Donella Meadows

According to the competitive exclusion principle, if a reinforcing feedback loop rewards the winner of a competition with the means to win further competitions, the result will be the elimination of all but a few competitors.

Pictures work for this language better than words, because you can see all the parts of a picture at once.

A system* is an interconnected set of elements that is coherently organized in a way that achieves something.

If you look at that definition closely for a minute, you can see that a system must consist of three kinds of things: elements, interconnections, and a function or purpose.

Purposes are deduced from behavior, not from rhetoric or stated goals

• The least obvious part of the system, its function or purpose, is often the most crucial determinant of the system’s behavior.

There are no separate systems. The world is a continuum. Where to draw a boundary around a system depends on the purpose of the discussion.

Everything we think we know about the world is a model.

Our models fall far short of representing the real world fully.

Stay humble—stay a learner.