Aphorisms on Systems
A running set of one-line observations — compressed enough to carry, loose enough to argue with later.
A system is whatever you can describe by its parts and the rules that bind them. By that test, a memory is a system, a nation is a system, and a grudge is a system that refuses to reach equilibrium.
—
You do not change a system by hating its output. You change it by finding the loop that produces the output and standing inside it.
—
Every institution is a frozen argument. Reform is the work of remembering what the argument was about.
—
Incentives are not what people say they reward. They are what survives.
—
A nation is a system that has agreed to remember itself in public.
—
The fastest way to understand any organisation is to ask what it is allowed to forget.
—
Structure is not the enemy of feeling. In music it is the only thing that makes feeling possible.