Re: Self Organizing systems LO3816

Benny Budiman (bbens@MIT.EDU)
Wed, 22 Nov 95 23:09:20 EST

Replying to LO3811 --

> ... _all_ models are wrong, even Newton's was wrong, and eventually,
> Einstein's will be proven incorrect. All of today's models will
> eventually be supplanted with better models.

As a system dynamicist I will say that all models are _incomplete_ but
are *not* necessarily wrong. A model is only an approximate structural
makeup of the real process based on the _observable_ phenomena at the
time.

> If we are going to avoid the pruning
> process, then we have to avoid all the 'natural' experiments, and
develop
> a better approach that minimizes the pruning, but still results in
some
> learning and some forward movement. So the key question is, how does
> management add critical value to the experiments that are chosen to
> facilitate our learning?

At MIT's Organizational Learning Center and System Dynamics Group,
there is an on-going study on the learning laboratory. The idea is
similar to the microworlds which are management "flight simulators"
which can be used as a tool to evaluate some policies before their
implementation.

--
Ben Budiman
bbens@mit.edu