Alex PY Chan

The World as Layers of Systems

Nov 05, 2022

In my previous post “Goal and System”, I used the word “system”. It wasn’t wrong. However, in the context of that post, it missed out a lot of meanings I wanted it to convey. My intention was to introduce the concept of system as a framework to make sense of the world in a better way.

Making Sense of the World

I mentioned “to make sense of the world”. First of all, what does it mean? It starts with a belief that the world exists independently. In other words, the world will remain here even if it isn’t observed by a human, or if that observing human is dead. Through the act of observation (via perception like seeing and hearing, or interaction), a human acquires information about the world. This act constructs a mental map of how an object work. It may not be the complete picture of the object, but it matches up to some degree to the results of observation. This process, from observation to construction of mental map, is to make sense of the world.

Then, another question comes: why do we need to do it “in a better way”? We all make sense of the world, regardless if we are consciously or even verbally aware of this act or not. But the problem is that our naive, instinctive way of making sense of the world is not for an industrial-information age society (the environment humans live in right now), where the environment is getting hyper-convoluted, which in turn causes a lot of confusion as it is hard to construct accurate mental map of the world, let alone a crystallised mental map. A better (or easier) way to make sense of the world helps us understand how things work. Thus we may diagnose problem and take action more effortlessly (or at least less effortful).

System Revisited

After clarifying up more peripheral parts, we now begin to dive into the concept of system. As the concept of system is applied on the world, in essence a system is a description of the world. What is the world we are trying to describe?

Through science (as a methodology to allow us to go beyond our direct senses), in particular, physics, we may claim that the world is only standard particles and quantum mechanics. Nothing else exists on its own, meaning that every other thing we consciously know right now is composition of these fundamental physics. For example, a car can move. We can break it down in components like engine, petrol tank, wheels, etc. For each of the components, we can break it down and down until we reach to the bottommost level: standard particles and quantum mechanics. At the same time, a car is also a part of something bigger, like in traffic congestion, or something more abstract like its role in the daily life of a household. We can describe the world (the world as we know it) on many different levels.

But system is not just about the static description of things in the world. The dynamic part is the main point of thinking something as a system. Inside of a system, how do its components work together? Exterior of a system, what roles does it play in a bigger context in relation to other elements (which are also system on its own)? Here we can see a lower-level/higher-level relationship we can describe when we try to jump between layers to focus on different details that matter in a particular context.

Setting System

We spent some hundred words to talk about this system thing. How is this thing gonna help at all?

In the context of personal life, often we have an oversimplified mental map about how human functions. We underestimate how infallible we are. We overestimate how much we can consciously control our actions. We ignore a lot of lower-level details when we try to “debug” our problems. The first point of thinking in system is an invitation to think about what exactly constitutes us as humans, e.g. how our palaeolithic biology causes bodily trouble in the modern world, how our physiology and psychology can affect our mood and stuff. We often try to find band-aids to patch our wounds, but we forget that we are inherently complex system in itself. A lot of bigger problems we face cannot be patched quickly. It requires gradual process of alteration.

At the same time, the concept of system is a way to help us keep in bay our innate tendency which we do not to let loose in these cases. Discipline is praised by a lot. It is important but it is not the only source of input needed, and it itself isn’t sustainable either. To put in place a system is to recognise how our nature works (i.e. the lower-level us) and in what way we can direct such natural tendency for the good (or goal) for us.

As a supplement to my previous post, goal is important. In the end, goal is the measurement. But setting goal tells nothing about how it is worked out. Thinking in system is not the solution, but a framework we can use to find out what needs to be put in place, to construct a high-level system out of our consciousness, in order to transcend ourselves.


P.S. A relevant xkcd (I see layers of systems in it)