself or its creator... Rather than discernible macrobehaviour, which implies subjectivity... What is the name for the consequence which emerges, the result which gives the system its place in the larger system?

Oh, of course. Allow me to refine Meadows' definition of a system:

. . . a system must consist of three kinds of things: elements, intraconnections (between elements within the system), and interconnections (between this system and elements or systems outside).

The definitions of 'purpose' and 'function' both in some cases include intent. I am personally more amenable to the phrase "discernible macrobehaviour" because it places the onus on the observer (the "discerner"), although strictly speaking a system with a not-presently-discernible macrobehaviour is still a system... Just one we cannot identify yet.

Is there a more neutral word?

~ Emergence, page 19

Quotemultiple agents dynamically interacting in multiple ways, following local rules and oblivious to any higher-level instructions . . . [resulting] in some kind of discernible macrobehaviour

~ Thinking in Systems, page 11 (the first page of the first chapter, "THE BASICS.") and page 15

Quote. . . a system must consist of three kinds of things: elements, interconnections, and a function or purpose.

A football team['s purpose may be] to win games, or have fun, or get exercise, or make millions of dollars, or all of the above. . . .

System purposes need not be human purposes and are not necessarily those intended by any single actor within the system. . . . the purposes of subunits may add up to an overall behavior that no one wants.

Here it is. ~ Thinking in Systems, page 82-83.

QuoteWhy the Universe Is Organized into Hierarchies--a Fable

The watches made by both Hora and Tempus consisted of about one thousand parts each.

Tempus put his together in such a way that if he had one partly assembled and had to put it down---to answer the phone, say---it fell to pieces. When he came back to it, Tempus would have to start all over again. The more his customers phoned him, the harder it became for him to find enough uninterrupted time to finish a watch.
     [Aside: This is a great example of a 'balancing feedback loop' in a system! In this case it's a bad balance; the more success Tempus finds, the less he is able to build watches, which places a limiter on how much watch-building success he can achieve.]

Hora's watches were no less complex than those of Tempus, but he put together stable subassemblies of about ten elements each. Then he put ten of these subassemblies together into  large assembly; and ten of those assemblies constituted the whole watch. Whenever Hora had to put down a partly completed watch to answer the phone, he lost only a small part of his work. . . .

Complex systems can evolve from simple systems only if there are stable intermediate forms. The resulting complex forms will naturally be hierarchic.

. . .

Hierarchies . . . give a system stability and resilience . . . they reduce the amount of information that any part of the system has to keep track of. . . . relationships within each subsystem are denser and stronger than relationships between subsystems. . . . Hierarchical systems are partially decomposable. They can be taken apart and the subsystems . . . function, at least partially, as systems in their own right. . . . However, one should not lose sight of the important relationships . . .

Thinking in Systems - watchmaker quote

The Nature of Order - genes, self sufficient little things

Emergence - Discernible macrobehaviour

Thinking in Systems - defines systems in part as things that have a "function" or "purpose", same idea as Emergence's 'discernible macrobehaviour.'

I like the phrase given in Emergence even though it's a mouthful because it avoids ascribing intentionality to systems.

Finished the book :) Great book. Thanks jack.

Thinking in Systems: ". . . most people already know about the interconnections that make moral and practical rules turn out to be the same rules."

~ http://newforum.droqen.com/index.php?msg=2116

This is a big one. Seeing two different things as the same thing. It often feels sudden and jarring and weird. And somehow comforting and right and possible.

The Nature of Order: ornamentation and function.
~ (no link)

pages 180-185

Stay Humble--Stay a Learner
Systems thinking has taught me to trust my intuition more and my figuring-out rationality less, to lean on both as much as I can, but still to be prepared for surprises. . . .
The thing to do, when you don't know, is not to bluff and not to freeze, but to learn. The way you learn is by experiment---or, as Buckminster Fuller put it, by trial and error, error, error. [Maybe 'trial and error' gameplay isn't so bad after all?]
. . . small steps, constant monitoring, and a willingness to change course as you find out more about where it's leading. . . . making mistakes and, worse, admitting them. . . . Error-embracing is the condition for learning. It means seeking and using---and sharing---information about what went wrong with what you expected or hoped would go right.

Celebrate Complexity
There's something within the human mind that is attracted to straight lines and not curves, to whole numbers and not fractions, to uniformity and not diversity, to certainties and not mystery. But there is something else within us that has the opposite set of tendencies. . . recognizes instinctively that nature designs . . . with intriguing detail on every scale from the microscopic to the macroscopic.
. . .
We can. . . celebrate and encourage self-organization, disorder, variety, and diversity. . . . Aldo Leopold did with his land ethic: "A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise."

Expand Time Horizons
Many Native American cultures actively spoke of and considered in their decisions the effects on the seventh generation to come. . . . As Kenneth Boulding wrote: "There is a great deal of historical evidence to suggest that a society which loses its identity with posterity and which loses its positive image of the future loses also its capacity to deal with present problems, and soon falls apart . . ."
. . . You need to be watching both the short and the long term---the whole system.

Defy the Disciplines
Seeing systems whole requires more than being "interdisciplinary" . . . Interdisciplinary communication works only if there is a real problem to be solved, and if the representatives from the various disciplines are more committed to solving the problem than to being academically correct. . . . They will have to admit ignorance and be willing to be taught, by each other and by the system.
   It can be done. It's very exciting when it happens.

Expand the Boundary of Caring
If will not be possible in this integrated world
for your heart to succeed if your lungs fail, or
for your company to succeed if your workers fail, or
for the rich in Los Angeles to succeed if the poor in Los Angeles fail, or . . .
for the global economy to succeed if the global environment fails.
   As with everything else about systems, most people already know about the interconnections that make moral and practical rules turn out to be the same rules. ~ Synapse: Aligning seemingly disparate values.
. . . They just have to bring themselves to believe that which they know. ~ Synapse: Measuring imprecisely but accurately by feeling.

Don't Erode the Goal of Goodness
The most damaging example of the systems archetype called "drift to low performance" is the process by which modern industrial culture has eroded the goal of morality . . . Examples of bad human behavior are held up, magnified by the media, affirmed by the culture, as typical.
. . .
We know what to do about drift to low performance. Don't weigh the bad news more heavily than the good. And keep standards absolute.